Explicit Content and Curious Minds

Shortland Street clearly has a racy, new writer. Over the past few weeks the PGR show has been raunchy, hilarious and, well, inappropriate for its younger audience.

So engrossed are we in our weekly, usually family-friendly, soap fix, that I hadn’t stopped to check whether the content was suitable for under ten’s. While the ambulance was rocking from side-to-side from the shenanigans within, much to the Shortland Street CEO, escorting important visitors around the premises’ mortification, I was slapping my knee in hilarity, oblivious to what must have been going through the heads of my three.

It wasn’t until this week when Miss Seven questioned a storyline about the customised renamed Fitbit – ‘Trick-Track” that I realised what they were drinking in. “Why is that so funny mummy?” she asked, which stopped me mid knee-slap.

Oh gee, how could I explain that? You see, there’s a bit of a fitness challenge going on at Shortland Street at the moment whereby some of the characters wear these ‘Trick-Tracks’ and sync them to their phones to follow their and their peers’ daily activity.

In a bizarre storyline, a particularly meddling mother, used the tracker to check on her daughter’s state of nocturnal marital satisfaction. It wasn’t looking good, so the meddling mother went about setting up an intimate date for them while babysitting the kids. Once the daughter twigged what her mother was up to, her and hubby rigged it to look like they had been super-active all night. That alone wasn’t the cause of the knee-slapping – other scenes followed, which I will spare you.

But back to Miss Seven’s question: given the fact that it was an hour-long episode and I’m brain-dead come 8 o’clock, I was stumped. I looked over at Master Ten, who had a pink-cheeked smirk on his face and realised he must’ve had an inkling. Master Seven was oblivious and engrossed in his ipad but Miss Seven just wouldn’t let up. Eventually she was given some feeble explanation about going to the gym at night, which I’m not sure she bought, given there’s nothing funny about that so it was a bit of a wake-up call as to my own parenting complacency.

I’m lucky they didn’t question the rocking ambulance but, while myself and, according to social media, others are clearly enjoying this writer’s humour, I’m not keen to explain what they have next up their sleeve so think I’ll start recording Shortland Street for later and go back to reading the more innocent Famous Five and Pippi Longstocking stories during prime time.
                                                                                                                                                     

Rugby Mess

We were all checking our phones last Saturday morning. The sporting parents were hoping like anything that games would be cancelled. It was the start of the holidays after a grueling long term, it had been raining hard all week and it was ice-cold.

But still the text didn’t come in.

The soccer had been cancelled the previous day, there was just one more to go … but eventually as the morning cleared, I had to face facts that the rugby was still on and so, reluctantly, piled the tribe in the car.

In at Kensington Park it was like a mud bath.

“Gosh, it really should have been cancelled today,” muttered parents on the side line, watching as once pristine shirts, developed a lovely shade of brown.

On the field, the kids were having a ball. By the time our 11am game came around, the well-trampled centre field was a muddy pit in which, after scoring a try, it became standard practice for the teams to run back to their positions conducting a ‘Steve Parr-style’ skid along the way, often ending on their backsides.

Master Seven, whose soccer had been cancelled, took to kicking his football on the side line with anyone he could convert to his chosen sport. It turns out many are adept at the game, with one random lady completely ruining her once white shoes.

But it was Even-Stevens: she kicked the ball, Master Seven went charging down a slight dip in the grass to chase it … and his feet completely skidded out from under him.

He emerged a thick, wet chocolate-hued mess – on the rear at least.

“Ahh, guys, how do you think you’re getting home?” I questioned after the game, thinking of my recently-cleaned car, skint of any plastic bags or towels.

“I hope you boys realise you are being stripped to your undies and sitting on newspaper all the way home,” I heard one mother call to her boys as they continued to skid around in the mess.

Ah, good idea, I thought and remembered the newspaper I had retrieved from the letter box on the way out.

Back at the car, I opened the doors to form a ‘dressing room’ and made the protesting boys strip while I stood and quickly skimmed the back section of the newspaper. Then I lined the car with it and placed the soiled gear on top, and lined the car seats with the rest.

And with that, we drove back for hot showers, albeit with two grumpy boys not talking to their fun police mamma who made them travel home in the nuddy.

Mud and Cocktails

When I signed up to accompany Master Ten and his classmates on a school trip to Matakohe-Limestone Island I admit it was with some trepidation. 

Spending over five hours on a deserted island with 60 kids and a rain forecast is not my idea of fun. Give me a tropical island and swim-up cocktail bar any day.

But Friday dawned with the sun out and so I drove four excitable boys, who insisted on turning rap music up loud on my stereo, down to the Onerahi Foreshore where we wait to board the boat.

Emma arrives shortly after and takes us over in three boat-loads. Emma and her husband Jono and two young sons are the new rangers and residents of the island who welcome visitors to their abode where they share their knowledge of the island and its history.

Seven-year-old Charlie, must’ve heard the spiel a thousand times before, for his dad’s introduction is interspersed with snippets of impressive knowledge called out by Charlie.

My first observation is the island is beautiful. It looks nothing like it does from the mainland. We set off past the cement ruins and broken down buildings that used to sleep the workers, into the bush to plant trees. Be careful, warns Jono, for it is very muddy.

We start up the track and it soon becomes apparent why we were told to wear gumboots. Up until today it has been raining hard - our shoes are submerged into the thick gooey mud and I am unimpressed. I am not a fan of mud or sliding around in it for that matter. We skid our way up into the bush and, in our teams of four, begin digging the holes for the new trees. Only, because the island is made of Limestone, this is a lot harder than it looks. My team of boys soon give up for a game of tag and leave me jumping up and down on a shovel trying to make a dent in the earth. Eventually and after I have rounded up the AWOL boys, we have planted four trees and make our way back to the track.

This is where the craziness begins. Getting up the track was one thing but sliding down without arsing up is another. It is crazy-town as kids skid around having an absolute ball, while the parents, such as myself, who aren’t wearing the right attire, look on in horror gripping tree trunks for dear life.

Some of us manage to make it back down relatively unscathed before we head back to base for lunch.

Away from the mud, I am back in my happy place, eating my lunch in the sunshine looking out at the scenic view and am quite happy to call it a day and board the boat back when there is one more surprise in store. We are to walk to the top of the island to the pa site.

Oh no, not more mud, I think and reluctantly get off my perch. We walk up, and up, and up and then I look back over my shoulder and stop in my tracks. The view from the top of Limestone Island is amazing. One would never know, looking out from the mainland, just how picturesque it is. How lucky the former residents back in the day were to live in such a place. 

The kids of course, moaned all the way up, then shot back down without taking in a thing while the adults drank in the scene before them, stopping to take pictures along the way.

Despite the mud, I was pleasantly surprised by this piece of paradise on our back doorstep. But still, after I dropped the four still-hyperactive boys back at school, I admit, with that tropical island swim-up bar still in mind, I carried on straight to the wholesalers.