Phil picked up his iPod yesterday and stifled a groan of dismay.
The iPod display was all in the spidery, calligraphic Chinese alphabet.
And there could only be one culprit.
When Phil was small he had a reputation for dismantling things , and not putting them back together again. Watches, pens, anything mechanical, was rarely safe from his fingers. Something in him wanted to find out how it worked, even if it was his father’s pricey Parker pen.
This curiosity has passed on in the genes. And now it is Felix who is changing things irrevocably.
My iPad had barely entered the house before my apps, the little icons which represent programmed , were being busily organised into folders not of my making: entitled ‘Thinkers”, “Games” and “Sports.
Grrrrrr.
And now this. The problem with an iPod on which all the writing is Chinese, is that one hasn’t the foggiest what each heading means. The iPod becomes, effectively, a very expensive paperweight.
Felix listens to Paddington and other stories on his father’s iPod. It calms his thoughts and helps him to sleep.
My son approaches his birthday with all speed. He is extremely excited, to the point of teeth-clenching delighted frenzy. I took the pod upstairs. I said, son, did you do this?
No, I didn’t, he protested. It wasn’t me. Would I do a thing like that? Honestly, Mum, he added reproachfully, why would I do a thing like that?
Son, I rejoined, did you do this?
Well, yes, he admitted sheepishly. he has a Princess Di eye-batting thing he does, and he employed it now.
His face brightened: “But I can get it back the way it was!” he announced.
Why, oh why do we listen to small charismatic charming seven-year olds who think they know it all?
I have plenty of evidence that he doesn’t. If I probe his claims with enough gentle enquiry I can usually ascertain that he is making a claim about which he knows nothing at all.
But there’s that insane hope that this time, it will be different. This time, he will fiddle, take us back from Chinese to English with a flick of the fingers, and make it all right , I tell myself.
Three minutes and a chapter of Paddington later, he handed it back.
It had four small rectangles on it and a little picture of a safe lock. My son had, even without speaking Chinese, managed to instigate a four letter pass code which no-one could penetrate.
He was apologetic but informed me that what could he do? He had pressed the wrong button. He was sorry.
What can one say?
It is more than eight years ago now, since I was handed one of those grainy ultrasound pictures and marvelled at the perfect Shrewsday profile-in-waiting.
When he was born he had a nasty case of jaundice: but rather than sweat it, he put on his tiny sunglasses in a Barbados-balmy incubator and chilled out. The only thing he was missing was a tiny perfectly formed pair of Bermuda shorts.
He kept me awake every night for 18 months. When just three weeks old he woke up hungry and I trudged the three storeys down to the kitchen with him.
He has never been one to wait for his food. By the time we got there I had this tiny entity howling in my face with disconcertingly grown up rage. He was one foot high with a bright red face but he was making sure his views were heard.
He grew into a strange combination: a contemplative hot head. A clever little soul with an unshakeable philosophy on life. A technological fiddler. And tonight, an over excited teeth-clenched grinner consulting me for tips on how to get to sleep The Night Before.
This, in no particular order, is what we have bought him for the big day: a small film camera; an ant farm; a Lego Luke Skywalker landcruiser, complete with R2D2, C3PO, Lego Luke and Obi Wan; and a bucket of soldiers.
His Auntie’s present of a tip-top hovercraft has also arrived through the post.
The cards are written, celebrations arranged, and a Disney trip crouches at the end of the week, waiting to delight him.
And as Felix blows out the candles on his birthday cake, his father will smile indulgently and Google ‘Help! My iPod is displaying Chinese writing!’
Kate Shrewsday 
There may be a ‘restore factory settings’ button, if you know where to look for it…
and it sounds like an MP3 player / Ipod should be on his list of what to get if he has enough birthday money!
My bother was a great dissembler and has turned into an electronics engineer and part time inventor….
I just wonder what Felix will be?
