My grandchildren came for lunch on the Sunday before Christmas. William and Annie and their parents, Lucy and David, stopped off on their way back to Yorkshire after spending the weekend in London with friends.
Caroline decided that at 2 years and 8 months, William is old enough to enjoy the taste of mango juice. He drank it but I’m not sure that he enjoyed it. He did like the glass that it was served in, however. I can’t remember where it came from but it has a coloured picture of Elvis Presley on it.
“Who’s that, William?” Caroline asked him, pointing at the picture.
“Don’t know.”
“It’s The King, ah-ha haa,” said Caroline, dropping her voice an octave for the, “ah-ha haa.”
“Who is it?”
William said nothing but just smiled.
“It’s, The King, ah-ha haa,” repeated Caroline.
This went on for a minute or two. Eventually William would answer that it was "The King" much to Caroline’s amusement but he was reluctant or unable to growl, “ah-ha haa.”
This coaching/training/prompting of infants is something that many people seem to do. I suppose that it’s marginally more useful and slightly more interesting than teaching a dog to fetch a stick but any benefit or reward seems to be more in favour of the adult than the child.
I was once guilty of similar behaviour myself. When my son Tom was the same age as William is now, I taught him to say, “eleven,” after I’d prompted him with, “What’s seven plus four?” and to answer, “Seventeen,” after, “Eight plus nine is?”
There were several people at the time, including two old ladies at the checkout at Waitrose in Barnet, who thought that they’d met a genius. The two women were so convinced that he was a prodigy, they spent five minutes trying to persuade me that I should allow them to contact the BBC.
Like the good educationalist that she is, Caroline spent a lot of time on Sunday afternoon reinforcing William’s learnt behaviour. By two o’clock, all Caroline had to do was to point to the picture of Elvis and William would say, “The King” after which he would bow his head and a second later mutter, “ah-ha haa.”
Then Lucy went too far. “Curl your lip when you say ‘ah-ha haa’ William, like this.” But William couldn’t. Just as some people can’t curl their tongues, so I suppose, the curling of the lip is a gift that is not bestowed on everyone. I can’t do it either.
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Caroline’s brother and his wife gave me a fantastic Christmas present. It’s an automatic pepper grinder. When I first opened the box, I thought that they’d given me a present intended for Caroline but I soon realised that it wasn’t what I thought it was. It looks like a green, tapered cylinder with an outlet at the side at the top.
To use it you pick it up and tilt it. Inside there must be some kind of gravity switch and as soon as it reaches a certain angle the grinder starts and out comes freshly ground pepper. It’s great because it means that you can carry on shovelling food into your mouth, or at least always have a free hand, while adding pepper.
Caroline got a high-tech present too which she thinks is fantastic. My son, Tom, gave her a pair of gloves with the ends of the thumbs and index fingers missing. This means that she can use her iPhone without having to take her gloves off.
We are both very easily pleased.
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It was Christmas Day yesterday and I was so tired as a result of the activities I indulged in during the day, at eleven o’clock I went to bed. It was not an easy decision and I made it despite the fact that the fourth test match between England and Australia was to start in half an hour but that just shows how tired I was.
However, I was awake at 5:15 this morning (Boxing Day). A minute after that the television was on and I was ready to watch the last hour and a half of the cricket.
63 – 0 was the score. England were doing well. A good job I went to bed, I thought. There must have been rain for most of the day. I’ve had a good night’s sleep and I’ve only missed 15 overs. Then I had another thought: “What’s the time in Melbourne? Maybe play has ended for the day and I’m watching the highlights.”
I turned on the radio and heard the commentary matching the television pictures. Actually it was five seconds ahead of the television pictures as usual. Why is that? Therefore the cricket was live and so it must have rained after all.
Then the bombshell: Cook hit a boundary and I was informed that England were now only 25 runs behind Australia’s first innings total of 98. Bloody Hell !!! I’d missed one of the best day’s cricket ever.
Now, upon reflection, I realise that I hadn’t really. What I had done was to sleep through the most important six hours of
THE BEST DAY EVER IN THE
HISTORY OF THE WORLD
Unless you’re Australian of course. Tee hee!
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