One of the presents that Amy received for her second birthday was a Mary Poppins DVD. In the subsequent ten months since that fateful day I have watched that bloody film so many times that I recite the script in my sleep. In a desperate bid to gain some respite from Dick Van Dyke’s hybrid Cockney/Swahili/Yugoslavian accent I bought a her a copy of The Wizard of Oz the other day. I was hoping that we’re off to see the wizard would replace it’s a jolly holiday with Mary on the internal tape loop in my brain, but unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
It appears Amy has inherited her Uncle Neil’s inherent fear of dwarfs. She was relatively entranced with the whirlwind scene (I skipped the boring black and white bits at the beginning), but as soon as the refrain of ding dong the witch is dead heralded the appearance of the Munchkins she shrieked in terror and buried her head in my chest. To be fair to her they are a little alarming, especially those sinister members of the lollypop league.
Someone once told me that off set the munchkins were a pretty debauched group. I’ve had my fingers burned recently by recounting something that I was assured to be fact but has turned out to be utter balderdash, so this time I’ve checked my facts and it appears to be a bit of an urban legend. The Daily Mail seem to believe it in their article The secret salacious world of the Munchkins, but the Daily Mail isn’t exactly a trusted source of information in our household – in fact I’m suprised it didn’t claim they were all asylum seekers as well.
Not to be confused with a fear of midgets, people short in stature yet still all in proportion. I my defence I believe my fear may have originated from an early viewing of the inside of a certain Mr Wonka’s chocolate factory and his slave workers who stole children away if they did something wrong. Admittedly they did deserve it but no one wants to be kidnapped by a chorus line of singing orange people.
You hurl yourself out of planes for fun, but you’re scared of Ewoks. You’re a strange man Uncle Neil.