What are we doing to our children?

Now our boys are a little older, they’re 9 and 7, and fully into gaming and weiner jokes, I really miss those toddler years. There was a clear and comforting routine to the day, especially as the evening drew in and bedtime, beautiful wonderful bedtime, approached.

Because that age is difficult. No, really, You don’t say. Yeah, we all know it is and bedtime when they are toddlers promises so much. Freedom. Relaxation. Not being screamed at, climbed on, dribbled on, accidentally punched in the balls/chin/teeth. It promises, but always fails to deliver, sanctuary, a haven of peace and tranquillity. The usual outcome is putting the kids to bed, then falling asleep on the sofa before stumbling up to bed at midnight like a drunk neolithic man.

I used to love the magic of bedtime: a nice warm bath so they smelled nice again and not like a mixture of shit, dirt, ketchup and cheesy wotsits. All soft, pink and pj’ed, cuddled up on the sofa, remembering why you loved them again and gave up all the exciting things you used to do to raise them.

We would then settle in for a bit of light reading of Greek Philosophy and some topical political debate…. Shit! I nearly had you there. No, we settled down to watch TV because we were knackered and thought the professionals could do a better job of calming down our somewhat spirited children than we could.

And in the UK, we turned our toddlers over to the BBC’s Bedtime Hour and their kaleidoscopic array of mesmerising nighttime offerings while our kids gouged out on the sofa like seasoned smackheads, sucking on the cat’s tail.

The centrepiece of the BBCs kids’ TV Bed Time Hour, the show that all other shows were merely the warm-up acts for, was the truly psychedelic smorgasbord of weirdness that is the opiate, In The Night Garden.

If you don’t know anything about this show, look it up, I implore you. There’s a lot going on. Most of which I find really disturbing but the kids take to it like Pookie took to crack. Its mesmerising combination of colourful characters, haunting songs and bat shit crazy dance pieces calmed them down and knocked them out better than an alcopop laced with Rohypnol.

“We wanted to explore the difference between being asleep and being awake from a child’s point of view: the difference between closing your eyes and pretending to be asleep and closing your eyes and sleeping.”

Aldous Huxley. William Burroughs. Step aside. This is some truly psychedelic shit.

The whole show is like dropping acid, falling asleep and then waking up in the middle of a really bad trip to someone force-feeding you mushrooms.

It was first aired in 2007 and they made 100 episodes. That said, it’s constructed in such a way that it is impossible to work out the difference between one episode and another. In theory, it could run forever. There’s a place in my head where it is. It’s that profound.

Here are my top 10 reasons why we should be really worried about this show. I agree with Zammo, we really should Just Say No!

1. Upsy Daisy

The female lead in this circus is Upsy Daisy. On the face of it, she seems fine, all bouncy, fluffy and pastel-coloured but there are quite a few strange messages being communicated here. The power and control that she has over the male characters is somewhat refreshing in our current climate. Makka Pakka and her favourite, Igglepiggle, follow her around like lovesick lapdogs, desperate to gain her favour. However, one of her crowd-pleasing tricks is to inflate her skirt, which pops up to reveal her panties! I am not sure this is the message we should be giving the little girls watching. What’s more unsettling is the fact that her bed, which is on wheels (of course it is) follows her around. Igglepiggle and Makka Pakka are desperate to get into it!

Now you tell me. Is a manipulative floozy with questionable morals, who leads on the two men in her life (who both clearly have some sort of special needs), playing them off against each other while dangling the carrot of getting into her bed the kind of positive role model we want for a nation of little girls?

2. Igglepiggle

Where do we start with Igglepiggle? He is our forlorn protagonist. At the beginning of the show, it is he who is cast adrift on a stormy sea in an unseaworthy vessel with no supplies to speak of, drifting off across the ocean with the prospect of a horrible and painful death from dehydration, starvation or being pecked to death by a colony of angry seagulls.

It is his dream that we are having. Or is it his nightmare? Or his dehydration-induced hallucinations? It’s not clear. But what is clear, is he is a deeply vulnerable character, with his red blankie and his childlike excitement every time he sees Upsy Daisy, who should not be wandering around a garish wood, trying to appease a mobile whore.

3. Makka Pakka

I love this guy. Beige in colour but not in personality, Makka Pakka is a bit of a loner, preferring the company of his pile of neatly stacked rocks most of the time, until the siren-like call of Upsy Daisy entices him out of his underground hovel. He clearly has some issues, probably OCD related — he is either stacking rocks, cleaning rocks, or cleaning anything that comes near him with one of his cleaning products from his trolley. He even has a go at cleaning Upsy Daisy and Iggle Piggle when he gets the chance, more evidence that he should have more support, some sort of carer to protect him from the clutches of Upsy Daisy and her pop-up skirt. Now none of the characters are particularly verbal, but Makka Pakka clearly has a language all of his own, further evidence that he should be in some form of sheltered accommodation, not left to live with his ‘family’ of rocks in a cave in the woods.