He’s going to be the Prime Minister, Pseu, and put a stop to those pesky Chinese who are clubbing the seals on our shores! That’s what the IPod episode was about; Felix is secretly learning the language.
Do you know, I like that option even better, Cindy 🙂 I must use my ipad translator, ask him something in mandarin.
As I sit here Felix is opening his Flip video camera. He has just switched it on and his first words were “…..English…..” Phil and I fell over ourselves shouting “NO! NOT CHINESE!”
Crikey!
Thanks for the tips, Pseu. Back to defaults once more 🙂 Felix comef from a long and illustrious line of engineers on both sides – Grandad was in REME Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) during the second world war tinkering with tanks on the frontline, and Grandpa invented a seminal radio receiver which has been used for decades across the world. So: who knows?
Your Gramp and mine sound a similar sort – he was an inventor too. Nothing that made it ‘big’ though as he had no mind for business!
I wonder, do many of these great engineers? Marc Brunel ended up in the debtor’s prison, didn’t he…I suppose Jeremy Dyson has made good though…my Dad kept our family through his engineering career; but Phil’s dad tinkered on the side while helping to spearhead Premium Bonds.
I think the Chinese writing is a symbol of the Interesting Times you are likely to live in while he is around!
I think you are absolutely right, Col. Whatever next? 😀
isn’t there someone in your area who speaks chinesse? A shop, an embassy, something?
There’s a novel idea, Sidey. I’ll walk into The Golden Dragon down the road and ask them to put it back. I hope they take it in good part: and don’t get any sweet and sour sauce on it.
Bless!!
🙂
Bwahaha, you can always try Google Translate… 😀
May have to, Adee 😀
Loved this post — highly entertaining. I hope your son has a very happy birthday!
Thanks Kristen 🙂 Has has had a lovely time.
Isn’t it odd how closely related creativity and destruction are? the boy will go far… (insert obvious destination)
Never thought of it that way before, Speccy! That would be why Tom Peters says the greatest creativity takes place at the edge of chaos….
China, here we come 😀
My brother, like Felix, liked to take things apart ~ and sometimes managed to put them back together. He’s an Electrical Engineer with Hewlett Packard . . . in design and development. 😀
Hope Felix has a grand birthday . . . and enjoys his Ant Farm as much as he enjoys mucking about with his dad’s iPod! Happy Birthday Felix!
Thanks! Felix enjoys everything voraciously, Nancy…he’ll be out hunting for ants the moment we get back from Disney!
ha, ha – what a lovely post, Kate – how lucky Felix is to have such a wonderful birthday to look forward to and how lucky the rest of the family to have such an interesting little chap to count as one of its own
My feelings exactly, BB. Life is never dull.
Oh, Kate, I know it isn’t funny, but, from this side of the pond and a generation or so removed, I giggle in amazement and know what an amazing young man this “contemplative hot head” is going to grow up to be an amazing human being.
Tom is always accidently hitting buttons and, poof, the television does strange things, or my own phone rings and I hear him, for thirty minutes, happily hammering away on some project. It is in the genes, however; our 15 month old granddaughter has managed to call him, twice, on her mommy’s cell. tee hee
I love it when the phone thing happens, Penny, Phil’s always doing that, and there I am at the other end shouting :”Phil!! I’m on the phone!! Hang up!!”
And Kezzie is clearly very technology aware. Give it a few years and your gadgets will be speaking Chinese at you, too.. ;-D
Awe, lucky you, never a dull moment and all the fodder for posts to come. Felix sounds like a fine boy…just think, the teen years will only get more complex in gadgetry and ideology 🙂
He will fly past us in knowledge and expertise, I am sure, Angela 🙂
What a nightmare! I’d have gone ballistic had it been my ipod! Sounds like he needs one of his own. Eventually.
I seem to remember that Paddington had a tendancy to break things didn’t he? Perhaps he needs another role model? 🙂
Hope Disney isn’t too hellish…