Readers of Benny's Eye on the Street - Pedantic Corner..The concerned Parent and the irresponsibility of traditional rhyme.

Here's a letter from a concerned reader. I apologise for my lack of posting of late. Due to professional commitments (I'd do this for a living but no one has offered, and I think I have a fanbase of about 10. A shocking travesty) I don't get too much time to post.

However fortunately there are still some people out there that are living in the real world.

So....




Dear Benny, 

I have been a fan of your blog for a while now and have been disappointed with the lack of action in recent months. It is an important social forum for the pedantic, the concerned and the, frankly, disappointed.

There has been an issue that has been concerning me for some time now, so I felt that you needed to be made aware and hopefully, through the power of social media we can stop yet another social menace. 

The issue at hand is the traditional children's rhyme and the messages that they contain. There are a number of children's rhymes, with which we are all familiar, that are giving dangerous messages to our children and, frankly, encouraging a social message that our faltering society could do without. 

Many of these rhymes have concerned me since I became a parent; 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' for example- The story of a little girl, so inseparable from her pet (a sheep which is odd in itself) that she breaks fundamental rules by taking it into school.

 The rhyme suggests that 'it made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school'. Really,if we are to develop a moral society who abide by the rules and regulations that we put in place it should have said "Mary was suspended pending an investigation into why and how she was able to bring the lamb into school. The school governors found that she was in breach of school rules and the best interests of the establishment and have decided to expel her. (The lamb has been freed from its captivity and relocated to a nearby farm)".

(clearly a sheep that...But still)

Not only does this reflect a more true sense of what may happen, giving our children realistic expectations in life, but it also prepares them to become obedient citizens who have the modicum of deference that is required to prosper. I am, frankly, surprised that in the years this rhyme has been around that we haven't had a spate of animal-in-school incidents. (Admittedly, it was amusing when a dog ran into school as a kid. Do you remember the sheer excitement, like you'd never seen a dog before). 

The rhyme that concerns me the most, however, is

 'The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe'. 

Let me refresh your memories of how it goes:

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread;
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed."

There are so many problems here that it frightens me constantly. I am fairly sure that this rhyme is responsible for many of the ills in modern Britain. 

(Benny: Like this poor lad, who instead of growing up as normal 70's kids did with toy cars, due solely to that poem he didn't have any mates because he grew up playing with this ridiculous plastic shoe.

Ironically it's also made by the same company as the toy cars.

Matchbox, what are you doing? you don't see Corgi pulling this kind of shit!

Also I use 'Live and Learn' as an expression in order to better myself and others. Playing with a plastic shoe would never do that. There's no benefit to this for a lad. Playing 'shoe house'???!!

... Final gripe that PLAY BOOT font is far too much like DAS BOOT, thus de-coolifying DAS BOOT slightly which shouldn't be possible as it's cool as fuck... Awful )

Anyway, back to the letter..

Let's start with the opening line. We know that she is old- I would suggest over 50 as a pessimistic guess. What kind of society do we live in that we let the elderly in our community live 'in a shoe'?

(B: Little did the young woman who lived in a shoe know how it would end up..

Perhaps like High rise flats it was initially thought of as quite a good idea?)

Firstly you think that this makes her a mistreated person, but actually it is probably all she deserves as she clearly is the kid of despicable mother and degenerate member of society who we should not be allowing to take advantage of the welfare state on which our British community is built. The rest of the rhyme informs of us her diabolical parenting skills.

The second line- 'She had so many children, she didn't know what to do'. For a start, you make a decision as a woman to firstly go to bed with a man, and in the majority of cases plan to get pregnant. I admit that it is perfectly feasible that the first of these pregnancies may have been an accident, but I have seen numerous pictures of this woman's family and she is widely depicted as having in excess of 8 children.

If she wasn't willing to educate herself about being a mother and the best interests of the children, then she shouldn't have had so many children. After the first unwanted pregnancy she had numerous options- place the child up for adoption, ship them off to live with a more competent relative, perhaps look to move to a women's shelter or something where wider care and provisions may be provided. But not for this old, irresponsible harlet...She had at least 7 more children.

