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As this blog has now accepted its fate as a terrible repository of kids say the funniest things, my wife reminded me today of the actual funniest thing that happened on our trip to the farm yesterday (also that I had initially put in the wrong link to a much more expensive attraction that you should not pay to visit for just 90 minutes - I am lost without my wife. I may have entered my dotage). Phoebe had had a go on a little electric car that you could whizz (very slowly) round a tiny little space with loads of obstructions. She had actually negotiated the drive very well, getting round the other cars and bollards with casual ease, leaving just centimetres each time, but never crashing. On the drive home she’d been cross that we hadn’t got her a gift from the gift shop, and so I tried to cheer her up via flattery, saying what fun she’d had and pointing out that she’d controlled that car brilliantly and that she was a better driver than me. She then bellowed, “Then why won’t you let me drive?” Which was an excellent call of my bluff.
And you can’t fault her logic.
So I let her. And we crashed and all died.
It would have been better for this blog has we done so. It, like me, is heading into its dotage. But on we plug.
It was another day of solo house husbandry for me, as Catie went into town before lunch to do more podcasts. Phoebe had woken up a little unwell, so we largely took it easy and watched films. And until bed time they weren’t too much of a handful and it felt like a privilege to hang out with these two idiots that I made with my cock (and some other help).
In the morning Ernie had picked up my phone and was holding it up to his face, so I held my hand up to my mouth and pretended we were having a conversation. I noted that I was holding out my thumb and little finger to represent mouthpiece and receiver and yet my son was holding a flat oblong phone against his face. The old phone hand mime represents a kind of phone that (aside from a few retro landlines and Star Trek like mobiles) hasn’t been used for a couple of decades. Really we should just be holding a flat hand against the side of our face, though the problem with that is that it’s a little similar to the hand gesture for sleeping. Will my children continue to use the old mime for “phone me” even though they will probably never use a phone with a bend in it in their lives. And why are we persisting with this out of date mime? We might as well he holding one hand to our ear and have the mouthpiece hand in front of our mouths.
Richard Osman (and a few others) responded to my tweet about this saying, "Like I still do the ‘signing my name’ mime if I want the bill at a restaurant. Rather than the ‘entering my PIN number’ mime.”
I confessed that I was also guilty of this mimal faux pas (but accepted that PIN number is now the accepted vernacular despite its tautological nature) and there was some discussion of how you could mime this effectively. Though interesting that Richard Osman eats at posh restaurants where a meal for two comes in at over £30 so he can’t just use contactless.
Tim Minchin chipped in to the conversation saying "I still do the “I’m trapped in a glass box” mime, when I should be doing the “Happily, I’m not trapped in a glass box” one.”
And some non-celebs joined in too, but who cares about them? Not me.
Solo parents in the past would have only been able to talk to one person at a time, and even then chained to the wall with those ridiculous old-fashioned phones. I could watch my kids (to a certain degree) and chat away about bullshit with people all over the world and wonder why some archaic things stay in language (and mime) long after the thing they referred to has been forgotten.
