NURSERY RHYMES, DESPOTS & VILE KYLE SANDILANDS

Yesterday I looked after a friend’s son who is 5 weeks older than Q. I’ve done it a few times of late and it has pretty much cured me of my dream for twins.

I take my hat off to anyone who owns such a phenomena. You must be really, really tired.

Anyway, like all good babysitters, I read the kids a story, several in fact, and sang them a bunch of nursery rhymes from a book he’d been given for his birthday.

Some I remembered, some I did not, but they don’t know them anyway, so I just made up the tune.

Others I just recited in that ‘adult reading a kid's book to a kid’ voice, but I’m not sure I'll ever read some of them again. Remember the old woman who lived in a shoe?

 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

And whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.

 Jeez. It's not their fault they're hungry.

How about Rock a bye baby, now that one is just evil.

I now know that the Ring a ring a rosie was about the bubonic plague. When I was a little girl we just thought it was a silly game where the last one to fall was out.

What about the poor old maid in Sing a song of sixpence who had her nose pecked off by a blackbird.

Jack and Jill are really King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette who were both beheaded, so I suppose saying they tumbled down a hill is nicer than saying they had their heads cut off in the town square while people watched and cheered.

Some of them really bothered me, and it made me realise that if I’m going to sing these ditties to Q, I may as well sing them about people relevant to her time period.

The choices for modern day despots, disasters and dictators are unfortunately in no short supply.

For the men we have…

Osama Bin Laden for starters.

Saddam Hussein, another top bloke.

Some would argue George W. Bush.

Perhaps I could do a rhyme that combined all three.

Closer to home we’ve got

Alan Joyce or the Unions depending on your perspective.

And Kyle Sandilands although I’m loath to give that man any more attention than his appalling behaviour has already managed to acquire.

Representing the women we’ve got…

Most of Los Angeles for making it seem normal for women to be anorexic and artificially constructed.

Sarah Palin for destroying the environment with her excessive use of hairspray.

And Jackie O for condoning her sidekick’s language by her own inaction and silence.

 We’ve got natural disasters aplenty to choose from – Hurricane Katrina and her sister Irene. 

Cyclones and floods destroying Australian homes, lives and banana plantations.

Tsunamis wiping out half of Japan.

Bushfires, famines, droughts and plagues.

 Ugh. Not much has changed has it?

 On second thought, I think I’ll write my stories about nice things that have happened.

Like the power of the people – think Facebook, blogging and how Twitter-ers convinced the advertisers to dump that foul-mouthed Sandilands.

I can see that one as an upbeat, honky-tonk tune.

Something like this…

 He’s foul, foul,

the people growled in 140 characters or less,

Dump him now, make him poor,

Let him sit in his own mean mess.

 I think I may be onto something people…