Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:13):
One, two, three. It's happy pants.
S2 (00:29):
Good day. And welcome to Happy Pants, a show especially
for kids and especially for you. I'm Geraldine and I'm Joe.
And together we're your happy pants team for today. Are
you wearing your happy pants today? We are. Happy pants.
Gives us a different color every day. And today mine
(00:51):
are creamy brown. This kind of brown makes me think
of hot toasted cheese. Mine are light brown too. And
this kind of brown reminds me of the taste of
crunchy peanut butter. A happy pants have lots of pockets,
(01:11):
and the first thing we need to do is see
what Happy Pants head office has tucked in there this morning? Well,
everything in our pockets is a clue, and we're supposed
to put the clues together and work out what it
is that we need to talk about today. Well, let's
get to work. Right. Let's take turns and make a
(04:03):
list as we go. You first. Joe. Okay, Geraldine. Here goes.
Pocket number one. Ooh! A pair of shoes and a
tiny skateboard. My turn. Oh, a tiny bicycle and a
bus pass. Oh, just a minute. The skateboard has grown
(04:25):
to full size. I'll just ride it over to the
corner and stack it out of the way. Whee! Oops!
These things don't have brakes. Okay, pocket number two. A
picture of a train. Oh, I hope that doesn't grow
to full size. Me too. The tiny bike has grown
(04:50):
to full size, but I'm not going to ride it
in here. I'll put it out on the patio. Oh,
and guess what I have in this pocket. A photo
of a ferry boat. Oh, we don't have a harbour
or a station in this room, so my bet is
that the train and the ferry will stay as pictures. Hmm.
(05:11):
Anything else in yours? Geraldine. My last pocket has a
notebook and a pencil. No. Not much. In mine, it's
a white board marker. Oh, and something metal and quite big.
It's a bell. That seems to be it. Our pocket
(05:33):
clue's always fit together. We just need to think how. Hmm. Well,
let's go through that list. Oh, then we could have
some wake up music to get us thinking. Shoes. Bicycle. Skateboard.
Bus pass. Train. Ferry. Notebook. Pencil, whiteboard. Marker and a bell. Oh,
(05:58):
that's going to take quite a lot of brain power
to work out. Let's get moving. Oh, that. That does
(08:38):
feel better. I'm thinking hard now as shoes, bike, skateboard,
bus pass, train ferry. 000. They're all ways of getting somewhere. Notebook, marker.
They're all writing things but doesn't fit. You can't travel
(09:02):
anywhere on a bell. You can't write with one either. Hmm. Well,
what if you went somewhere where you had to write something? Oh,
that would fit everything except the bell. Oh. Oh, that'd
work now. Where could you travel to? Where you had
to write stuff. And there was a bill. Oh. Oh,
(09:25):
I got it. School. Most schools have a bowel. Or
maybe a siren to signal start time. Morning time, afternoon break, lunch,
and most importantly, home time. School means pencils and notepads
and whiteboard markers. And you have to get to school
(09:49):
and home again. So all those transport things fit to
lots of kids live close to their school so they
can walk there or ride a skateboard or ride a bike,
but never do dinky's that's just asking for an accident.
I wonder how many you could fit on a bike. Well,
(10:11):
some bikes are tandem bikes and that means they have
two seats and two sets of pedals. The rider in
the front does all the steering, while the one in
the back doesn't have to worry about looking where they're going.
The second rider's job is a little bit like a
turbo charger. That's where the extra leg power comes from.
(10:33):
There's an event in the Paralympics for tandem bike riders,
isn't there? Yeah, there sure is.
S3 (12:58):
Happy Pants is a special radio show just for kids
like you and me.
S2 (13:02):
Walking or riding a bike works fine for those who
live close to school. But what about those who live
far away? Well, many of them use the mum and
dad taxi service. How do you get to school? All.
Do you walk, ride or use the mum and dad? Taxi?
Perhaps you catch your bus or the train. If you
(13:25):
live in the country, you probably have a special school
bus service which picks kids up in the morning and
drops them off after school. School buses in the country
are usually painted a bright orange colour. Can you think
of a reason why they are such a standout colour?
