Feeling My Age

Two hardboiled eggs were left over from breakfast and Child K drew faces on them so they wouldn’t get mixed up with the other – uncooked – eggs in the fridge. Now they have such obvious personalities none of us has the heart to smash and eat them. They’ll probably end up going bad and have to be thrown away…

I love the wild whimsy of children. Billy Bones was dreamed up, drawn up and finally pinned up some years ago by Child K who figured we ought to have a skeleton in the cupboard under our stairs. Constant opening of the door - not to mention dragging junk in and out of the cupboard every time the gasman wanted to read the meter - took their toll on Billy. Things could have gone either way - he was getting pretty tattered and might easily have ended up as a few scrappy bits of chalkmarked black paper in the recycling bin. But last weekend an older and more skilful Child K took pity on him and got out the scissors, chalk and paper to do a thorough repair and rescue job. She even added a baby daughter skeleton to keep him company in his cupboard.