Safe and Sound, Fat and Round

Now that so many children are confined to barracks by parents in fear of the murderers, kidnappers, paedophiles and Daily Mail journalists who freely roam the nation's streets, the reduction in broken limbs and other injuries to children must be saving the NHS millions of pounds a year.
My own generation were constantly breaking arms and wrists when we fell out of trees and having our arms and legs ripped open on barbed wire. Then there were all the injuries sustained when you fell out of your trolley or bogey. For the benefit of any younger readers these were primitive go-carts made from planks of wood and bits of old prams which you raced downhill on the pavement or the road. If both you and your father were crap at DIY, they had neither steering nor brakes so when they went out of control at 30 mph you had to try and stop them with your feet and you frequently did several somersaults before smashing your head into a wall. Where I lived they almost had paramedics on permanent standby for BTAs and TCRIs (bogey traffic accidents and tree-climbing related injuries).
Maybe some of the money being saved on today's non-battle-scarred kids will offset the cost of later treatment for obesity, diabetes and heart failure.

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BLOG OFF

It's reported that someone starts a new blog every six seconds. Perhaps they should track this person down and shoot them.
The same research says that bloggers create 10,800 updates every hour. This loghorrea must be clogging up and slowing down the internet in the same way that spam does.
It's obviously time to establish a regulatory authority for blogging - OFBLOG - composed of members of the great and the good who rarely use a computer and have only the vaguest notion of what a blog is. They will have the power to close down boring blogs, blogs that are up-dated more than once a day, blogs that are up-dated less than once a week, blogs with silly names, blogs with titles in a mixture of upper and lower case letters, blogs that display holiday pictures, blogs that chronicle children's potty training and first day at school.............
Of course, I may be hoist with my own petard (is that what the young people call a 'wedgie'?) but I'm prepared to take my chances. If the worst happens, I'll start an underground blogging movement with secret servers in people's attics. It'll be much more fun - like the days of pirate radio but without Tony Blackburn.

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Carlo is very excited about the trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach but he's having trouble understanding the concept and at first confused it with Neverland, the home of his hero Michael Jackson. (Did I ever tell you that Carlo does a very passable Moonwalk?).

He's also spending a lot of time on Blackpool websites and my hard drive is now cluttered with mpegs he's found of some of the rides. He made me sit with him and watch a video of something called the Pepsi Max Big One, holding my arm, swaying from side to side and screaming in my ear. Because of this madness I missed a Money Box Special on ISAs. I may have to accidentally delete these video clips.

There's also something at the Pleasure Beach called Beaver Creek. I'm guessing that would be another first for Carlo.

Tomorrow: Carlo and Lee set off for Blackpool