Temper Fugit

Tell you who I hate. Peppa Pig. Her and her smug smug family who love everything.

Even if something goes wrong, feeling 'a bit grumpy' is the worst they ever get to. They live in a house with an endless garden, own a convertible despite two stay-at-home parents (who seem to have a nebulously Bohemian past involving ballet dancing and theatre) and conform to all the worst trends in stereotyping from adverts. Daddy's a bit clumsy, stupid and prone to overestimating his own abilities, Mummy is good at everything and ridiculously calm.

It comes in tiny, 5-minute episodes, perfect for a toddler's attention spam. Unless your toddler is F, who can happily sit through an entire season back-to-back every lunchtime. Often has to if you want her to eat anything, in fact. I've seen season 2 about eighteen times so far. One more Windy Autumn Day or Trip to Pirate Island and Pow, Zoom, straight to the moon Alice, one of these days, so help me. Perhaps Peppa Visits the Bacon Factory in a later season. I hold out little hope.

Still, F likes it, so that's okay. And it's still better than all the dubbed animated garbage on Barnkanalen. Pipi, Pupu and Rosemary, for example, a show that is two-thirds title sequence to one third pabulum. Made worse by the fact that the credits are the same as the intro song, just played backwards. And what the hell is quiz show Amigos all about? It's like Shooting Stars, except you can see how confused the studio audience is.

F is a whisker away from walking now. When we go to the park, she points folornly at the other children rushing about. But she doesn't quite trust herself to let go of things yet, not for more than a second or two. It'll happen, probably when we're not looking. She's sly that way.

While I was cooking her dinner last night (fish fingers and chips, total disaster, she hates both of them), she managed to climb into one of her toy chests unaided. I came back to find her happily playing with a giraffe, balanced on a large pile of building blocks, all still inside the chest. Rare to find such enthusiasm for putting things away in a child, I reckon.

For everything she likes, though, she reveals a pet hate. The top three of these is probably

• - being helped unasked
• - being told not to do something she was enjoying
• - fish

So for example, if I take the fork off her to put a mouthful of tuna pasta on it, partly to help her eat it and partly to stop her waving it like a banner at a Brazilian street party, I could expect a furious tantrum immediately.

Funny things, tantrums. It's very hard to tell between a genuine agonised scream and a massively fake one if you haven't seen what caused it. Somewhere between absolute fury and utter misery, full commitment to the emotion, arriving in a second and vanishing just as fast. Must be very tiring for her; I know I find them exhausting. I also know I'd love to have that kind of emotional access in my acting.

But there aren't that many, and she's usually fairly quick to accept that she isn't allowed some things. Mostly she plays, either boxes by herself, or reading, piano or throwing the ball with me. And if now and again a sly hand comes creeping round the edge of my computer screen to press caps lock, a pair of big, innocent blue eyes somewhere behind it doing their best to look entirely unconnected, then it's quite hard to mind all that much.

Which is the tough bit, really - I know she's genuinely interested in what's inside the power sockets and is really upset when you discourage her pokey inquisition. Or that she can't have any coffee because it's too hot and (until you brainwash yourself as an adult) tastes vile.

But some lessons are best learnt second hand, after all, and it's up to me to stomach my reluctance at being a vendor of such antique wisdom without complaint. It certainly beings a new appreciation for what your own parents must have gone through first time around.