Two in a WEEK? What's the matter with me?
May. 10th, 2008 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundTrains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, LOVELY TRAAAAAINS, wonderful trains!
It's ALL about trains. Seriously. My latest post on Who Teaches Whom? elaborates, but here are a couple of more recent allusions.
[This afternoon, I was a Friendly Monster, and Oisín was a Small Human.]
Small Human: Friendly Monster, do you know what a steam train is?
Friendly Monster (catching on quick): No, Small Human, I have never heard of such a thing.
Small Human: *explains that steam trains have engines, with funnels and domes and fireboxes*
Friendly Monster: *asks silly questions, which greatly amuse Small Human*
Small Human: *explains that trains run on rails*
Friendly Monster: So, these trains, they have legs, then?
Small Human: No, they don't have legs.
Friendly Monster: Then how do they run? When I run along forest paths, I use my legs.
Small Human: They have wheels!
Friendly Monster: What are these "wheels" of which you speak?
Small Human: They're ... round things.
Friendly Monster: Ah! Round. I know round. Like an orange?
Small Human: No, not round like an orange, but round like ... a heel or a slice of an orange. [He's extrapolating from a loaf of bread; I'm not sure that he's ever seen slices cut from an orange]
Friendly Monster. *pauses to note Small Human's grasp of spatial whatsit*
Small Human: Friendly Monster, do you know that trains pull goods and passengers?
Friendly Monster: No, I didn't know that, Small Human. But they must get damaged!
Small Human: What?
Friendly Monster: The goods and passengers must get damaged as they are pulled along the rails!
Small Human: Em, don't worry, they have little boxes with rooves.
Friendly Monster: *notes Small Human's change of register as he explains something to someone who doesn't share his frame of reference* Ah, the passengers climb into these little boxes?
Small Human: Yes. They're called coaches.
[Michael Palin does a section about the Forth Bridge in his "Confessions of a Trainspotter".]
Oyster: Did you know, Mama, there's a train bridge across the River Liffey? A train bridge! And the name of it is the Fifth Bridge. So it's after the Forth Bridge.
Stories (you might notice a theme)
"Tell me a story about..." says Oisín, several times a day. He usually knows precisely what he wants to hear, and corrects me if I get it wrong - or if I try to wriggle out of my responsibilities. "And then they arrived at the station just in time, and everyone was happy, the end," I say. "NO, that wasn't it! Tell it properly!" He's very clear about what passes as a story, too. Mere character description won't cut it: a story has to have happenings. He rarely requests the same story twice, but certain loose formulae are popular.
A family of allosauruses discover a railway track running through their forest and become fascinated with trains. (These, incidentally, are steam trains, because dinosaurs lived in the olding days when there were steam trains and kings.) They ride around in the goods trucks, and on the rooves of the coaches, and they become known as the Train Dinosaurs.
A monster and a bear become friends after an unfortunate incident in which the bear steals the monster's new purple shoes. One day the monster finds a railway track running through the forest, sees a train and is smitten. He goes and finds the owner of the railway and persuades her to let him learn to be a train driver. After a brief apprenticeship he does his first day's work as a driver. Among his passengers is his good friend the bear.
One morning, Edward Bear, known as Winnie-the-Pooh, or Pooh for short, woke up in his house in the middle of the Forest and wondered to himself, in a wondering sort of way, "I wonder what Piglet is doing this morning?" In a flawlessly executed pastiche of Milnean style, Pooh calls for Piglet and they go exploring in the Forest. You'll be gobsmacked to hear that they find, of all things, a railway track running through the Forest, which they follow to the nearest station. They get a train that runs on the line between Pottleton and Cottleton. In some versions of the story they go to Pottleton, but mostly they go to Cottleton. It turns out that Cottleton, by a mechanism I don't quite understand, also contains Heuston Station. So Pooh and Piglet take the Intercity to Cork, changing at Mallow onto the Tralee train. Because Winnie-the-Pooh was written in the olding days, the Tralee and Dingle line is still operational, so they take a train to Dingle, and then a Prius to Ballydavid, where they have a lovely holiday. They then retrace their steps in painstaking detail, all the way back to the little station in the Forest.
