So earlier I was in the kitchen, making dinner. My place is sort of open-plan on the ground floor so the kitchen is combined with the lounge and dining room. Anyway there I am, cooking away, when my youngest boy decides that he's clearly had enough of this appalling service and wants food now. Not in five minutes... Not when it's cooked... Immediately, and that's only if it can't be done faster.
A toddler demanding food is nothing new, to be fair just about every parent has been through this at some point. No it wasn't new, but the way he did it was. Rather than stomp across the room and try and climb up my leg, he climbed into his high chair and glared at me. Now this doesn't sound especially impressive, until you realise that the high-chair was away from the table and sort of pushed into the middle of the room. It's far too tall for him to climb into. So without even pausing to think about it, he pushed it across the floor until it hit the wall. Still too high for him, but at least it's near the table. In fact it's also near one of the end tables we have next to the settee too. Not quite close enough though, so he pulls that table over until it's next to the high chair. It's a light table by the way... he's not super-toddler (wouldn't that be cool though? Hold on... just thought that one through... maybe not.)
So having rearranged the furniture to his liking he then climbs up onto this end table, stands up, walks to the edge of it and then literally climbs (might need to check if there is any monkey in my DNA, this raises uncomfortable questions about my genealogical roots) up the side of the high chair and clambers into it. All told, pretty impressive... and also VERY fast.
So fast in fact, that I didn't have time to stop being impressed and start being horrified at the danger he'd just put himself in. To be fair it wasn't that much danger and the worst could have happened would have been a bump on the head. This got me thinking, my GOD I am overprotective... or is it just everyone now? I never rode my bike with a helmet... we didn't have pads for skateboarding... we didn't have "don't do this at home" statements on television. We just knew. If I fell off my bike or skateboard I got back up and got on with it. If I got cut... well I guess I bled a bit. I knew, without the requirement for a warning notice, that despite what happens on Tom and Jerry, throwing an anvil onto someone's head is going to do more than raise a red lump. So where did this all come from?
It's everywhere once you start looking for it. Government adverts about eating more healthily and making sure you get five, no... seven... no, hold on a second... forty two servings of fruit and vegetable a day? We've also got to be politically correct. It's not okay to say things which might offend someone because of their race, sexual orientation, religion... and okay this is true, it's not... It never was... But it pervades everything...
There was a period when I was writing Fae that I stopped myself from putting in swear words or too much gore and violence. I didn't want to offend the reader. Then eventually I caught myself deleting a piece of dialogue and suddenly I thought, fuck the reader! This is my damned story and if you don't like it then that's fine. I wasn't about to pepper it with blood and profanity but you know what? Some people swear.... So some of my characters swear... deal with it. As for the blood... it's an epic fantasy... nuff said. If you can't deal with this then I recommend another book... possibly read whilst wearing protective gear and eating your sixty-a-day... My books will be real... true to me, and as good as I can make them. Just try to ignore the kid climbing the furniture in the corner.
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