Aint Gonna Stand For No Cheeky Monkeys Muthaf..

I’ve been learning some new songs in the past few days (and not just because I’m going back out ‘on the road’ next month - venue details and booking information coming soon) courtesy of my musical nephews Tommy & Fraser. Most of the songs, thankfully, are fairly informative but harmless. For example, did you know that as well as the wheels on the bus going round and around, there are also grannies on the bus who go ‘knit, knit, knit’ and mummies on the bus who go ‘chatter, chatter, chatter’? As you would expect, I asked Tommy whether this song might not just be reinforcing outdated sexual stereotypes but he confirmed that in his experience, other mummies seem to ‘chatter’ non-stop about how hard it is to decide between buying new kiddies shoes or an extra bottle of white wine. (He also whispered to me that a few of the old knitting grannies tended to smell of pee.)

But some of the other songs were a bit more dark and troubling and hinted at a level of violence not often found outside the toughest L.A. gangs. Driving back from the park the other day, Tommy’s little angelic voice struck up from the back seat…

“Five cheeky monkeys swinging through the trees…” accompanied by some cute little arm movements to approximate ‘swinging’.

“…teasing Mr Crocodile, ‘can’t catch me’…” hands each side of the head as if replicating moose antlers and waving impudently at the crocodile. At this point the singing gets slower and more dramatically tense and I get the feeling things aren’t going to end well.

“AAA-long came the crocodile…” arms together stretched out in front and moving in a snaking, stealth-like manner through the water “…quiet as can be…” arms slowly part very wide as if jaws are opening… “SNAP!!!”

“F#cking hell,” I thought quietly to myself as I struggled to keep the car on the road. I’ll spare you the gory details but let’s just say that when the next verse started there were less than five cheeky monkeys doing any swinging.

Tomorrow: Itsy Bitsy’s back! And this time she’s mad as hell!