Friday 22 June 2012

Now we are three

16st 0lb, 5.0 units. Not many people outside the North East know that Newcastle is blessed with its very own Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Sun. This has the great virtue of no doubt annoying Rupert Murdoch by compelling him to call his latest offering the Sun on Sunday. Much as the existence of the Scottish Sunday Mail meant that the Daily Mail’s Sunday counterpart had to be called The Mail on Sunday.

When I was a small boy back in the 1960s, I was a faithful reader of the Sunday Sun and used to marvel, even then, at the banality of its readers’ letters page. This was full of (a) endlessly repeated drivelling reminiscences, often relating to the production of something called “proggy mats” (40-odd years on, I still haven’t the slightest clue what those are); and (b) unlikely misunderstandings involving children. I think that they might even have had a sub-heading along the lines of “Kids Say The Funniest Things”. You can doubtless imagine the sort of thing, not least because Viz comic has spent the last couple of decades parodying it so well.

Every couple of months there would be one describing how Little Kevin in Jarrow had burst into tears because he thought Mummy had told him he was going to visit Grandma in Heaven when of course she had said Hebburn, the bit of Tyneside next door. Excuse me while my sides split.

In the circumstances, it is obviously a high risk strategy for me to turn this blog into from Bloke in the North into “Kids Say The Funniest Things”. But I feel strangely compelled to share the following exchange between Mrs Hann and my elder son in the wake of his birthday celebrations last Saturday, which I have described elsewhere:

"Did you have a nice birthday, Charlie?"

"Yes, I did."

"How old are you now?"

"Three."

"That's very grown up, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. Can I drive the car now?"

Ambitious. I like that in a child. I could now go on about how he might well be able to make a better job of driving the car than some other members of the family, but that would mean introducing details of an unfortunate incident that I faithfully promised not to go on about …