One day, Niall and Mama and Oisín and Fiachra want to catch the Eurostar, so they go to the station, but there's a sign up saying "Eurostar cancelled". And they're very disappointed, but then Oisín spots a sign saying "Little Blue Train this way", and they follow the arrow on the sign, and they follow more signs with arrows, and eventually they find the Little Blue Train, which is a steam train, and the driver says, "Do you want to go to France?" and Niall and Mama and Oisín and Fiachra say, "Yes, please!" and so they go and buy their tickets and come back and get on the train, and the train sets off. And it goes through the English countryside as far as Dover, and then down into the Channel Tunnel and out at Calais, and then it goes through the French countryside until it arrives at Paris Gare du Nord. And then - actually, what happens then is that Oisín cuts the story short and we go back to the beginning, but this time there are signs saying "Eurostar cancelled; Little Blue Train cancelled", and we are disappointed until Oisín spots a sign saying "Little Purple Train this way". And so forth.
One morning, Oisín and Niall wake up and go downstairs, and when they look out the window they don't see the hedge and the trees and the compost bin, and they don't hear the traffic - they see a village street in the countryside. And all the signs are in French. So they run upstairs and tell Mama that their house has moved to France. Mama is very surprised, and when Fiachra wakes up they all go out exploring. When they come home they search through the house and find a fairy hiding in the bread-bin. "Oh dear," says the fairy, "I was trying out a new spell to make your bread stay fresher, and I think it went wrong." Mama and Niall say, "That's all right, we could do with a holiday anyway." So they phone their families and Niall's work to let them know that they'll be away for a couple of weeks, and they have a lovely holiday in France. And the fairy goes and finds all the local fairies and asks for their help in moving the house back to Dublin. So they all come round and draw chalk symbols on the kitchen floor, and light candles, and chant the spell, and the air outside the windows becomes dark, and there is a loud whooshing noise, and when the windows brighten again, there they are back in Dublin as if they'd never left. (This is an older story, which started out being entirely train-free - not to mention distinctly wish-fullfilly on my part. However, as the series continued, those sneaky locomotives began to creep in. Often, there'd be a train museum or an abandoned bog line in the village where the house moves to. "Tell a story about our house moving to Heuston Station" was a recent variant.)
Finally, I have a note of a conversation from last September that made me giggle a lot once I was out of earshot. It was part of a series - Oisín had become fascinated with clampers, and had wanted stories about a car that got clamped, a bus that got clamped, a van that got clamped, and so on. I was wilting a bit by this stage.
Oyster: Tell me a story about a train that gets clamped.
Mama: You know, I can't think of a scenario where a train would get clamped.
Oyster: Well, just tell me the story - we'll improvise.
It's ALL about trains. Seriously. My latest post on Who Teaches Whom? elaborates, but here are a couple of more recent allusions.
[This afternoon, I was a Friendly Monster, and Oisín was a Small Human.]
Small Human: Friendly Monster, do you know what a steam train is?
Friendly Monster (catching on quick): No, Small Human, I have never heard of such a thing.
Small Human: *explains that steam trains have engines, with funnels and domes and fireboxes*
Friendly Monster: *asks silly questions, which greatly amuse Small Human*
Small Human: *explains that trains run on rails*
Friendly Monster: So, these trains, they have legs, then?
Small Human: No, they don't have legs.
Friendly Monster: Then how do they run? When I run along forest paths, I use my legs.
Small Human: They have wheels!
Friendly Monster: What are these "wheels" of which you speak?
Small Human: They're ... round things.
Friendly Monster: Ah! Round. I know round. Like an orange?
Small Human: No, not round like an orange, but round like ... a heel or a slice of an orange. [He's extrapolating from a loaf of bread; I'm not sure that he's ever seen slices cut from an orange]
Friendly Monster. *pauses to note Small Human's grasp of spatial whatsit*
Small Human: Friendly Monster, do you know that trains pull goods and passengers?
Friendly Monster: No, I didn't know that, Small Human. But they must get damaged!
Small Human: What?
Friendly Monster: The goods and passengers must get damaged as they are pulled along the rails!
Small Human: Em, don't worry, they have little boxes with rooves.
Friendly Monster: *notes Small Human's change of register as he explains something to someone who doesn't share his frame of reference* Ah, the passengers climb into these little boxes?
Small Human: Yes. They're called coaches.
[Michael Palin does a section about the Forth Bridge in his "Confessions of a Trainspotter".]
Oyster: Did you know, Mama, there's a train bridge across the River Liffey? A train bridge! And the name of it is the Fifth Bridge. So it's after the Forth Bridge.
Stories (you might notice a theme)
"Tell me a story about..." says Oisín, several times a day. He usually knows precisely what he wants to hear, and corrects me if I get it wrong - or if I try to wriggle out of my responsibilities. "And then they arrived at the station just in time, and everyone was happy, the end," I say. "NO, that wasn't it! Tell it properly!" He's very clear about what passes as a story, too. Mere character description won't cut it: a story has to have happenings. He rarely requests the same story twice, but certain loose formulae are popular.
