Chronicles of Junior Misssy
Aslan: Always “Happy to Help”All of a sudden I have become acutely aware that my little girl is growing up fast. Little teeth are getting wobbly, she’s finishing nursery and moving on to school and she’s becoming a lot more independent.
The kids and I went to the cinema tonight and my girl showed there was still a lot of baby left in her, though. Jnr Misssy just can’t sit still in the cinema, and within ten minutes of the film starting, I had taken her to the toilet, taken her for a drink, had to retrieve her shoe from the floor of the row in front of us and had to pick up her spilt sweets from all over the floor to the soundtrack of her wailing.
After fifteen minutes she had given up her seat for my lap, as she always does.
She also talked to me throughout the whole film. Normally, I hate it when people talk through a film but tonight, watching Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, I enjoyed Jnrs commentary immensely. This was, in part, because I realised that I’m not going to have too many years left when my daughter wants to sit on my knee whispering to me, with her arms round my neck and her little hands buried in my hair.
The other reason was her commentary was hilarious. If only it could be an extra feature on the DVD of Prince Caspian.
Highlight One: “Where’s Asda?”
“It’s Aslan”
“Where’s Asdan?”…..
Highlight Two: “Who’s that beaver?”
“It’s a mouse”
“Well, it looks like a beaver to me”……
Highlight Three: “Are the bad men good yet, can I open my eyes?”
“I’d give it a minute”…..
Highlight Four: A little centaur with blond hair and a beard walks on screen, he says nothing, just blows a little horn. Junior Misssy absolutely cracks up laughing in an otherwise silent cinema. Really cracks up. The shot changes to something else, then returns to the little centaur and Jnr Misssy cracks up even more.
I’m reviewing Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on the radio this Saturday…better read some newspaper reviews beforehand so that I can pretend I was paying attention….
(Podcast here)
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It’s a Kind of Magic..kinda
You may be wondering how the magic show went.
To recap, I was coerced into throwing a party for Junior Misssy’s 5th birthday and she asked her Dad if he would do a magic show for her 19 (I know, 19!!!!) little friends. And, unlike most Dads who would have reflected on their lack of conjuring ability for a nanosecond and then politely decline, Meeester just said, “Ok then, I’ll do a magic show”.
Such bravado despite having no ability in the discipline.
As the weeks went on, signs that Meeester was in-training would appear. It wasn’t that there were any spangly jumpsuits arriving by mail order, or a pen filled with two Siberian Tigers in the back garden. It was the little things.
For example, I noticed a Word file on the desktop marked “The Secrets of David Blane”. Was the magic show going to consist of Meeester suspended in a perspex box above the street for ten days without any food? Would a gang of cheeky students be hiring as helicopter to fly a solitary burger past the box to taunt him?*
As it turned out, Meeester had a show all worked out. With actual tricks and an actual “Magic Hat”TM
Here he is:
But the show did not go 100% smoothly. Oh, he had his hecklers alright. One minute in, he was dealt the cruelest blow a magician could ever face. A 4 year old boy in the back, with a lazy eyepatch, shouted the devastating words of,
“You’re Not Magic!”
The adults visibly winced. “Ooooofff!” went the collective shock-wave. How could Meeester recover from this? Paul Daniels would have flounced off to his dressing room for less!
He quickly reverted to the surefire way of heckle control: humiliation of the heckler.
He asked the boy to come forward. Goddamn it, he would prove that, yes indeed, he WAS magic! Much as Jesus would have done if someone had complained about the quality of the fish and the freshness of the bread roll at that big picnic he had.
Lazy-Eye Cherry was called forward, but some kids didn’t hear Meeester right and thought they were all being called forward! Bum rush the show, the pitch is being invaded! Meeester’s little magic table was in danger of being tipped over. Surely Copperfield never had to work in these conditions?!
This was a tricky moment for the illusionist, indeed. A panic stricken Meeester called behind him for adult bouncers to appear and save the show from the kind of crowd crushing scenes that made Bono uncomfortable at Live Aid.
In seconds, the kids were settled by the mini legion of friends of ours who, luckily, are teachers and used controlling to scenes of kid-induced flashpoint mayhem. The show could continue and Lazy-Eye was converted into believer by the use of some water, three cups and a tense but fleeting moment where he thought he’d get his little eye-patch soaked.
A week on, Meeester went to pick Junior Misssy up from nursery. He was mobbed by fans.
Hang on, must stop, am receiving a call from Caesar’s Palace…”Hello, The Great Martini’s office, how can I help you? No, we won’t support Michael Jackson…but we are up for the Barry Manilow gig…”
* This actually happened to David Blane when he did his Tower of London thing. Apparently he also got quite a lot of sausages thrown at the box, and routinely people would have picnics under him.
You picked the wrong country if you wanted moral support, Dave.
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Sshhhh!
I did speak, but just to a small team of lucky listeners. Pretty much my parents and grandparents were the chosen few, give or take and uncle or two. I never spoke to anyone I didn’t know well.
Just about every school report card I got from school had the words “quiet” and “conscientious” peppered throughout them. Anyone in the teaching profession will be able to tell you that these are codewords for “I haven’t a clue who I’m reporting on as clearly they have made no impression on me whatsoever”.
Everything changed around the age of about twelve when I decided that chatting might be a laugh, and shyness could, in the words of the Morrissey, stop me doing all the things in life I’d like to. But the turning point is not what I want to focus on. I’ll do that another time.
Despite my turn to the chattier side of life, I still like quiet and there are periods of time where I like to be quiet and not engage in conversation. Indy, my son is the same, and I’ll happily share my quiet time with him. Not chatting.
I do, however, have two key players in the Flying Martinis that don’t like to be quiet at all, ever. One is Meeester. That’s fine-my choice- opposites attract and all that and I often send him off to chat to people when I can’t be bothered. The other is my actual genetic offshoot, Junior Misssy.
Despite the moniker, she is no more like me than flying air. The girl wakes up chatting, she goes through the whole day chatting, she chats while she eats, she chats in the bath, she chats in the car, she chats on the toilet, she chats when no-one else is there, she chats to the cats, she chats to ladies she meets in the shop, she chats to the snails in the garden, she chats to foreign people who don’t understand her, she chats from January 1st to December 31st with no break except for sleep. And I’ve even heard her chat when she’s doing that.
On holiday she spent a lot of time in her seat on the back of my bike and it was like having an in-bike entertainment system stuck on Talk Radio.
She fell asleep beside me in bed about 30 minutes ago. Up until that point she chatted all through Big Brother (she reckons they should get “kicked out if they say a bad word” Good call, I say) and given that she seemed full of topics of conversation, she was threatening to chat all the way through “My Name is Earl” which is the Favourite Television Show of the Flying Martinis.
I had to gently tell her to stop.
This is a child psychology dilemma. Your chatty kid is driving you daft but you don’t want them to feel that you are not interested in answering any more questions in this particular day. Last question of the day was “Mu-um? Does Harley have kittens in his tummy?” (Harley is our fifteen year old male eunuch cat.) Now, this question is a good one and on it’s own is quite cute. Darling, even.
But I tell you, it must be question number 3,003 today.
And about 1,000 of those questions have been the one that every parent would like to see banned:
“Mu-um, are we there yet?”
Ever since our mammoth journey to Holland, this has been a favourite. But to be asking it when we are going to the supermarket is a bit much.
Because I’m still a quiet wee girl deep down.
Shhhhhh!
