On the silent period.

You have a bit of a love/ hate relationship with a man named Stephen Krashen.
Not that he knows you exist, mind. He’s a luminary in the field of research into language acquisition*, although his entire body of work seems to consist of him stating the bleeding obvious and then giving it a seriously researched kind [...]

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On words and phrases that will be banned come the revolution, part three.

You have decided to ban the word ‘however’.
Not because you dislike the word. On the contrary, it’s one of your favourites. You spent your entire university career bashing out essays where the argument was hanging by a thread and the words, ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘however, and ‘thus it can be seen’.
Luckily you’ve matured since then. Nowadays [...]

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On swinging both ways.

‘Bilinguals,’ says a book you have out of the library on the subject*, ‘are like hurdlers.’
This is not reassuring.
Partly, of course, because as the mother of a proto-teenage boy you are ever alert to potentially dangerous situations and the first thing that comes to mind is not ‘Oh, good god, how will we afford the [...]

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On anonymity.

You joined Facebook recently.
Actually you joined it twice.
It tells you, quite sternly, to be sure to use your real name.
How sweet.
But in fact, you did contemplate coming out of the closet.
Especially when it turned out that no one you know In Real Life is there, and fewer of them use it on a regular basis.
So [...]

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On the garshok.

So the Star’s first word is officially ‘poo’.
Or rather, it’s a strange coughing sound which means ‘poo’.
This is his Babushka’s fault.
Ever since the six month mark she’s been lobbying hard for you to use a… damn, forgot the English word again… oh yeah… potty with the Star.
Despite your best efforts to ignore this, the fact [...]

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On the herons, a goldfish, your cat, his Grandad and the Neighbour.

One of the walks you frequently take the Star on is for a quick trot along the nearby River.
About halfway along your route is a big wooden structure which was clearly from the days when the area was a hive of warehouse and shipping activity and which for ages you thought must have some interesting [...]

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On chickens and eggs.

On first seeing the Star, everybody so far has immediately exclaimed ‘Oh! Doesn’t he look like B!’
Which makes you sulk a bit because you think he has your eyes. Even if they are grey.
Luckily, one of your friends immediately added, in a comforting sort of way, that babies always do favour their father because it’s a survival [...]

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On Remembrance Day

You now no longer have any grandparents.
You miss them.
You were interested to discover yesterday that your new packet of paracetamol came encrusted with Braille, but it reminded you that you will now not be able to ask Grandma whether she finds the little bits of Braille on the buttons you press on the buses to tell the [...]

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On the fear of fur coats.

How long did it take you to start seeing the Star as something of a research project?
Four and a half months.
Which is how long it was before he jerked you from the edge of sleep into fully awake one morning by lying in his cot and burbling ‘Dada’. And ‘Dadee’.
Oh perfidious Star.
Although it wasn’t the actual [...]

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On the aging process.

Never before have you felt so old.
There you are, watching the TV (again), when along comes the next installment of the BT ad.
This time the Bloke and his Woman are having an argument. On some kind of instant messaging service because he’s away on business. This being the source of the spat. His being away, [...]

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