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MATT HARVEY"S back with two little boys (no Rolf Harris jokes, please), broken nights and a basic grasp of wordslush, grammargrinding and syllablubbage. Can you tell what it is yet?
Clap hands Daddy come
Bringing baby cake and bun
Cake and bun, plum and stone
Making baby so big
How big?
Sooooooo big!
(repeat until tired, then continue)
THIS rhyme is a big hit in our family at the moment, but maybe it’s not so good without the actions. In the issue I wrote of a trip to Cambodia and the arrival of two boys in our lives. Excuse me while I carry on from where I left off. Carry on and on and on, even.
People ask do you have you a routine yet? I say, well I’ve got about 10 minutes that keeps them entertained, then I have to start again. But I know what they mean, and no, we haven’t, quite, although we do the same things in the same order. Just at different times.
They’re such different boys. And such fine boys. Strapped in their bargain all-terrain e-Bay boogie buggy they travel in style around town - where they are becoming known. Believe it or not there are no other gorgeous good-looking chuckle-bucket twins of Cambodian origin in Totnes, so friends and family taking them for a walk are greeted everywhere with "Ah, it’s those boys…"
And those boys are adapting to their new lives. As are their parents. But I don’t know how we’d have coped with all the visits from friends and family if it hadn’t been for family and friends. They’ve been fantastic, their grandparents are devoted, and hands on, as are aunts, honorary and otherwise, and cousins. Friends and neighbours likewise. The boys even have their own fairy gothmother, which I think may be a first for this postal district.
BEFORE we returned I thought fancifully that we ought to have a little sign outside our house saying ‘Twinned with Cambodia’. Now I think we ought to have a sign saying: ‘Gobbledegook spoken here’.
There’s always been a lot of nonsense talked in our house, sometimes knowingly, and I’m not blaming it all on the presence of their little wonderbundles, but they seem to activate the gobbledegook glands in others too. I’ve even identified three main forms of nonsense: wordslush – "ello lickle chiblums’; grammargrinding – "is that it’s boys, what boys is it, is it asking that it is?"; and syllablubbage – "oosh chiggle sniggle, grinchy grinchy". Most people speak a unique combination of all three with one form predominating.
A few gifted individuals are skilful at switching fluently from gobbledegook to grown-up-speak and will attempt to engage all of us in conversation at once: "Oh, what lovely boys, oosha lubbly lubbly boyden? Are they twins? Izzitatwinizzit hmmm? zalubblyboyatwinboytwinboyizzit? Marvellous, identical or fraternal or don’t you know? Really? Ooshalicklefraternalkernel Hmmmm?"
Sometimes they’ll lose their rhythm and switch sense and nonsense: "So who’s a little twin boy, eh? I do believe it’s you, and you too. And have Mimsy and Plibsy got a routiney weeny den, are they floppy-woppy like a droopy-droo?"
This can be embarrassing for everybody, but fortunately it rarely happens more than twice a day.
OF course everyone has questions and most we’re happy to answer, though some we deflect with deft yet clumsy diplomacy.
The most difficult question, which I’m asked a lot, is: "What kind of nappies do you use?" Not as innocent a question as it sounds, not where I live. I interpret it as an eco-sounding, a green litmus test, with a sub-text of "so you write for Connect, but do you walk the walk"? My answer is passive-aggressive.: "We use a new brand called Landfill. They’re cheap and convenient and help the environment by filling the gaps left by unbuilt housing developments…"
If anyone does have any advice or information about ecologically sound nappies that don’t involve our spending much more time or money, it would be gratefully received, if not necessarily followed. (If we followed all the advice we’ve been given we’d fall over.)
There must be something we’ve not yet come across - eco-craps, maybe, or wicca-wipes. Isn’t there a company called Greenarse, catering to the organic orifice? I’m not sure.
I’VE heard you develop a new kind of antennae when you’re a parent. I think antennae is the wrong word, I’d go further and say it’s a form of intelligence.
There are many acknowledged forms of intelligence these days. Alongside traditional IQ, there’s emotional intelligence, EQ, and spiritual intelligence, SQ. There’s also alternative intelligence, TQ9 (also considered an alternative to intelligence), and practical intelligence, B’n’Q. The special intelligence whereby a parent can tell at a fleeting whiff whether a nappy’s full and what of, has been called orificial intelligence, OQ. I’d prefer to refer to it as PooQ, or, simply, the knowing nose.
BUT it’s not all happies and nappiness. I’m back to work, if you can call it work - and I do. I was proud to be commissioned (at short notice) by The Independent to write a short poem about Totnes. Not so proud of the poem, but unashamed enough to produce it here.
Roger McGough has written a clever acrostic poem to celebrate Liverpool being made European City of Culture 2008 and the Independent invited a handful of other poets to write in the same form about the place they live or come from. Hence my Two-Way Domestic Totnestic Acrostic:
Twinned with Glastonbury in its too-tender heart
Organic, outraged – ‘Say no to GMO!’ ‘No’
Tastefully tantric, not tacky, nothing like that
New age, navel-gazing its numinous abdomen
Empathic, embracing every ethical energy source
Sceptical of the non-existence of angels
I was struck by the kindly way I was misquoted in the little accompanying biog-bit. Of course, they’re not as interested as I am in what I actually said, but I’m always struck, whenever I know a jot about anything that’s covered by the national press, at what is lost, twisted, changed.
Then I realised I’d deliberately given an unbalanced picture of Totnes in my poem. But then technically since I write this column I’m a sort of journalist myself. And once again I’m shocked and saddened by the way I’ve distorted and misrepresented things.
The bit about the gorgeous boys is true though. Anyway it’s back to real life now, back to my real work: "Clap hands Daddy come, bringing baby cake and bun…."
Matt Harvey
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