James Proclaims!

When I was a child, TV in the UK consisted of four channels. In England that would have been BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4. In Wales, where I grew up, there was no Channel 4. We had S4C. Which was entirely in Welsh. I don’t really speak Welsh, although I did learn a bit in school and somehow managed to get a grade B at GCSE. But S4C was mainly useless to me (apart from as a cunning ruse when I pretended to revise for the aforementioned GCSE), so I grew up with three channels. Channel 5 didn’t really arrive until I was already an adult and, although additional channels might notionally have been available via the installation of a satellite dish, my parents never subscribed to such services because I think they were quite expensive. And they probably felt that three channels was enough.

We also only had one TV to be shared between the whole family and the internet wasn’t really a thing as far as the general public was concerned. We didn’t even have VHS player in the early years. If you wanted to watch TV, you watched what was on the TV. As a child, it meant I knew the schedules pretty well. My time was late afternoons and weekend mornings. Cartoon time. Long time readers may recall my homage to the cartoons of the 80s and 90s but might also note some clear omissions. Like BraveStarr, the animated Space Western that would definitely have been my cup of tea. If I drank tea at that age. Which I didn’t. Although I think I did drink coffee. Which, on reflection, seems wrong for an primary-school-aged child. But I digress. I never watched BraveStarr, because it was on at the same time as something else I liked on a different channel. Possibly He-Man.

Back in the day we had to make some hard choices.

These days there are hundreds of channels available in the UK, many of them accessible without subscribing to any particular service. But if you like having access to the internet, which I do, then in all likelihood you’ll have subscribed to some multimedia provider that throws in a load of extra TV channels as part of your internet/phone package. Most of them are awful, and largely if I watch TV in the traditional sense, then I’d probably watch something on one of BBC1, BBC2, ITV or Channel 4. Not S4C though because I now live in England and have no intention of sitting any more exams in Welsh. Actually sometimes S4C because they occasionally show rugby and football matches involving teams I grew up with and it’s worth putting up with Welsh language commentary to watch those games. But largely it’s the ‘big 4’ if I watch TV. Which I mainly don’t these days.

Because another thing that comes with having the internet is access to subscribable streaming services, and I subscribe to a few. I’m not sure if I can really afford to subscribe to them, but once the direct debit is set up, it’s quite hard to equate those services with the total lack of money in my bank account at the end of every month. And I do use most of them, more so than my gym subscription for example. Which is wrong on multiple levels. I might need to review my priorities a little. Perhaps I’ll do that later with a cold beer and calorific snack.

As a household we still only have one TV. And even that is probably more than we need, because these days you can access moving images via a whole host of devices. But we do have a TV. It’s on as I write this. I’m not watching it. Little Proclaims is notionally watching it. Although being the whirlwind that she is, she’s also multi-tasking and has produced no less than seven drawings of cats in the last 15 minutes. My daughters do enjoy a whole host of cartoons, which are available on demand via the various streaming services. And they do demand to watch them a lot. Of course Mrs Proclaims and I feel a tad guilty about letting them just sit and watch TV, but I could hardly produce exquisite prose like this if I didn’t let the TV do a little of the heavy lifting vis-a-vis childcare. The magic of the modern world is such that we are able to ease our guilt a little by insisting that they watch their cartoons in French. Because that is an option. So it’s sort of educational and not lazy parenting at all.

I do wonder how my children might have coped with the limitations of the 80s and 90s, but I also know that my childhood would have been equally incomprensible to my parents and the stuff of science fiction to the generations that preceded them. Was it better then or is it better now? There’s nothing quite like the good old days of course. Not even, as it turns out, the reality of the good old days.

But at least my parents got to watch what they wanted some of the time, simply due to the lack of cartoons at certain times of day. Mrs Proclaims and I rarely sit down together to watch anything much. Except on Friday evenings.

Friday is pizza night. This mainly entails Little and Mini eating the cheapest supermarket pizza available, as soon as Little returns from school. I would feel guilty about this, but we’ve tried offering them more expensive pizza in the past and Little is very clear that she prefers the cheap ones. Mini Proclaims doesn’t articulate her preferences as such but does like to let you know of her distaste for gourmet pizza through a sound, which might be best described as “bleurgh!”

So they eat their cheap pizza and then Mrs Proclaims gets them ready for bed. I’m usually home a little later on a Friday because I do a thrice weekly martial arts class. It’s pretty much the only thing I do that isn’t work or childcare, and I’m confident that any middleclass person who came at me with a set of pre-choreographed moves would soon find that I could provide some more-than-adequate choregraphed responses. When I return, there is usually time for me to participate in Little Proclaims extensive and elaborate bedtime routine and then Mrs Proclaims and I settle down to enjoy a slightly pricier supermarket pizza and an episode of a show we both like. Or if we’re feeling really extravagant, possibly a whole film. Mini Proclaims will usually join us for this somewhat underwhelming attempt at a ‘date-night’ but only having 50% of our children present is about as close as we ever get to spending quality time with each other.

Until recently Mini Proclaims had not been too vociferous in her objections to us not watching one of her cartoons of preference. Little Proclaims would afford us no such clemency, which is why it is really important that we get her bedtime routine right. Little Proclaims believes the TV was invented solely for her amusement and cannot fathom a world where her parents might also enjoy the moving pictures.

This Friday just gone, I missed my martial arts class, due to the fact that I was recovering from a cold. I didn’t miss a day of work (which on reflection my colleagues may not be thankful for) but I didn’t feel quite well enough to pretend to punch and kick people for an hour. However, I still didn’t get out of work that early, so the children were already munching on their cheap pizza by the time I arrived home. It was considerably earlier than my normal Friday return, so there seemed little point in Mrs Proclaims and I delaying our pizza/TV extravaganza until Little Proclaims went to bed.

Or so we thought.

In fairness Little Proclaims did not object to Mummy and Daddy watching something on TV that wasn’t something she wanted to watch. But she equally saw no need not to talk incessantly throughout the show. She was, however, placated by having the dining table to herself to do an activity that she likes to call ‘creating’. ‘Creating’ mainly seems to consist of sticking stuff (usually stuff found in the recycling bin) to other stuff. Historically her main medium has been sellotape, but recently she’s been experimenting with Pritt stick.

We relaxed. The main source of distraction had been resolved and the issue of attempting to return her creations to the recycling bin without her noticing was a problem for another day. But we’d let our guard down. Mini Proclaims is normally well-marshalled on ‘quasi-date-night’. But with her sister diverting our attention, Mini Proclaims was free to roam. And roam she did. Right up to the TV unit. The first casualty was the DVD player, which she unceremoniously pushed onto the floor. We don’t use it that much, but on balance we’d prefer it not to be treated in quite such an irreverent manner. Still, it survived so no harm done.

Her next trick was to switch off ‘the box’. ‘The box’ is the thing that the internet/telephone company provides customers in order to access all the digital content they offer. This included the show we were attempting to watch, which was instantly cut short without ceremony.

Mini Proclaims looked at us.

And said “oops”.

It was pretty cute.

We all laughed.

I turned the box back on, found the show we had been watching and pressed ‘play’.

Mini Proclaims walked up to the box again.

And switched it off.

And said “oops”.

We didn’t laugh quite as much the second time.