A family of allosauruses discover a railway track running through their forest and become fascinated with trains. (These, incidentally, are steam trains, because dinosaurs lived in the olding days when there were steam trains and kings.) They ride around in the goods trucks, and on the rooves of the coaches, and they become known as the Train Dinosaurs.
A monster and a bear become friends after an unfortunate incident in which the bear steals the monster's new purple shoes. One day the monster finds a railway track running through the forest, sees a train and is smitten. He goes and finds the owner of the railway and persuades her to let him learn to be a train driver. After a brief apprenticeship he does his first day's work as a driver. Among his passengers is his good friend the bear.
One morning, Edward Bear, known as Winnie-the-Pooh, or Pooh for short, woke up in his house in the middle of the Forest and wondered to himself, in a wondering sort of way, "I wonder what Piglet is doing this morning?" In a flawlessly executed pastiche of Milnean style, Pooh calls for Piglet and they go exploring in the Forest. You'll be gobsmacked to hear that they find, of all things, a railway track running through the Forest, which they follow to the nearest station. They get a train that runs on the line between Pottleton and Cottleton. In some versions of the story they go to Pottleton, but mostly they go to Cottleton. It turns out that Cottleton, by a mechanism I don't quite understand, also contains Heuston Station. So Pooh and Piglet take the Intercity to Cork, changing at Mallow onto the Tralee train. Because Winnie-the-Pooh was written in the olding days, the Tralee and Dingle line is still operational, so they take a train to Dingle, and then a Prius to Ballydavid, where they have a lovely holiday. They then retrace their steps in painstaking detail, all the way back to the little station in the Forest.
One day, Niall and Mama and Oisín and Fiachra want to catch the Eurostar, so they go to the station, but there's a sign up saying "Eurostar cancelled". And they're very disappointed, but then Oisín spots a sign saying "Little Blue Train this way", and they follow the arrow on the sign, and they follow more signs with arrows, and eventually they find the Little Blue Train, which is a steam train, and the driver says, "Do you want to go to France?" and Niall and Mama and Oisín and Fiachra say, "Yes, please!" and so they go and buy their tickets and come back and get on the train, and the train sets off. And it goes through the English countryside as far as Dover, and then down into the Channel Tunnel and out at Calais, and then it goes through the French countryside until it arrives at Paris Gare du Nord. And then - actually, what happens then is that Oisín cuts the story short and we go back to the beginning, but this time there are signs saying "Eurostar cancelled; Little Blue Train cancelled", and we are disappointed until Oisín spots a sign saying "Little Purple Train this way". And so forth.
One morning, Oisín and Niall wake up and go downstairs, and when they look out the window they don't see the hedge and the trees and the compost bin, and they don't hear the traffic - they see a village street in the countryside. And all the signs are in French. So they run upstairs and tell Mama that their house has moved to France. Mama is very surprised, and when Fiachra wakes up they all go out exploring. When they come home they search through the house and find a fairy hiding in the bread-bin. "Oh dear," says the fairy, "I was trying out a new spell to make your bread stay fresher, and I think it went wrong." Mama and Niall say, "That's all right, we could do with a holiday anyway." So they phone their families and Niall's work to let them know that they'll be away for a couple of weeks, and they have a lovely holiday in France. And the fairy goes and finds all the local fairies and asks for their help in moving the house back to Dublin. So they all come round and draw chalk symbols on the kitchen floor, and light candles, and chant the spell, and the air outside the windows becomes dark, and there is a loud whooshing noise, and when the windows brighten again, there they are back in Dublin as if they'd never left. (This is an older story, which started out being entirely train-free - not to mention distinctly wish-fullfilly on my part. However, as the series continued, those sneaky locomotives began to creep in. Often, there'd be a train museum or an abandoned bog line in the village where the house moves to. "Tell a story about our house moving to Heuston Station" was a recent variant.)
Finally, I have a note of a conversation from last September that made me giggle a lot once I was out of earshot. It was part of a series - Oisín had become fascinated with clampers, and had wanted stories about a car that got clamped, a bus that got clamped, a van that got clamped, and so on. I was wilting a bit by this stage.
Oyster: Tell me a story about a train that gets clamped.
Mama: You know, I can't think of a scenario where a train would get clamped.
Oyster: Well, just tell me the story - we'll improvise.
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Date: 2008-05-09 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-10 06:52 pm (UTC)