Nuzzle & Scratch

TV has its place in our household. It's never used as a childminder and we never put it on to sit the girls in front of it and keep them quiet, but we will keep it on in the background for them to watch when they need a break from wrestling on the couch or singing to the guinea pigs (or whatever game they've invented on any given day). We stick to one channel and one channel only. For one thing, I can't be doing with adverts, so we watch Cbeebies, an advertless channel run by the BBC for preschoolers. For another, I cannot keep up with the scheduling of different channels and trying to remember all the best shows on each. Lastly, I just really like the shows. they are fun, innocent and sometimes pretty funny too.

One such example is Nuzzle and Scratch. The characters in question are puppet alpacas who work for the 2 By 2 Any Animal Agency and do badly at any work assignment they are given. However, they always turn things around and come out the heroes at the end. The characters are likable, the stories very funny and the show generally good entertainment. In fact, I started watching it before Angelica and Natasha caught on to it.

However, as Nuzzle and Scratch increased in popularity they were given a spin-off series teaching safety to small children, called Hoof and Safety. We were all looking forward to the series and I for one was disappointed to find it a kind of dull substitute for the original show. The girls, on the other hand, were much more in favour of the spin off and became instant fans.

Now, I am pretty easy to scare and freak out about a lot of things. My DH has banned me from watching anything on TV about what's really in food or dangerous items in the home. I think Hoof and safety fits into this category personally because I was pretty upset to see the balloon animal poke itself in the eye after running with pens and the cartoon alpaca getting frazzled when it tried to switch on the light switch with wet hooves.

However, the programme seems to have had the opposite effect on the girls. We had done a pretty good job of teaching them about safety around the home. Angelica always understood things that were hot and not to be touched. But after watching the episode about hot things hurting she has become obsessed with mugs of tea, hair straighteners and saucepans.

Every time she sees us with a steaming mug of hot drink she will recite the first line of the 'hot drinks hurt' rhyme from the show and attempt to confiscate them from us. She seeks out my hair straighteners (which thankfully I never use) to demonstrate what not to do with them and she constantly fills things with water so she can knock them over and cry "Poor alpaca! Poor alpaca!" Plus, she drives me mad every time I go in the kitchen with her stern warnings about saucepans.

Great. So now I have to undo all the 'safety advice' that Nuzzle and Scratch have passed on to my girls. Thanks a lot, guys! Stick to your day job!