Off Topic

As you will all have noticed my daughter is the major player in this blog.  It is driven by her actions and words, and our tired, muddled reactions to them. She is Hamlet to our Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the Doctor to our Companions, DangerMouse to our Penfold (please say I am not the only person who still, on a fairly regular basis, says ‘Good Grief Penfold’ when things go wrong or someone says something ludicrous, or the only one to say ‘Crumbs Chief’ when it has all gone wrong?).  Basically she is the main character.  So when she comes up with a topic which she would like to see addressed on the blog who am I to refuse?

Gotta love a super hero with an eye patch

You see, somehow, she is fully aware that I write a blog.  She knows what it looks like while I am wrestling to put some of the right words in mostly the right order, she knows what’s going on when I’m desperately refreshing the stats to see how many thousands of people are hanging on my every word, she knows the look of exaltation that passes my face as I have managed to get just the right title (how she knows this, it having only occurred once or twice over the 40 odd posts so far I’m not sure).  She will see me, come running over to the laptop and prod it while shouting blod at me.  I’m not sure if she really thinks it’s called a blod, or if it’s some not so subtle critique on my writing powers, and I don’t know about you, but ‘blod’ doesn’t quite have a ring of praise and adoration about it does it?

I don’t know whether she has any idea of what the blog is, surely she can’t, but she knows when it’s happening and tonight, after a small amount of prompting from me she came up with the perfect topic for me to write about, a topic so sublime and transcendent that it could have only come from the mind of a small child.  A topic which will surely set the world alight, cause an internet sensation and bring me fame (my campaign to be a UN Earth Champion starts here).

We were sitting at the dinner table when it came out.  I had been desperately trying to think of a theme for the blog today when it struck me that it would only be fair to ask N as she was just sitting right there.  She hesitated for a little while, clearly mulling over which of the ground breaking ideas she had would work best for a Wednesday blog post.  And this was the one that she came up with and I am really pleased, I couldn’t have thought of a better one if I’d tried, and I say that with full knowledge of the fact that I hadn’t thought of a better one even though I had been trying for the better part of 3 hours.  I actually had had an idea, which I had worked on and then discarded as being utterly unsuitable for a blog post.  It turns out there’s not as much to say about avocado and peach soup as you might think.

I am pleased that we have decided from early on to make sure that we all have our evening meal together, and around a table.  I know for some that it is not possible, but if it is I really do think that it is a vital part of the day.  So much happens during the day and the evening meal is the perfect time to talk it all over, recover from the day and generally reacquaint yourselves with each other.  Even when all three of us are in the house all day it can be the case that we don’t really see each other for most of the day and so sitting down together as a regular routine is brilliant and something that I would definitely recommend.

When N decided that boats and elephants was what she wanted the blog to be about, I just knew that it would be the easiest blog post I had ever had to write.  The words just flowed out of the pen, which was a shame as I now have pen all over the laptop, but it was all worth it.  I hope you enjoyed my daughter’s suggestion as much as I did and that I have managed to capture some of the essence of such a big subject. Now, where do I go to pick up my Pulitzer?