LYS is coming here tomorrow for a few days, and the Lassie will arrive on Friday. The beds are made up, and Hamilton and all the cuddlies are very excited. The Bushbaby is on the landing, waiting with wide eyes. In fact, the bushbaby alway has wide eyes.
If you look at a cuddly toy in a shop, be it new or a charity shop toy, you have to take care. You should pick it up casually, as if it were a commodity like a tin of beans, turn it over, look at the label, put it back. Because if you love it, if you talk to it or cuddle it, it will wake up and think of you as mummy or daddy, just like a duckling when it hatches. Then it's a relationship. It loves you, and you have to buy it.
I know this. All our family know this. But a few years ago on a London trip, I was in the Natural History Museum (can't remember why) and I thought it would be good to take home some little something for Tony and LYS, who was living at home at the time. Nothing much, you know, just some small thing. A little onyx dolphin for Tony. Perfect. And then I was caught out by something with big eyes looking at me, and instead of turning away at once I made a beeline for it, picked it up, and said something like 'Aah!' or 'hello!'.
I tried putting it back on the shelf, but I could feel those round, hopeful eyes on my back. I came home on the train with a bushbaby in my bag, and LYS, who understands these things, took it to his heart - but not to his university, so it's still here just now, waiting eagerly for him. As are we all.
I'm normally wary of hot spicy food, but for this evening we had arranged a little treat for the two sixth formers who helped with after school club this year. The said treat involved an Indian restaurant, which turned out to be a buffet of about twenty-five different dishes. Roughly half of them were suitable for vegetarians, which is extremely good news if, like me, you're a veggie. One of these days we'll have to take LYS and the Lassie there. (But not the bushbaby. Never give spicy food to an animal who already has eyes like saucers, even if it's only a toy.)
And for all those of you who are desperate for news of The Archers - Adam has fallen out big time with Brian and Ian isn't too impressed either. Phoebe is home, Vicky's expecting, Mike is surprised, and Jenny is all of a doodah.
3 comments:
Ooh, how lovely! I've always loved bushbabies (spelling?...and hedgehogs...
Here in the US, we have a radio program (not quite up to the Archer's level, but still very nice!), "Adventures in Odyssey." Recently, (one of the characters), Connie Kendall, described "Budapest" as "an insect that follows an Asian religion."
I really can't top that.
All the best to you--God's blessing!--this lovely, all-to-quickly-winding August!
If we think a cuddly toy wants us to take it home, we often tell him or her "You're happy here." Most of the time this works and the cuddly toy tells us that s/he is happy with all their friends.
Sometimes the toy tells us that although s/he is happy there, s/he REALLY wants to go home with us. Then we have to buy it, of course. :-)
Kaitlin, nobody in the Archers could come up with something like 'Budapest'. But we could be on to a whole new thing with place names.
Hi, Pam, welcome to the House of Stories! LOS (Lovely Older Son) tells me that he uses that approach with cuddly toys, too. I sometimes tell them that their real Mummy is coming, but it isn't me.
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