Pictures in My Mind

When Emily came home last weekend she asked where one of her old toys was. 2XL is an interactive robot that works with cassette tapes and he also plays ordinary cassette tapes and that was why she wanted him after so many years. Someone had lent her a set of Chaucer tapes and she had nothing to play them on because we have cd's now. Surprisingly I knew exactly where 2XL was because I had almost thrown him away last year, but Emily had loved him so much that I couldn't bring myself to part with him. After such a long time he needed a new set of batteries and he was a bit sluggish when he first started but he was soon chatting away in his robot voice, making corny jokes and asking endless questions. She took him back to university to play her Chaucer tapes and a couple of weeks ago I joked with her about listening to Chaucer spoken in a Robot voice with an American accent. It plays tapes normally except for the special robot ones but she said that the miller sounded very much like one of her uncles who has a strong Plymouth accent, he also has amazingly curly eyebrows so rather than Chaucer in a robot voice she is listening Chaucer with a strong Devon accent and amazing eyebrows!

Do You Ever Wonder How Your Mind Works?

Do you ever wonder how your mind works, or whether you think in the same way that other people do. I'm absolutely certain that Robbie's brain works differently - goodness knows what goes on in his head! I used to read the Beezer when I was younger and they had cartoon characters called the Numbskulls who managed the various departments in their man's head. Their antics were always very funny and they often got their human into very embarrassing predicaments. Now that could explain a lot, maybe Robbie has little men in his head!

Anyway, back to the point. Yesterday I was busy working when suddenly I found myself thinking that Rev Awdry (creator of Thomas The Tank Engine) was extremely sexist. Why were all the engines male? Why were the subservient characters and carriages female? and why did he choose such dreadful female names? I wondered what train of thought could possibly have caused those particular thoughts to pop into my head, and I tried hard to think backwards. I had written my blog article much earlier in the day and I had included a photo of the Class 20 from Robbie's trip. I'd noticed that it had a 'face', somehow it reminded me of a character I had seen before, but I couldn't remember who or where. Even when I closed my eyes tightly I couldn't quite make the link so I moved on to other things, but my brain must have continued to work away at the problem. I wrote my other blog about the books I have read and I made a mental note that I still needed to write about the railway history book that I bought last week. After that I got on with my real work and didn't give another conscious thought to trains or books. At lunchtime I was working on something completely unrelated when up popped my thoughts about Rev Awdry and his engine characters. I presume my earlier observation of a 'train with a face' had combined with my thoughts about books and my brain had wandered off at a tangent.

I guess the answer is that the Railway Stories of Rev Awdry are sexist because they reflect the time that they were written when matters of gender, class and even race were treated very differently. I don't know why he chose such dreadful female names, but perhaps it was his revenge on the world for lumbering him with a name like Wilbert! I loved those stories when I was a child and my own children loved Thomas too. I am so glad that times have changed and I it is nice that Thomas has adapted to the modern world.

Eventually I remembered who the Class 20 looked like, it was Rodney Copperbottom from the film Robots. See what you think.