Looney tunes

Although the heat is quite bearable on most days, we are spending most of the daytime in the house. We go out into the garden at about 18:00 to water the plants and do some gardening.

These days, Zakaria has to be forced to leave the house. He wants to stay inside and watch television.

The television is a newcomer in the household. It is a medium sized flat screen set with ‘dish’ (satellite) offering cartoons and alike the whole day round.

Zakaria is usually the first one awake in the morning. He takes a sip at the bottle of water standing next to his bed and comes to our room to shout at me : ‘Done with sleeping’ until I get out of bed. Then, he leads me into the living room to go and sit in front of the television set until I switch it on. As I’m not in the mood for arguing, I just switch it on, look for the right channel and try to sleep a bit more.

The novelty is wearing off. After an hour or so he starts playing and television provides background noise. When he is being naughty switching off the television is not an effective punishment anymore.

When Zakaria is bored with cartoons, I can switch to one of the main news channels and am bombarded with updates on market crashes, riots and demonstrations.

It used to be so quiet in the house. Occasionally, I switch off the television and enjoy the calmness until another ‘cartoon shot’ is needed.