OK so you know the joke already, but just in case there is someone out there who has been living on a desert island for the past fifty years, here it is again. 'Why have all the elephants got big ears?' 'Because Noddy won't pay the ransom!' There, I feel better now that I've shared that with you, but now on to more important things. Noddy was one of those characters that filled my afternoons on the television, driving around in his little yellow and red car and annoying the life out of somebody, mostly PC Plod but also his friend Big Ears. He was a little wooden boy who lived in a house for one in Toyland and he got his name from the fact that his head was on a spring and wouldn't stop nodding when he got excited about something. To compound the problem, that nodding made the little bell on his hat ring too. His early history is fairly interesting, having been carved by a woodsman but then he ran away from home after the man also carved a wooden lion which scared him to pieces. Eventually, Big Ears, a friendly gnome, found him and took him to live in Toyland because he thought he was a toy. And there he lived happily next to Mr and Mrs Tubby Bear and their mischievous son Master Tubby. It is a tribute to Noddy and his creator Enid Blyton that almost sixty years after he started out, children still loves to hear, read and watch stories about the little wooden boy and his friends. Noddy wasn't part of the whole Watch with Mother scene which included such delights as The Flowerpot Men, The Woodentops and Andy Pandy. I could never really understand why they called it Watch with Mother because mum really never had time to sit down and view the television, but was happy enough that I was occupied in front of the screen while she got other household chores done. I guess it wasn't any different from a lot of other homes. Maybe a better name would have been, 'Just sit there and watch that television while Mother makes your tea.' I loved Andy Pandy, especially the theme tune but Teddy was a bad rascal most of the time and Looby Loo was just, well, plain loopy. Everyone always sat right to the end of the programme just to hear 'Time to go Home' and see Andy and Teddy disappearing into their picnic basket. And who can forget Buttercup the cow and Spotty Dog in the Woodentops, with his strange jerky movements and equally odd bark. He was always announced as 'the very biggest spotty dog you ever did see.' And while daddy was bit of a country bumpkin with accent to match and never wore a shirt, the rest of the family spoke rather good English and were always sensibly dressed. But best of all were Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men whose total grasp of language amounted to two words, 'flobadob' and 'flibadob'. Yet both these words could be used in any context as substitutes for any other word in the English language and they merrily communicated all manner of things without having to extend their vocabulary. They lived at the bottom of the garden, in flowerpots and on either side of what resembled closely an overgrown daisy but answered to the name of 'Little Weed.' I often wondered why they just didn't pull her up and get rid of her but then she was their wake up call when the gardener left and their warning call when he was returning so I reckon there is no point in cutting of your nose to spite your face.
Anyway Noddy, Bill and Ben, Andy Pandy and Spotty Dog all remind me of a time long ago when life seemed to be much more simple and when decisions and issues did not crowd the day. A time when you didn't see the strings they were attached to because you didn't want to believe the puppets weren't real. And for others, maybe they never saw the strings anyway. No, nothing got in the way of your enjoyment.
I was reading the other night of the parable that Jesus told about the good seed landing on different types of ground and yet on only one type of ground did it flourish, which the Bible refers to as 'good soil.' I wonder what made it good soil. Maybe it was because nothing else was competing for the nutrients that the seed required and maybe all the weeds had been removed or as yet hadn't had a chance to take root. Maybe because it was moist soil, with some shelter from storms and too much heat but at no point is there any indication that the seed was bad. Maybe I enjoyed all those programmes years ago because nothing else had tried to compete with them for my attention. And maybe when people hear about Jesus when they're young it has such an impact for the same reason but as they grow up, too many other things crowd our lives and cloud our vision until He is squeezed right out. Jesus said, 'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'
You know, I never forgot Noddy and my childhood heroes on television, even though so many other things cluttered my years since. And despite all that happens, we never forget Jesus and it's never too late to find that childhood faith again. What have you carved out for your future? Seek the Lion of Judah.
