pox

Nice word pox

Blog hiatus while my daughter is off school with chicken pox. The whole class seems to be off. Probably because these days, chicken pox's time-line has shrunk to fit in with parental schedules. In my day you were off school for 2 weeks. Nowadays parents slap on a bit of calamine, wait until their grizzling infants look a bit less spotty and send them back to school to infect the entire class. In the chemist's queue my itching daughter's eye fell upon some discounted children's DVDs (a big no no) so along with calendula and calamine, I came home with what I thought was an Australian version of Peter Pan but actually turned out to be a mishmash of Pan and Captain CrustyMumpyGrumble or something. Perhaps it was re-cut to specifically target low attention span masses for whom visual coherency and narrative have become redundant. The fact that my daughter didn't seem to mind was a little worrying. Five is a funny age.

Not long before the chicken pox landed, she went off for a 'play day' with a couple of other schoolfriends wearing a new pink hair-band lodged in the front of her Afro. (I have never been into pink, but in this era of consumer conformity, it is hard to counter) When she was returned home, I was appalled to see that her hair had been hot-comb straightened into a style resembling Condoleeza's. Aggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

A pox on that parent!