Dance!

Junior and I have spent some of our valuable Saturday afternoon time watching the Rock Eisteddfod judging on the telly. I have had, I can tell you, qualms. Qualms about watching telly on a quite pleasant Saturday afternoon in which the Noodle's pliable and ever-developing brains will be Turned to Mush or his eyes will become Square. I think I am channelling my grandmother. If it was winter and we were sitting in front of the heater I could also channel my grandfather and worry about both of us Melting the Fat Around the Kidneys. But for spring this is, thankfully, not an issue.

But I am now qualm-free, because after the judging was over (congratulations to the school who did a mass-dance interpretation of the Grapes of Wrath and the second-place getter who provided a sensitive re-enactment of the Rosa Parks story) we went outside and did a bit of weeding. And the junior has now come up with a fully staged and choreographed performance about the evils of competition and war mongering. He has imagined costumes, musical genres, sets and props. The main characters are two queens striving for some kind of symbolic trophy, while they deplete the resources of their respective countries and allow all of their people to become either a) dead or b) destitute. The dancing is done mostly in mirror image to emphasise that the struggle is pointless, because the two groups are identical.

My idea was a re-enactment of the moon landing, because I thought it would be kind of funny to make kids dress up as astronauts and dance. The Noodle is a person of considerably greater spirit than me.

I never quite understood how people could possibly come up with the grandiose ideas that Rock Eisteddfod entrants seem to consider obligatory. Now I know. Some people just think like that, even when they are gardening. Telly may not, after all, Rot your Brain, but if you watch it you run the risk of Eisteddfod-think seeming somehow reasonable. It's a danger I had never before considered. I choose to see it as 'inspiration' and believe that watching telly in the day time causes the Noodle to be creative and vibrant.

Didn't see any spirit fingers, though.