Flights of Fancy

The more I see of life, the more inclined I am to think that there is a world which I inhabit and a world which children inhabit and they are perpetually distinct. To expect my own peculiar brand of supposedly grown-up reasoning to be understood by a young person is foolhardy in the extreme.

At a recent family gathering my young nephew was playing with Lego at the dinner table. The offspring of my husband's younger sister, he's still vaguely fascinated by having a new auntie to play with and for some reason he was keen to show me the results of his constructive labours. So my meal was punctuated by perusals of various different permutations of cars made from bricks. I responded to each one with an appropriate level of auntly enthusiasm.

A small, familiar figure appeared at my right hand side as I reached for the Merlot. "This one," it said with great gravitas, "is a hoover car." A hoover car? Finally something I could approach with more genuine excitement. As the little plastic vehicle scooted across the tablecloth I suggested it might be picking up crumbs along the way. Concentrating hard on steering around a wineglass, the nephew agreed. So, warming to my theme, I said that I could do with a hoover car to help me clean my flat. I asked if it might hoover the road, too, as it drove around. Here the wheels nearly came off the little hoover car muse that had been gathering momentum in my head as the conversation developed. "Why would it need to do that?" The nephew asked, furrowing his five year old brow. "Erm, because there are lots of hedgehogs that get squashed trying to cross the road and they need to be cleaned up," I replied, slightly worried about the macabre turn I'd suddenly steered our discourse down. Luckily the little chap accepted this explanation with barely an acknowledgement, which allowed my overactive imagination even more free reign. We would create the Dyson Formula One Racing Team, kitted out with brightly coloured hoover cars that didn't have to make pit stops to change their dust bags. From that moment on, any Lego car that did not possess suction capabilities was dismissed out of hand. Hoover cars were the way of the future.

I was so proud of myself for holding his interest for so long and I was sure he was soon going to proclaim me his favourite auntie. To be honest I'd enjoyed spinning a bit of a yarn and making up a totally bizarre fantasy. Only on the long drive home did it occur to me that little boys, for all their bizarre enthusiasms, aren't usually terribly interested in housework. Gradually the penny dropped. I realised that he had meant to show me a hover car, not a hoover car. I am a fool. I still like the idea of the Dyson F1 team, though.