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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

"Educational TV"

DD1 would like to be an archaeologist when she's older, so we sat down last night to watch a documentary about the tomb of King Midas. It was on at 8 o'clock, so I thought that even for Channel 5 it would be 'suitable'. But no.
"Mummy, what's prostitution?"
"What's a brothel?"
"What's infanticide?"
The programme wasn't about King Midas as billed; it was actually about the murdered bodies of over a hundred Roman babies discovered in the sewers under a bathhouse and suspected brothel. So DD1 had a quick guide to the murkier aspects of sexual behaviour, while I desperately tried to work out how to change the subject to something more appropriate without making a big deal out of it.
So next time, Channel 5, please could we have a bit of a warning beforehand. It's not big or clever to make me have to explain that kind of stuff without advance notice.