( A concerned neighbour popping round there to the shoe, back in the day)

Firstly, YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING SHOE!!!! It is not really suitable living accommodation for herself, but to put this many children in this kind of dire poverty is downright unfair and setting them up for a life of misery (assuming that they all survive to adulthood- which is unlikely in these living conditions- from the pictures it seems that the shoe doesn't have running water and I would be very surprised if the old woman provides them with reasonable medical care). 

Secondly, where is the father? Now I assume (perhaps naively) that they all have the same father. He has a responsibility to these kids too. Perhaps she is not such a faithful lover after all though and there are numerous different fathers. In this case (shame on her) she should be getting some better legal advice because these men should all be making paternal contributions. Certainly these would be of a level that she could move out of the shoe and into a house, or even flat (somewhere with windows would be a start!). 

Thirdly, where are social services? These children are numerous, living in dire poverty, malnourished (as the third line shows), being mistreated (as the fourth line shows), living without a father figure or indeed extended family network. Surely in our modern, democratic and liberal society we should be providing assistance for this family. She is not a responsible mother so take the kids away. If the kids must stay with their mother then provision, financing and home help should be provided by the state so that these kids stand a chance in life. I would be surprised if they are accessing an education, and if they are not afforded these chances to progress then they may too enter the cycle that their mother has fallen into. Who knows, in a generation we could have  all 8 of these poor little tykes living in their own shoes with multiple undernourished urchins. Who knows where this could end...

The third and fourth line are just downright shameful. They represent all that is wrong with society. These children have been through enough- They are in a single-parent, poorly-provisioned household (shoehold) and are having no assistance from outside sources at all. To give them a broth without bread and then a beating on a nightly basis?! Who is this sadist bitch! You made a decision to bring these kids into the world! If you have such an issue with them, let them go. There are millions of loving foster and adoptive families out there who will give these kids the love and care that they deserve. The time to act is now- Many of these children will already be too psychologically damaged, but we must try to offer them a better future. 

So what messages is this rhyme giving our children? 

1- It is ok to sleep around and have multiple children with no thought for their well being.

2- Motherhood should be entered without the education needed to provide said well-being for your offspring.

3- Providing the elderly with substandard living accommodation is acceptable.

4- Malnourishment and a lack of balance in a child's diet is acceptable

5- Beating children on a regular basis is an acceptable parenting technique

It is not difficult to see, when we expose our children to this kind of lesson so early in life why we have some of the wider social issues that we have in this country. We should be giving our children, simply, better advice and guidance to build a responsible and moral future. Can I suggest the following as an alternative to all parents reading this:

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children she didn't know what to do,

Social services were called by a concerned neighbour and the mother and her children have been rehoused in much more suitable accomodation. 

She is now attending parenting classes and has met a nice hardworking man called Trevor who provides for the children and has fallen easy into the role of a loving father.

 The family have managed to stay together and both parents are now working so making viable contributions to both wider society and the tax system. The children are flourishing at the prospect of a brighter future and a genuine route out of poverty. "

Thanks for listening. Hopefully this will stop this menace before it is too late. In other matters,

Why on earth of Old King Cole so merry?

Why did Jack and Jill climb that hill when they are clearly so clumsy?

 And.... why is Humpty Dumpty always shown as an egg when there is nothing said to suggest this anywhere in the poem?...

Yours Faithfully, 

A concerned parent. 

The Nutter...Not Just on the bus

When you get on the bus....Does the nutter sit next to you? He sat next to Jasper Carrot, but I think Jasper had it easy. You see on my bus most of the people on there are nutters. I can't escape them.

Nutters are attracted to me like virgin nerds to Games Workshop, I can't get rid of the smeggers. My life consists of moments of normality interspersed with the intrusion of nutters. Jasper had one nutter on his bus. I have about ten nutters on my street! Proper nutters as well, I'm not talking 'woo he's a tad eccentric' I'm talking crazy shit. A couple of the people are like characters off One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, in fact, I think that bearded guy actually does live on my street, if not they are definitely brothers:

Proper nutters, I'm talking ridiculous. The bloke that lives next door to me thinks he's an alien. He's got little posters and signs up on the windows and doors saying that he's a 'Nebulon', It says 'Greetings and Salutations from the Nebulons' on the window next to his door, and he's got little stars and glittery stuff everywhere. It's fully weird. He's actually quite a clued up bloke but he does think he's an alien, and he has these obscure episodes. We used to have these students living above us. They had loud sex all the time so we called them 'The Shaggers'. Anyway, they made a complaint one morning that the Nebulon guy was playing his music too loud and he hit the roof. I've never seen anything like it. He shouted something about them shagging too loud then he ran out in the street, roared like a lion, then ran off down the road not to be seen for a couple of hours. It was surreal. I literally couldn't stop laughing for about ten minutes. It's just odd behaviour. My street is not normal.

