MEGA MINDY STAAT PARAAT

I like Holland. R is always vexed by how much I like Holland, but I like its towns and its hagelslag and its greater proportion of tall men. And I like Mega Mindy. She is a Dutch Super-Heroine, who goes around in pink catsuits, being all against injustice and wrong-doing, and whacking Naughty People down. And her boss (male) is the Biggest Clot she's Ever Met, something that she sings out with impunity in the main title song. Ok, so she's still as improbably proportioned as any typical cartoon totty; she is also, of course, hopelessly in love with someone who doesn't know it, but even so. She isn't fawning around a absent-but-authoritarian male boss (yeah, Charlie) who is there simply to Put Her Right, and that works for me. A better role model for girls than, shall we say, Barbie? But more from that particular soap box another day...

Anyway, today I had my own Mega Mindy moment in Addlestone. I was pulling away from a friend's house, with the theme song from Mega Mindy playing (we have reached agreement, my 3 year old and I: ONCE a journey, and that is all. Unfortunately, if the journey involves driving five minutes to pop something through a letterbox and then back in the car, this is apparently, in the cause of Mega Mindy music, two journeys. And so on...anyway, it's on rather a lot.) And I was squinting into the sun to see what was coming, while rather joyfully singing along the main chorus with J "IK BEN MEGA MINDY, MEGA MINDY..". Before I realised it, a cross portly man with no hair had got out of his car in front of me in the road and was glaring.

"OI!" he puffed at me, all fat stomach and concerted aggression "Whatcha say to me?"

"When?" I asked, not winding down my window, because these parts of Surrey can be scary, you know. We're like the hood of Weybridge over here...

"Just then! I pulled up to let you out and you mouthed somefink at me, I saw you. Whatcha say?"

Actually, the sun was so bright, I hadn't seen him, so it was jolly good he had pulled up to let me out.

"I said," I mouthed back through the glass "I SAID 'Ik ben Mega Mindy'". Because I had.

And do you know what? He turned round, ran back to his car and drove off. Just like that.

Wow. These Dutch Super-heroines really rock.

I always said Holland was better.

PS I can't talk about cripplecock at the moment, and I don't mean to be unfeeling. I just can't think about it right now. I need five minutes of being silly and pointless.