Skip to main content

A dalek in Asda

A dalek (probably not in Asda)
Yesterday there was an dalek in our local Asda. Apart from offering the opportunity for a quick tweet ('Just seen a dalek at Asda. I always thought they shopped at Lidl.') it inspired me to think about what has happened to fear in children.

If, at the age of 8, when I first encountered daleks on TV, I had met one rolling down the frozen food aisle, I would probably have wet myself. In practice this couldn't have happened. First we didn't have a fridge when I was 8, and second there were no supermarkets in Rochdale yet. We still did our food shopping at the Home and Colonial. But I digress. I am a member of the generation that genuinely hid behind the sofa to watch something like Doctor Who.

We peered in terrified delight over the top of the couch at the rather murky images of that first Doctor Who adventure, ready to duck down if necessary. Daleks were seriously scary. In 2011, as far as I can gather, nothing much phases an eight-year-old. Given there hasn't been a huge amount of evolution in my lifetime (I'm not that old), what has happened? Is it that they're all exposed to Saw and other such DVDs from the age of two? I really don't know. But I didn't see one child clutching at their parents, showing fear when the dalek came down the aisle. Bring back the good old days, I say...


Image from Wikipedia
Labels:

Comments

  1. Henry24 October 2011 at 12:28

    My first dalek was at my Dad's Works summer Family Day. Its inclusion was ill advised. I was terrified and required expensive ice cream therapy to set the world right.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous24 October 2011 at 12:35

    Well, kids are still scared of Father Christmas, clowns and Mr Punch when they run into him in town. Not all kids, but some. If they were asked to sit on the Dalek's knee or walk through the Dalek grotto maybe they would be crying wrecks ? I wonder if the frozen food aisle is so incongruous and other people's reactions so amused that they had no reason to fear. Context makes a huge difference I think.

    The old Dr Who actors were more scary too. Tom Baker was a more friendly one but even he had a kind of lunatic menace compared with Matt Smith. I think that left the audience feeling more vulnerable too
    From another person that lived behind the sofa at key moments on a Saturday night

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sue Smith24 October 2011 at 12:38

    I am not looking much more enigmatic that I meant to in my comment above! Sue

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp
117 comments
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor
25 comments
Read more

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense
6 comments
Read more