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With kids, every now and again, there is a moment of pure joy that just about makes all the tedium, tantrums and tiredness worthwhile. Tonight my son stood up on the arm of the armchair and started singing “Do you know the muffin man?” In a funny voice. He really only knew the first bit, but had a guess at what happened next. It was like he was on stage, but I am not sure he was trying to be funny to begin with. But it made us laugh and I recognised the flicker in his eye that meant he enjoyed this reaction and was setting himself on a path pathed with unhappiness and disappointment to become a comedian.
He hammed it up further, without losing any of the charm and we laughed more. He fell off the armchair accidentally and we laughed, so he got back up and fell off on purpose. Not as funny in some ways, but now with the additional joke of him chasing the laugh. Just as his sister was getting jealous of the attention and laughs and tried to make us laugh too, he jumped off the chair and his pyjama bottoms fell down. It was another fortuitous effect of gravity which focused attention on him again. And seeing that his bare bum had got another laugh he carried on with his bottoms round his ankles. His sister, desperately tried to claw back the moment and showed her bottom too, but she knew in her heart she was just playing catch up.
We tried to persuade the boy to put his trousers back on. “I’m the muffin man!” He proclaimed, “I don’t wear trousers.”
“You’re not going to sell many muffins like that,” I told him. But I liked the idea that the muffin man was some kind of exhibitionist/sex offender. It fitted in well with what we know about him, though failed to explain how selling muffins had raised him enough money to live in such an exclusive and expensive area of London as Drury Lane.
Also the worry is that he will take the few acting jobs I get if he keeps ploughing this furrow.
Later he’d be more of an evil spirit refusing to do what I told him or go to bed, but I still had the bare-bottomed Muffin Man in my short term memory and that helped me through. As tough as things can be I am delighted to have had these two insane spirits arrive in my life. Which is lucky as they’re going to be around for quite a while.
A very enjoyable RHLSTP with Lou Conran is now up on audio
And we recorded another RHLSTP with Catherine Bohart, who was charming and witty and open and honest. I have missed the audience in 2020 RHLSTPs but think I've managed to get some good podcasts in the podcast bin in the altered circumstances. This was a nice one to end 2020 on, but when will we be back in front of a crowd? And how bad is the Covid situation going to get before we are vaccinated?
Ages and very are my guesses.
