Seen, Not Heard, Preferably Neither
Created | Updated Feb 19, 2004
They say that animals are best understood when observed in the wild. In adherence to this principle, allow me to introduce my sister's children.
Hermione is performing surgery on a cat. Without anaesthetic. Using a rusty can-opener. While wearing boxing gloves.
To be strictly accurate, Hermione is performing a violin recital. We are assured that she hugely enjoys this activity. The assertion sits uncomfortably with our own harrowing experience, but also with her terrifying expression. It is reminiscent of those images of Churchill being stoic during the darkest hours of the Blitz, only uglier.
I have never heard anything so horrible as my niece playing the violin, except perhaps her mother's squeals of delight in accompaniment.
Watch carefully for the moment of climax. As the piece blunders to its crescendo, Hermione will rise up on tiptoe, go cross-eyed, and wet herself.
Miles is helping to put away the groceries. One presumes that his enthusiasm is fuelled by the stimulation of gastric juices. That would explain, though not excuse, the tooth-marks in the baked-bean tins and the packaging slick with copious drool, threatening to adulterate the Rice Krispies.
Of the eggs, we need say no more, except that the contest was unequal. A child who possesses a Geller-like ability to decommission cutlery will hardly be challenged by mere eggs. He forces his thumbs through carton and contents alike, never so much as pausing to extract them from the carrier bag.
Even without the benefit of raw materials thoughtfully provided by Sainsburys, Miles has the propensity to leave nameless stains on any surface. Beware, for this includes those forming part of the nimblest of visitors. Watch for a moment, and feel your gorge rise as he makes another outrageous addition to his catalogue of incongruous foodstuffs.
Whereas his sister has set the family benchmark in looking odd and sounding awful, Miles has invaded the more intimate senses, and thus transports us to a new plane of disgust. Miles actually smells disturbing. What he might feel like to the touch does not bear thinking about.
And finally, there is Leo. The eldest of the Trinity, his uncanny survival instinct has garnered nine years unmurdered. Unlike little sister and baby brother, Leo is more than incidentally offensive. He offers the fully interactive nightmare. For Leo wants to play. He demands to converse. He declares opinions.
Leo is the antithesis of the 'seen and not heard' maxim. Bright-eyed and excrutiatingly polite, he engages inappropriately with any unguarded adult. He demonstrates the model he has just built, explains the book he is reading, hovers at the corner of the room, expectantly clutching some execrable board-game.
He will offer his unsolicited views on subjects that leave one clawing at the window-catches, from the fastidiously-observed decomposition of local road-kill, to the nocturnal exclamations of his mother's latest boy-friend.
In his vilest moments, he will exhort you to 'help him to help Mum' by drying the dishes, matching up the socks, herding his loathsome siblings to bed...
There. The last of these distressing rituals has just taken place. At last, they're gone. My sister flops into the armchair, and fixes me with that familiar glare.
There is no need to discuss this all over again. She thinks that the problem's mine, the silly girl.
