L brought the Grandsons to see us today, and we spent a day together that for the Oldies was in almost equal measure brilliant and exhausting.
Before they arrived R and I set up the world’s easiest Easter treasure hunt, placing five small plastic boxes around the flower beds, with two little chocolate rabbits in each one. We explained to the Boy Wonder that we wanted him to help the Brother solve the clues and find the boxes, so as to be fully involved in the game – and after leaping on the first one in an understandable surfeit of chocolate-based enthusiasm, B got the point and played along beautifully, and they both had a thoroughly good time. In this case I’d put the box in the pulmonaria patch, the clue being a little sprig of lungwort, and once I gave the Boy the extra hint that he needed to find the patch of flowers where he used to watch the yellow-faced bees, he rushed off with the Brother in pursuit, spotted the box in a flash, and said, “You need to look over there – it’s a box with a green lid.” After pouncing on it with a little shout of triumph, B minor handed the box over so that his big brother could extract the chocolate and start unwrapping the rabbits, and couldn’t resist giving a little round of applause while he waited for his prize.
Towards the end of the afternoon, bored because the Boy was watching something on television that didn’t interest him, the Brother began exploring the house, and discovered to his great pleasure (as several other children have done before him) that you can go out of a door at one corner of the snug, up into the base of the tower around which the house is built, down through the front and back halls, and back into the kitchen – and then back into the adjoining snug, and so on, in a (potentially) endlessly repeating circuit. Each time he burst back through the kitchen door he’d exclaim “I’m back! I did it again!” – which I’m sure would have been extremely annoying from an older person, but from a 2-year old was somehow charming and funny.
After a while he decided that I had to join in this game, taking my hand very firmly and dragging me after him, and giving me quite terse instruction whenever I wasn’t standing in absolutely the right place while he opened or closed a door. Then R was brought in as well – “Gandad – come!” he said, patting his chest to indicate where Gandad had to come to – and at this point the marshalling of his forces began to get quite complicated, because there isn’t much room in the tower. Somehow we all had to squash ourselves into a very small space between the door from the snug and the stone platform on which the staircase is built, while B minor closed the door and then pushed past us, climbing up onto the platform and then back down into the front hall. At this point R and I were not supposed to move, and if either of us did we were sent back to our proper place. Once he was on the hall steps the Brother would summon us – “Come! Now!” – reinforcing the command with another beckoning gesture.
On one occasion I set off after him and was told “NO! Gandad first!”, and at this point I decided to subvert the game, by not following on as expected. When Bmin and R reached the back hall and he realised I wasn’t there he came rushing back and said “You! come now!”. Another time I was instructed to leave the tiny lobby in front of R, which was essentially impossible because there wasn’t room for me to get round him onto the steps up to the tower base, but Bmin pointed out by way of gestures and monosyllables that I simply had to climb onto the stone platform. This is about three feet above ground level, with very limited headroom because the staircase to the first floor curves round above it, but I gave it my best shot, and when I was clearly having difficulty the Brother popped back down onto the lobby steps and shoved my trailing leg – hard – until I managed to complete the manoeuvre.
At some point in all of this palaver, while R maintained his status as ‘Gandad’ I lost mine: having started the day as ‘Gamma’ – and one one occasion even ‘Gamma Jiw’ – I somehow became ‘this one’. As in, “Gandad – come! Now this one!” – with a peremptory finger pointed in my direction in case I didn’t get it. After being referred to several times as This One, I said to him, “Who am I?”, and he stared at me in bemusement: if I didn’t know who I was, how on earth was he supposed to? So I tried again. “What’s my name?” At which point he thought hard, scowling, and after a second came up with, “Ammo.” And so it was, for the rest of the day, to the considerable amusement of R and L: “Who is this?” “Ammo.”
Given that earlier in the day, watching the Brother crashing around among the toys on the floor of the snug in his size 6 boots, I’d described him to R as, “An unguided missile”, I think this new nickname might be some kind of retribution.
R: L2, C7, D15.
