How Courageous, Loyal And Strong Are You?

We handed over our sackful of Sainsbury's Heroes cards to Ivy- and then- since she didn't have one- bought her an album to put them in. I spent a happy hour or two sorting through them and putting them in their slots and if I'd had world enough and time I'd have finished the job. Ivy was more interested in filling in the album's questionnaires and dot to dots. "Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten for courage, loyalty and strength", it said. Ivy put her head on one side, thought for a moment, then awarded herself 10 for courage, 9 for loyalty and 10 for strength.

Twentieth century artists did their best to kick the overt moralising out of children's media- but it will keep creeping back in.

Now we're collecting cards for Aria, who'll we being seeing at the end of this month. "Do you have any heroes cards for us?" I asked our Sainsbury's delivery man this morning- and he sort of sighed and told us what a pain it's been trying to off-load them on his clientele- who, I suppose, must include a lot of elderlies.