What do in the holidays?

This is a friend's show and we've seen it a couple of times now, we were lucky enough to be a test audience at Kirsty and Ken's lovely home last year. Ken Harper has a passion for this most traditional of shows and has made all the puppets himself. It's a little bloodthirsty and the stock characters may be a surprise for parents used to giving their kids a diet of Peppa Pig and Angelina Ballerina, but our kids LOVE Mr Punch. They were fascinated by Death and the Devil and 'swossages swossages I love swossages' has entered our everyday parlance (well, not that we have sausages EVERY DAY mind you. Just many days.)

Ken does a quick 'meet the puppets' session afterwards, as a way of breaking the spell, and it's really interesting to see the children on that edge of belief, where they know they are empty puppets and yet continue to invest life and consciousness in them. I've talked before about my ambivalence in steering the kids away from belief in the fantastic towards the real and this has been one of my favourite experiences in both embracing the real world and the facts of it, while letting a trace of harmless magic linger.