The food chain

The Boy Wonder has come to stay with us for the weekend, and as we often do, we effected the handover from his mother in the car park at Slimbridge. "It's two nights, right?" he said, clearly anxious that there should be no misunderstanding, and was reassured by his grownups that he'll be with us till Sunday afternoon. Later, chatting with R and me over lunch, he endeavoured to negotiate his way up to a four-night stay, and I said that we could at least talk to Mummy about him perhaps coming for three nights during the long summer holiday. "Or four...?" he replied, smiling winsomely.

Let's hope he's as keen on us come Sunday as he appears to be now.

We spent another couple of hours at Slimbridge, doing the usual sort of things, but it was punishingly hot and I was keen that he shouldn't be out in the blistering sun for too long, so we retreated to the café at regular intervals, and eventually even I (not usually a fan) was hot and sticky enough to succumb to some ice cream. I caught this photo as the Boy was marching up and down the boardwalk over Swan Lake with a bag of bird seed, trying to dole it out absolutely fairly between the waterfowl crowding below the rail and the pigeons and Rooks gathering on top of it. He keeps up a running commentary all the way through this distribution: "A little bit for you... and some for you... and - yes, you can have some as well, and - hey! Don't be so cheeky!" - and so on, while R and I potter along behind him, exchanging smiles.

Tonight we let him stay up later than we'd normally allow, to give the house a chance to cool down at least a little bit. (We still have horrified memories of a visit with his parents when he was about six months old, when he screamed the entire place down for several hours because he couldn't sleep through the heat in his room; the next time they came, they offered to bring a portable aircon unit.) Eventually though, bathtime and stories were completed, and I started what should have been the final round of negotiations to get him into bed and me out of the room. At this point he came up with a delaying tactic I haven't had to deal with before, and began cross-questioning me about whether we'd all be safe overnight from burglars. After we'd exhausted my remaining reserves of patience talking through the household's security measures, and with my mind wandering to the chilled glass of white wine I had reason to think might be waiting downstairs with my name on it, I said that he really didn't need to worry about it because burglaries aren't very common things in a village full of people (I'm paraphrasing here) who all know each other and take a keen interest in each other's business. "In fact," I said injudiciously, "the last time I remember anyone getting burgled here was back when your Mummy was a little girl."

Immediately, the Boy pounced. Who was it, where exactly did they live, and what precisely happened? Instant dramatic row-back from Grandmother, who suddenly found her memories of the event becoming extremely vague: these were just some people who came home and found that someone had managed to get into their house and take a few things, with no damage caused, and no-one hurt, or even frightened. In this version of history they were quite cross and a bit sad, but they got over it very quickly.

The Boy shook his head sadly. "It's the food chain," he said. "Bigger things eat smaller things. You can't change that."

Among the many potential responses competing to emerge from my mouth, the one that won was, "Who's been teaching you about the food chain? Have you been learning about it at school?" The Boy looked at me as though I were mad (Learn something at school??), and said, "No. Peter Rabbit. Lily explained about it." 

At this point, you - a Beatrix Potter aficionado -  might reasonably be asking "LILY WHO??"; but I - grandmother of a four-year old child - instantly grasped that we were talking about the animated children's TV series currently showing on Netflix. I also realised that he must have been waiting for a chance to test out this new knowledge on a reliable grownup, so giving no hint that I thought it was in any way inapposite to the burglary situation we'd been discussing, I just pulled a little face and agreed that yes, it was sometimes sad, but bigger things eating smaller things was indeed the way of the natural world. 

Satisfied with the outcome of this conversation, the Boy tipped his head on one side, gave me his cutest smile, and said, "Can I have another story now?"