The end of the quest....

so, creator of two of my childhood heroes, Noggin the Nog and bagpuss, is no more.. and the world is a sadder place without him.... now, the Beard is not going to sit here and say that kids programmes aren't as good as they used to be, as that is of course relative.. I know many children of today who find the Night Garden just as tedious as Mr Benn.. and that goes for the children of yesterday too... but i think that nowadays kids are denied the simplicity of that earlier age.. Mr Benn getting a circus over a ravine or Ivor taking coal to Grumbly just doesn't cut it anymore.... and there is a stunningly obvious reason for this, ignored or at least unmentioned by correspondents on Jeremy Vines excellent show earlier today.... and that is this.. regardless of lessened attention spans, (of which more later...) and other such pseudo reasons, comes the simple fact that life is seen as being more complicated than it was... there is so much more for the young to master nowadays, including the fact that there is more history.. look at computers, mobiles, et al... whether this is a good thing or not is another matter... and as for the attentioi span.. well, lets be honest, although we could lay the blame on MTV, it's obvious to the beard thatlife in general has become more and more a series of soundbites as the years have gone by.... simply because we have the notion that there is more of it to fit in... long gone are the days when a child worked in the fields etc for most of the daylight hours, and sat by the fire listening to long stories while carving buttons.. and once the victorians had inventedthat myth called "Childhood" the fate of the nation's young was decided.. all of a sudden they had to be amused.. at least the ones who could afford not to work.. and that led to moves to let the poor ones play, and then we had to find stuff to fill their time, and school was invented because we thought maybe playing all day wasn't such a good idea after all.... for lets be honest, childhood is a very recent invention..... so recent that it is still only just reaching certain areas of the globe.... and it is this that has caused the gradual reduction in attention spans.... the fact that children are allowed to be distracted.. it has happened in adults too, but usually we're too busy chiding the kiddies to notice.... the reason tv programmes are the lengths they are is the result of our attention spans, not the cause of it.... but there we are.. and lets be honest, most people (even kids) can concentrate on something they enjoy for ages.... but if received wisdom is correct, none of you will have hung on this long, so until we can all be the only engine n a male voice choir, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!