When I was a kid, we lived in the country
(13:47):
and we had a school bus which picked us up
and dropped us home every day, and the bus route
went right around the district, picking up kids from all
the homes and farms, and it took more than an
hour to get all the way around. And each week
the bus change which way round the circle it went.
(14:09):
So if you were first on in the morning one week,
you were last on next week. That was so. It
was fair for everyone, but you just have to remember
not to get your weeks mixed up or you miss
the bus. You couldn't just wait for the next bus
because there wasn't a next one in the city. Lots
(14:30):
of kids catch a train or a tram. Some even
get to school on a ferry. A hundred years ago,
many country children live far away from the little school
in their town, and very few people had cars back then,
so getting to school wasn't as easy as it is today.
(14:52):
And some families had a living teacher for their children,
called a governess, who taught them to read and write
and how to do simple mathematics if they lived close
enough but too far to walk. Some children rode to school,
sometimes as many as three kids on the one horse.
(15:14):
Only one rider can fit into a saddle, settle. So
they all rode bareback, hanging onto each other so they
didn't slip off. The horse would be hitched to a
fence or a post under the shade of a tree
outside the schoolyard fence, with a nosebag of oats, or
a bundle of hay in a bucket of water. And
there it would wait patiently for home time and the
(15:37):
long trip back home. The mum and dad taxi back
then was likely to be a buggy, and that was
a lightweight cart pulled by one or sometimes two horses.
And it was big enough to carry all the family,
usually to church or to some special event than it was.
(15:58):
Gee up Neddy, to get everyone there on time. These
days most families have a car, so mum and dad
aren't likely to say, gee up, Neddy. They're much more
likely to say, have you fasten your seat belt? Mm. Geraldine.
We've talked about how kids get to school, but that's
(16:20):
only part of the family. How do Mum and Dad
get to work every day? Well, I know some people
who do ride their bikes to work, but I think
most drive or use public transport. I think some people
use time on the bus or the train as work time.
They flip open a laptop or use their phone as
(16:41):
soon as they sit down, and they never look outside
to see the gardens and the trees as they whizz by.
I've seen people hop on board with a carry cup
of coffee, obviously too busy to have had breakfast. What
would be your favourite way to travel to work? Geraldine? Well,
(17:02):
that's easy Joe. I like happy pants to have a
gadget so that I could be anywhere and just say,
beam me up, happy pants. And I'd be transported instantly
right here to headquarters. No bus or train or car.
One second I'm at home and the next I'm here.
(17:24):
How good would that be? I think that might only
work in outer space. You might need a spaceship. Ah. Oh, well,
I'll stick to a bike when it's fine. And a
bus when it's too hot or too wet. How about you, Joe? Ah. Oh,
I think I'd settle for a fold away helicopter. Something
(17:49):
I could fish out of a backpack, unfold, and then
take off for wherever. How about a good old fashioned broomstick? Nah.
I'd need a black coat and a pointy hat for that.
I'd rather have my own built in set of fairy wings. However,
I don't think that's likely to happen any time soon,
(18:09):
so it will be bike or car. For me, getting
to work is often very slow. Traffic jams hold everything up.
If fold up helicopters, broomsticks or fairy wings were around,
you could fly over all those holdups. Well, you could
until everyone else caught on to the idea. Then you'd
(18:33):
have traffic jams in the sky as well. Ah! Oh, well,
back to the drawing board. And back to how all
those people get to school or work. Talking of work,
a little bird told me that our story today is
about some unusual creatures getting to work. Well, it is indeed.
(18:54):
We don't think of these creatures as actually going to work.
But if they did, how would they do it? Listen
to our story and let your imagination make some fun
pictures for you. How does the giraffe get to work?
By Christopher Llewellyn and Scott Tulloch. Look, it's a little
(19:19):
known fact, but definitely true. The animals only work at
the zoo at night. They go home like the rest
of the staff. The zebra, the tiger, the chimp and giraffe.
Next day, after toast or a lightly grilled mouse, they wash,
clean their teeth and then leave the house from across
(19:43):
the whole city. They all make their way back to
the zoo for the start of the day. These zebras
and antelopes cram on the bus and sit at the front,
not making a fuss, avoiding the back seat. The lions
domain where he sits with his crossword, scratching his mane.