 




this one guy, 'Mad Mark', he's got a caution from the police because he's constantly getting his knob out. All the time. Apparently he was having a roast dinner at some mates house at the end of the street (also nutters, I'll get to them later) and when the bloke of the couple went to the kitchen leaving his girlfriend with Mad Mark he just flopped it out and carried on eating like nothing was wrong. They kicked him out and Mad Mark got arrested about an hour later. Madness. I hear tales of it all the time. I literally can't escape this guy. He's everywhere I go. I can walk into any pub in town and he's there. This causes a bit of an issue because bar staff have started to refer to him as 'your mate'. I can't be done with this, it's the dark side of attracting nutters, people think that they are your best mate, and of course the nutter is always going to back this up. I can't have Mad Mark as a verified mate. He's a Beardy-Weirdy flasher. It's just not on. He's alright I don't mind having a grog with him sometimes but I can't have that 'your mate' tag. What if he gets his knob out in the pub. I could get barred by association.

The only reason that I know the roast dinner tale is because Halun (he's called Alan but that's how he talks) the nutter from the couple at the end of the street came round my flat and told us. He was worried at the time that the council were going to randomly knock down houses in our street which would leave weird gaps and wouldn't look very nice. I can't figure out why he had that fear but then, he is a nutter so whatever.

His girlfriend used to be a prostitute, she's quite odd as well. I remember when she was a beggar in town. She used to have quite long hair, then this one time came out of her flat and she'd bicced her head. I can't figure that one out either. It looked really odd. Like a fat rough Britney. Both her and Halun have this weird habit of knocking about everywhere just in their pants. I came back from my band rehearsal one night and she was just standing in the street in a small t shirt and her knickers. It was raining and cold. Very bizarre. One of the students at the other end of the street as well the other week had to break into his flat above hers and Halun came to the door wearing nothing but some very small black briefs. It was a horrific sight. I know what they'd been up to and it just doesn't bare thinking about. It's just like the worst free DVD you could ever imagine that comes with an amateur porn mag. Like, the Readers Wives triple shit edition. I can't think of anywhere shit enough, er..Darlaston edition perhaps, or parts of the outskirts of Manchester.


There's definitely some weird dis-robing thing going on in the street which brings me to my next house of nutters. The 'Kings of Fun' 

It's a house where every single member of the household is weird. For years before I knew them I used to see them, three of them just sitting on the sofa lights on, blinds open. Just sitting. Like a shit Simpsons. Just sitting there all night not moving. Really odd. Anyway, as usual they are nutters so I started bumping into them and now I can't get rid of them. They come up to me all the time in the street. One of them came round the other night for me to unlock his phone. I wouldn't mind too much but you pressed the screen and it said press # to unlock. He just kept slapping the screen and making weird noises. I suppose they can be sweet though, he once showed me a photo of when he was in the school play..Like 40 years ago. He was proud of it. fair play, I wish I could be proud of something like that, I asked him what he was playing, 'a wizard'...He had the hat on and everything on the photo. He said he kept it but it got lost.....Probably for the best.

Another time he was sitting out on the wall. It was really hot that day. He came over to me and my girlfriend who were sitting outside our house and said 'I don't really like these shorts shall I go and change them?' I was like 'Whatever, yeah' They were alright just normal knee length camouflage shorts. 

Anyway he goes in, comes back out with some much shorter shorts. Bit weird I thought but he kind of pulled them off in a 'dad doing the garden when you're a kid' way. Ten minutes pass. 'I don't like these shorts, I'm going to change them'. He goes inside..About 5 mins pass, the door opens...

....I didn't know what to say......

