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Tom Dodds on transport matters »The other evening I went into our office where No2 son was on the internet (it’s actually the little box-room over the stairs).
“Shall I close the curtains, or leave them as they are?� I asked.
He looked at me solemnly and with not a little distain before stating “There’s only one curtain in this room.�
I left wordlessly.
At Tyne Bridge practice that night I recalled this story to Mrs Drummerman. She is a health-visitor and has always taken an active and helpful interest in my boys.
“Ah� she said sagely “that’s what it’s like with autistic children.�
But I’m not so sure.
When I got home that night BBC News 24 was reporting on the stricken cargo-ferry Riverdance. According to the newsreader she was “in trouble eight miles west of the Lancashire coast�.
On hearing that I heard myself mutter “Well she’d be in a damn sight more trouble if she were eight miles east of the Lancashire coast.�
His auntie, my teacher-sister, used to use the Anadin conundrum to ascertain academic development. When her primary pupils could understand that it was better to take nothing for a headache than Anadin, because according to the advert “nothing works faster than Anadin�, she knew her work was done.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard my father say “Why do they say such-and-such a thing is good for a cold? I want something that will be bad for the cold and get rid of it. The last thing I want is something that’s good for it and keep it going.�
Then of course there’s the boys’ father Fester.
Whenever I ask him a question like “Are you not going to shut that door – it’s bleeping freezing in here?� he invariably replies “Yes, I am not going to shut the door.�
Logically and pedantically correct – but wrong in so many other ways.
As my mother used to say “It runs in the family like a wooden leg.�
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