4. The Pontipines

These guys worry me a lot; I have so many concerns for their family set-up. This tiny little family live in a tiny little house next to the Wattingers. The parents are quite contradictory— on one hand, they force their children to dress like puritans in the family colour, which is red, but on the other hand, their attitude to parenting is somewhat lax. By the look of their house, they live a puritanical lifestyle, forgoing furniture for their faith, and they clearly don’t have enough rooms for their 8 children.

What is particularly worrying is the way that they treat their children. The children don’t appear to have names, and the only way the parents can account for them is by lining them up and numbering them. This system seems to work, but more often than not, there seems to be one or often more children missing from roll call. And this is purely down to the fact that these children have no boundaries. They are clearly not given any guidance about where they can or cannot go. They disappear out into the wilderness, turning up under huge flower pots, up trees or even worse, down the chimney.

I have reached for the phone on numerous occasions to inform the authorities before my wife has reminded me that they’re not real. But still. It’s not right.

5. The Wattingers

If you have watched this show you will know, that however weird the Pontipines are, the Wattingers are worse, because they are so damn mysterious. They’re like the Klopeks from The Burbs. We have no idea what goes on behind their closed doors but by comparison, it has to be worse than the Pontipines, who are quite open about their alternative lifestyle. I shudder to think.

6. The Tombliboos

These 3 cheeky little characters of indeterminate gender live happily together, which seems quite nice, even though there is no sign of a parent or guardian. But they live in a bush. Yes, they live inside a huge bush. Social services would have a field day.

Unn, Ooo and Eee are very high spirited little chaps and chapesses who are always excited. You get the impression that they are quite young because they have all sorts of slides in their bush-house and a collection of funky musical instruments but no kitchen or bathroom to speak of.

They must have some kind of washing facilities because apart from cracking out some tunes like an embryonic Hansen, they do wash their trousers and hang them out on the washing line. Which, incidentally, is all they wear. The lack of a parent or guardian is evident when, every episode, they get a bit excited and their trousers fall down.

As a parent, it is hard enough keeping trousers on our little ones without some fluffy, bush dwelling miscreants encouraging them to let it all hang out.

7. The Narrator

The whole show is narrated by none other than beloved English thespian, Derek Jacobi. You may remember him as the Duke of Windsor in The Crown. Anyway, he has quite a unique voice and the capacity to sound very threatening and unnerving. Hearing him sing some of the characters theme songs just messes with your noodle. It sounds like it would be better suited for The Shining or a film of similar ilk.

‘Yes my name is Igglepiggle, Igglepiggle, niggle, wiggle, diggle’

He sounds like Jamie Gum stalking through his underground lair — just what we want our impressionable toddlers thinking about as they go off to sleep.

8. The Fucked up Perspective

I mentioned that there had to be some hallucinogens involved in the writing or the creative conception of the show and this is never more evident than the messed up perspective.

One minute Igglepiggle is dragging along one of the vehicles available, and the next he is climbing inside it. The Ninkynonk and the Pinkyponk, the former like a child’s pull-along train and the latter like a Zepplin launched during Pride Week are the size of children’s toys one second, and then suddenly Upsy Daisy and Igglepiggle are waiting to board, like a couple of hippies on their way to Woodstock. It messes with my mind and my adult brain is fairly well developed. God knows what messed up mousse it is making of the minds of our children.

9. The premise

The whole premise of the show leaves me wondering what the bejesus it’s all about. There are no common threads. In fact, to try and make sense of it is the last thing you should do. It’s like trying to unravel the complexities of Tenet. You should just let it wash over you and relinquish control of your brain, your logic and reason, like when the anaesthetist is counting you down before surgery.

But I have tried, and failed to find a narrative. To find a plot arch, some tropes, a structure of some sort but to no avail. It all just ends in a big song and dance which leads me to conclude that it must be a musical.

If this is pandering to the way a toddler’s mind works, then no wonder people take drugs. They are just desperately trying to rediscover the abstract toddler within, to disconnect from reality and embrace the lunacy of life.

10. The Songs

I’ve mentioned the songs before, and my reasoned conclusion that it must be a musical, but it’s no Lion King or La-La Land. Upsy Daisy’s song is the most coherent but it’s Makka Pakka’s song that is the one that epitomises the show the best.

I’ll never forget, a few years ago, at a teaching conference, a headmaster started his speech by speaking the lyrics to this song, which as you can probably predict, went down a storm and left everyone slightly bemused for the rest of the day.

Here it is:

Makka Pakka Song

Makka Pakka,

Akka Wakka,

Mikka Makka moo!

Makka Pakka,

Appa yakka,

Ikka akka, ooo

Hum dum,

Agga pang,

Ing, ang, ooo

Makka Pakka,

Akka wakka,

Mikka Makka moo!

I rest my case. If you are thinking about letting this kaleidoscopic brain-melt loose on your darling little loved ones, for the sake of your sanity, don’t do it. Just get them some ketamine and save your own sanity.