Well, almost.
When R and I took temporary possession of the Boy Wonder at Slimbridge this morning, it rapidly came clear that he was far from being on song. Contra-suggestive, emotionally fragile, pink around the cheeks and ears, and streaming thick green snot, he looked like a furrow that was going to take a fair bit of ploughing. ‘Maungy’, my West Riding forebears would have said. “Not 100% well,” R and I agreed.
That he wasn’t 100% well was promptly confirmed by the fact that he asked for sausage, which is a fixed element in the Slimbridge ritual, but then wouldn’t eat it – or indeed anything, other than the chocolatey foam from a babyccino. Asked if he’d like to go to the water playground, or if he’d prefer to go straight home, he havered, but eventually opted for water play. It then took me about 20 minutes in the baby changing room to coax him into appropriate clothing (which is my excuse for the fact that his costume ended up back-to-front, and I’m sticking to it), and in the playground he was largely withdrawn and disengaged. The only elements that really pleased him today were the hand-washing facilities and the trampolines, and though he still finds the trampolines quite frustrating, I’ve chosen this photo for today as evidence that he’s almost mastered the necessary coordination for bouncing.
After the playground, some ice cream which of which he ate only half (Bad Sign), and a return trip to the changing room during which he told me he was feeling sad and thought he needed to go to sleep, we packed ourselves back in the car and headed for home. B duly did sleep, for most of the journey, and woke up apparently somewhat restored. But we’d barely set foot in the kitchen when I saw him breathing deeply, and at the precise instant when I turned to make a grab for the nearest receptacle, out came half a chocolate ice cream, a carton of strawberry milk, some babyccino foam and two small bites of sausage, in a Pollockesque spray all over B, R, and the kitchen flags.
The Boy was distressed for precisely as long as took me to clean him up and get him into dry clothing, then he took a sip of water, demanded an oaty biscuit, and trotted happily off to the swing, where he spent the next twenty minutes demanding to be pushed higher, and chattering nineteen to the dozen. I think we heard more from him in those twenty minutes than in the whole of the preceding five hours. After swinging he chased us around the garden for a while, roaring like a scary monster, demanded to be taken through the gate at the bottom of the wild garden to look at the stream and the turkey who lives in a garden on the other side of it, and played a few riotous rounds of hide and seek, before (minimal) dinner, more playing, bath, stories, and bed.
The rapidity of this recovery, which happened as though a switch had been flicked, put me in mind of a favourite family anecdote about the Boy’s uncle, which I’m pretty sure H would prefer me not to commit to print. Let’s just say that unexpected Boy Bounce-Backs seem to be a bit of a family trait.
