what I did in my holidays...
Remember those funny little books you used to make when you got back from school holidays? You know, when the teacher was still in denial about you all being back, and needed time to go get another mean instant coffee and gossip with the music teacher in the plah-doh smelling hallways. You know the kind, you remember the tongue biting earnestness of it all. Books made of thin white paper, with bright gaffa tape spine molding sensually over the the lumps of the regulation issue three staples. Remember the pictures? Arms sprouting wildly from grinning pumpkin heads, scribbled cars like a confusing afterthought in the corner and beaming, pin prick eyed sunshines dangling limply from skies pierced with ominous M shaped birds that never ever seemed to be getting into the foreground, always relegated to flapping their m-ee wings, no heads, just wings, a sharp, minimilist black.

Well that's what I feel like everytime I write a blog entry about being away. 'What I did on my holidays: an illustrated book in paper and gaffa: volume #317'

***

Have been drawing with my cousin these last few nights. She's almost 4, it reminds me of being that age, it's funny. Last night she had more energy than me for play (afterall she gets a nap) and I rested on her bed saying 'mmm' and 'yum' and 'uhuh' while she 'cooked' with her pots and pans and read to me. I had to go kiss her goodnight shortly after as she and Uncle were reading Red Sea Sharks on the couch and I was exhausted and ready for bed. She said goodnight to me in the same affectionate, indulgant tone that adults use with her. She is so thoroughly intersting - it's amazing to see someone learning their very first (verbal) language - and so intersting to realise that the concepts all predate the language. Often people get it wrong and think she's saying nonsense, that she's mixed up, but she's not, she's just trying to use this awkward, clumsy language of ours to approximate the complex, subtle, emotional responses she has to the world. So fascinating.

And then we went to the beach and there was a big dog and I had an icecream it was all yellow and I ate it it got on my jumper the end