“It’s raining!”

I’ve touched before on DS’s desperation for it to rain. To be fair, he’s barely ever seen any of the wet stuff in his little life, and certainly not in Dubai. But ever since he first watched Peppa Pig jump in a muddy puddle, he’s wanted nothing more than to jump in muddy puddles himself, his feet shod in a pair of shiny Wellington boots.

 

DS's fantasy: Mummy Pig, Daddy Pig, Peppa & George jumping in muddy puddles together.

 

And every day that we see a cloud in the sky – and even on days when we don’t – he clutches my arm, looks skywards and says, “Mummy? Itsh going to wain today?”

Even when I say no, absolutely not, look – there are no clouds in that bright-blue sky, he still says, “But it might wain later, yes? After school it might wain?”

So there were DH and I on Saturday morning, trying to have a little bit of a lie-in at 8.10am while Gerlie payed with the children in the garden, when what should we hear but the gentle artillery of feet crashing up the wooden staircase.

“It’s raining! It’s raining!” shrieked DD as she charged into her room like a baby elephant and proceeded to throw the contents of her wardrobe around like they were caught up in a tropical cyclone.

Our bedroom door flew open (thank heavens nothing untoward was happening).“Itsh waining!” announced DS with the pride and gravitas of a footman announcing the arrival of a highly esteemed monarch. “I need my waincoat!”

DH and I peered out at the balcony. Pit…pat…pit….pat…. splot.  It wasn’t so much rain as a reluctant spit from a god unwilling to part with his saliva.

“Hurry up outside, children, or you’ll miss it!” I shouted.

“But we need our raincoats or we’ll get wet!” they shouted back as they delved deeper into the cupboards for raincoats I realised with a jolt of guilt were still hanging in wardrobes in the UK.

Then, a clomping back down the stairs, the sound of shrieks from the garden then, once more, the artillery up the stairs, this time accompanied by disappointed voices.

“Mummy, it’s not raining anymore.”

“Never mind, dears,” I said. “There’s always next year.”

Can we really blame Peppa Pig?

I’d been thinking about writing a blog called “I blame Peppa Pig” when the British newspapers beat me to it. Apparently, paranoid parents have been blaming poor Peppa for their children’s bad behaviour, specifically jumping in muddy puddles, refusing to eat vegetables and asking for chocolate cake (no mention of snorting like a pig in the Etisalat office, but I guess that’s a more sensitive issue in this region than it is in the UK).

Forgive me for saying at this point that I personally think children have been jumping in muddy puddles, refusing to eat vegetables and asking for chocolate cake since long before Peppa Pig was a twinkle in her creator’s eye – and, as for snorting like pigs, let’s just say there’s a reason I didn’t pluck up the courage to have children till I was 34.

Anyway, I love Peppa Pig. Since DD was two, I’ve encouraged her (and now DS) to watch it over other TV shows primarily because Peppa’s family, and in particular Daddy Pig, have such spiffing British accents. In comparison with other age-appropriate TV offerings such as Barney the purple dinosaur, Handy Manny, Micky Mouse and (please-god-kill-me-now) Dora the Explorer, the Pig family are a pleasure to the ear.

Furthermore, the plots are intelligently written and beautifully observed. Too many times I’ve caught myself snorting with laughter at the antics of Peppa and George when I really should have been concentrating on cooking dinner (snort-snort).

So my blog was going to go back to our trip to Peppa Pig World in the UK last summer and blame that for my children’s newfound love of fairground rides. It all started with Peppa’s Balloon Ride.

A 45-minute wait for a 2-minute ride on Peppa's Balloon Ride - maybe I should be blaming her after all!

I was also going to blame Peppa for my son’s disappointment that it hasn’t yet rained this year. Every morning he looks at the sky and lisps in his toddler accent, “Itsh going to wain today, mummy?”

“Why do you want it to rain so much?” I ask him, after explaining that there are – yet again – no clouds in the sky.

“Becosh I want to jump in muddy puddles like Peppa,” he says.

Every day.

Anyway, the paranoid parents worried about their children jumping in muddy puddles might like to spare a thought for those of us who’ve had about 2mm of rain in the past 12 months. Some of us have to create puddles to jump in, don’t you know? You have no idea how lucky you are.

My top 4 pre-school TV shows:

Peppa Pig
Enough said.

Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom         
Set in a world of elves, this has the same voices as Peppa Pig – and some lovely adult jokes such as the “elf visitor”.

Little Princess                                   
Brilliant stuff. And a nice iPad app to go with it, too.

Charlie & Lola                                   
Despite episodes with dangerous names like “I’m not tired and I will not go to bed!”, my two have learned a lot about things like eye tests, going to the dentist and getting their hair cut from this, and I love how Charlie looks after his little sister Lola so nicely.
But where are the parents in all this? The mind boggles.

Peppa Pig World – oh yes!

Yes, there is such a place. And never, in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would ever plan an entire week’s holiday around a visit to a place designed around a fictitious animated pig.

Daddy's car ride at Peppa Pig World

But child-rearing, it turns your brain mushy until one day there’s a part of you – a sane 40-year-old woman who likes nice handbags – who wakes up one morning in your lovely stylish home and says, “You know what? I think we’ll rent a cottage in the New Forest and visit Peppa Pig World. What d’you think, kids, snort-snort?”

And so we found ourselves crammed into a tiny little quaint cottage in the heart of the New Forest, trying hard not to bash our brains out on the medieval midget doorways, poring over theme park plans and plotting our trip to Paulton’s Park, home of PP World.

Stop sniggering at the back.

I have to say, it was very well done. Despite the crowds of panicky mums hot-footing it to the turnstyles to enter the theme park at 10am, we got in very quickly, “only” about £100 lighter, and frog-marched our way past all the other attractions to the pink land of Peppa-La-Pig.

You couldn’t miss it.

Not only was Peppa herself spinning around at the top of a 50-foot pole, but the theme tune (Ba, ba-ba, ba ba; ba-ba ba-ba ba  ba) piped loudly and repeatedly out from behind every fake bush until you did actually want to impale Peppa on a skewer and shove her on the BBQ (or maybe that was just me).

And here's Daddy Pig making pancakes inside Peppa's house. My joy knew no bounds.

The rides looked great. I can only say “looked” because we didn’t actually go on any. Faced with queues of up to an hour to go on a ride that lasted just 30 seconds, I had a word in DD’s ear, promising the joys of a real rollercoaster if she could tear herself away from the idea of Peppa’s Balloon Ride, Grandpa’s Little Train, or Daddy’s Big Red Car.

“We could queue here all morning and go on one ride,” I pleaded, “or outside PP World, we could go on the train ride, on the rollercoaster, on the Viking boat ride and on the tractors all before lunch. After lunch you could go on the flume ride, drive a digger, go on the magic carpet ride, the ladybird ride, the bunny cars and the UFO ride. What do you think?”

Silence.

“And then you could have an ice cream? We’d have time for that…”

“Okay Mummy Pig,” she said.

Snort snort.

Grandpa's Little Train ride got shafted for a trip on the "Rio Grande" railway - a much superior train with absolutely no queue