(20:05):
Outside on the pavement, in full running gear, jogging to
work are the emu and Rhea. The ostrich usually runs
with them too, but today she's at home with a
touch of the flu. A car toots its horn as
it speeds past the pair. Gripping the wheel is a
grizzly bear. Well, a camel and llama sit in the
(20:28):
back with a gigantic tortoise on the roof rack. A
few other creatures are hitching a ride. The glovebox has
22 spiders inside in the boot. Still asleep as they
drive down the road are a skink and a snake,
and a big warty toad. The car stops at the
(20:53):
lights as a train rumbles through. Staring out of the
window are two caribou reading the paper. In the next
seat along is a chimp in a hat and a
salesman named John grunting a mooing into their phones from
carriage to carriage. The buffalo roam while a family of
(21:14):
wolves sits, snarling and yawning Awning. They're best left alone.
First thing in the morning. A tiger is revving his
bike by the track in a black leather jacket with
a skull on the back. The lights at the crossing
turn green from red and the tiger rides off on
(21:37):
a tiny moped. A deep, growling engine fills up the
air and a huge motorbike appears from nowhere. The tiger
looks over at the rider in pink, and a small
flying squirrel gives him a wink on the back of
the bike. Holding on tight sits the slow loris, her
(22:01):
eyes wide in fright. The motorbike roars as it shifts
through the gears. The front wheel lifts and the pair disappears.
The roar becomes muffled under the ground, replaced by a
clickety clackety sound as the metro rolls by completely jam
packed with people in suits, mandrills and macaques reading a
(22:25):
book as it hangs from its tail. A lone howler
monkey grips the handrail while a troop of baboons squabble
and fight. A row of red bottoms keen to alight
as the metro arrives at the station below at the
gates of the zoo. A wind starts to blow, a
(22:46):
black helicopter flies in from the shore and a long,
sturdy beast slips out of the door. The creature is
dressed in a fine reptile skin with a single gold
tooth from a lottery win in designer sunglasses. He thinks,
(23:07):
makes him cool. The crocodile waddles away to his pool
with three of the animals still running late. A taxicab
skids to a halt at the gate. Two red kangaroos
hop out of the cab, taking coins from their pouches
to settle the tab. With only one animal left to
(23:30):
clock in, the zookeeper waits, rubbing her chin. Then over
the crest of the hill comes a speck, which turns
into a head and a very long neck, freewheeling downhill.
The animal zips all legs and knees and a smile
(23:53):
on its lips. So how does the giraffe get to
work every day? On a rusty old bike someone else
threw away. That was a reading of How Does the
Giraffe Go to Work? Written by Christopher Llewellyn and Scott Tulloch.
(24:19):
The reader was Joe. Hey. Did you get some fun
imagination pictures about zoo animals getting to work? Oh, I
love the bit about the big, fearsome tiger revving up
his bike, a tiny moped and being passed by a big,
powerful motorbike driven by a tiny flying squirrel with a
(24:43):
slow loris clinging to the back seat. Slow loris is
about the size of a small cat, and a flying
squirrel could fit in the palm of your hand. Or
just imagine them on a Harley Davidson. I really liked
imagining how a giraffe would look on a bicycle. That long,
(25:03):
long neck and those extra long, thin legs. If you
liked stories, the Felix Library has lots from which to choose.
You can have large print, braille or audio. Fact or fiction,
whichever you like. There's something for you. If there was
anything in today's program about which you would like to
(25:23):
know more, you can find us on Radio Vision Australia.
Keep wearing those happy pants and we'll catch you next time.
S4 (25:48):
Happy pants is produced on the lands of the Whadjuk
Noongar people. Vision Australia Radio acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples as the first Australians, and the traditional owners
of the land across our working area. We pay our
respects to elders past, present and future in maintaining their cultures,
countries and their spiritual connection to the lands and waters.
Vision Australia Radio acknowledges and respects the genuine diversity and
(26:11):
richness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Australia.
Happy pants has been made possible with the support of
the Community Broadcasting Foundation.