Friday, March 30, 2007

I sit with the Baby, playing mindlessly.

From her collection of wooden blocks, I take a semicircular one. Placing it upside-down on the carpet, I can bash down on one end to send it spinning into the air.

The Baby is delighted by this. She laughs heartily. I have an audience!!! I do it a few more times, to more laughter. Then I start catching it, which provokes utter hilarity.

She is clearly a simpleton. But it is brilliant. There is this hammer-blow sense that I have somebody who really admires me. This is a new feeling. I mean, I know that my written output is widely-read and laughed it by the halfwit community, but this is different – a real live thing.

I sneakily pass the block into my other hand whilst catching it. The Baby is agog at its mysterious disappearance, then creases up again when I reveal its whereabouts. She might even have wet herself, although she wets herself all the time so it would be difficult to establish the cause as my funny block trick in a court of law (if wetting yourself was illegal).

My dad used to do tricks like this with me. And Granddad used to make a coin appear out of my ear. The thought that I am now doing this with my own Baby is almost unbearably poignant. It is just a simple trick, but she loves me for it. All I am doing is flicking a block into the air and pretending that it has disappeared.

Boooooo – my dad’s and granddad’s tricks were probably shit as well. They were not magicians after all. It is a depressing realisation. I really looked up to them, as well.

I flick the block again. Twelve minutes have passed. The LTLP will be home in seven hours. A rabbit runs across the garden.