Sodor Disaster!

Anyone who has boys, and some owners of female models, will probably be familiar with Thomas the Tank Engine .

Train obsession was hard-wired into son number one at birth. He's seven now and the train obsession is still going strong. I have zero interest in trains of any variety so I have had seven years of pretending to be enthralled by the little blue engine and all his tedious friends. Son number two appears to be following suit...oh goody.

For anyone not versed in the history of the island of Sodor:

Sodor is run as a not-so-benign dictatorship by Sir Topham Hat, the fat controller, who ambles around talking to trains in a somewhat patronising manner and dispensing justice to those that step out of line.

There are girl trains, but they are few and far between, and are either vain or stubborn or sneaky...but then I shouldn't complain as the male trains seem to exhibit those traits too.

The whole thing is run along a strict class hierarchy with steamies at the top, then diesels, then trucks...who get pushed around by everyone and are deemed to be lazy and insubordinate.

They all have really freaky faces which give me the creeps.

It seems to be designed to teach British children that the ruling class have a divine right to tell everyone what to do and rich old men get to run the show...so actually probably a pretty good lesson in socio-political reality at the moment <sigh>

Anyway...Sodor has a health and safety record which makes Network Rail's infrastructure look positively utopian.

However...little people are blissfully ignorant of all of the above and they love all things Thomas. 'Oh no it's a Sodor disaster' has entered the Grant vocabulary and does not look set to depart any time soon...a bit like most of the Sodor rolling stock. In our house the phrase covers everything from real time wooden train wrecks to food spillages to accidents complete with real blood.

And here...for your perusal, is Noah, demonstrating a classic Sodor disaster involving Spencer and the Express carriages.