 .... Honestly, I've never seen anything like it... Well I have but not for a long time. Tiny, red, Liverpool FC style shiny 80's shorts. Honestly, they were shorter than Kylie's hot-pants in that video that people like. Proper ball- skimmers. I'm sure he did a bit of a twirl at one point. It was just the wrongest thing ever. I think I saw anus. 

Oddly enough though it's the second time I've seen those shorts. Another bloke had some that were pretty much exactly the same...The following WINTER (yes it was January I think)..coupled with a leather jacket, and non- leather upper shoes, you know, them types you see like in the window of Shoe Fayre or at markets where people have no teeth...(Or in Bilston.)

The look was unbelievably weird. So weird that I thought for a split second maybe short guy on my street was a fashion setter and it was all over the catwalks that Autumn.

..I can't even find any near short enough on a male. Got a few funny looks trying though ;-)


Shorts guy aside, he's actually normal compared to his flatmate.

 This guy is something else. I woke up once at 3am on a work night, and George Michael Greatest hits was blaring out at about 120 dB, I looked out the window he's naked in his room like wandering about. Fortunately he's facing the door not the windows (which were totally open) but still. Then he disappears and I hear shouting, 'Fuck off, Fuck off you bastards!'. Ten minutes later the whole street's out looking puzzled, and then an ambulance and a copper turn up to take him away. 

Apparently he'd got naked and ran around the house, and then locked himself in his room and put George on at full blast. These things just don't happen on other people's streets. I was knackered at work but it was so so worth it. 

They're everywhere. There's a tramp in town with Tourette's. He's really annoying. I walk past him and he still recognises me from playing in town. He's like 'alright mate....CUUUUNNNTT!!!!, BUSKER FUCKING CUNNNT!!!..AAAARRGGHHH! Hows the music going?' 

It's a bit much. I bought him a burger once. He called me a twat then said thanks. It's really strange.

There's so many nutters in Leeds that they kind of blend into normal. They're accepted more than anywhere I've ever known.

I used to go to an open mic.. Well I say mic it was totally unplugged. They had this bloke come in. Johnny. Total loon. Total. He used to carry a knife in his boot, not a butter knife, a fucking big Rambo knife. I asked this regular about it, he replied ' Well that's Johnny'..'That's Johnny!!??? What Johnny? The bloke off The Shining?...It's just acceptable in Leeds. Nuttery. That Johnny guy had an electric tennis racket. Acceptable, mind you we're in Leeds, they like all that weird shit.. 'Shoegaze'. Big news in Leeds. Weird shit, for nutters that wear cords and vote for independant's that have policie's like 'we shall only wear wicker' or 'Let's ban eating fruit from the tree. It's cruelty to fruit!'

I could go on forever on this topic because as I say I attract them. 

When I used to be a busker I had the ultimate nutter, Rob.

This bloke was about 4 ft 1 and he's like a busker stalker. When you're playing he stands next to you and gets closer and closer until he's under your chin. It's just too much. He sings along with the words (which he makes up) out of tune and sometimes does a bit of a dance. It was another one of those times where everyone thought he was my mate. This one woman gave him a quid because she thought we were a double act.

Anyway busking aside, he's a pathological liar. He's mentally incapable of telling the truth.  Here's a couple of Rob classics. I know loads because he'd literally stand by me for 6 hours every day:

1. He went on a trip to Blackpool on a coach. There was a terrible crash and Rob single handedly saved all the passengers from certain death as the coach was on fire.

I asked him why it didn't make the news. He just tapped his nose in that way only bookies and nutters do, winked and walked off.

2. He told me that he went out in new aftershave slept with 7 women, and they all asked him to marry them. Then there was a fight between said women, and he ended up going home on his own.

3. In a tent market thing in the middle of Briggate in Leeds a man pulled a knife, Rob used his martial arts skills that he'd learned in the Special Forces in order to disarm the man, knock him out, and even had time to stay for a pint.

4. He told me that the Royal Mint was bringing out a £25 note, and some people had them, but you had to apply to have one. Apparently Tristan McKay, another busker in town had one that day in his busking case.

They're everywhere...But you know what. They make the world interesting. Long live nutters, just in small doses

So when you get on the bus, does the nutter sit next to you? For me it's about the only time they don't!