Bringing up a son is an education.
The male psyche is a foreign land to me, and I have, until now, expected it to send ambassadors. But sons send out no ambassadors, and I am preparing an envoy as we speak.
We ambled along the South Bank to the Tate to see what was going on this week, and found a lovely surprise. For below the ground floor, at the very base of that impressive old power station, was an exhibition tailor-made for the pint-size.
It was ‘The Itch Of The Golden Nit’.
Part of the Cultural Olympiad, and championed by classic BBC magazine programme Blue Peter, this is a first of its kind. It is animated democracy. Because it is entirely made of children’s’ own designed cartoon characters, with the artists plucked from the length and breadth of the UK.
Using drawings, workshops and the miracle of the upload, children’s’ art was collated into a half-hour long action packed adventure film, and children voted for celebrities to take the voices of the main characters.
It cost £3 million: but one watch has you hooked.
We sat in the little Tate projection room and watched, entranced, no-one more so than my son, whose eyes were as big as saucers.
He adores the hero, Ten Hearts, played by Sanjeev Bhaskar. The epitome of dashing masculinity, for ten minutes of every day this superhero becomes evil: and by the end of the film he’s looking like a dead cert for consort of Catherine Tate’s Evil Stella.
To persuade him, Stella says he will have a great time: because he gets to press lots of buttons.
The film is privy to Ten Heart’s thought bubble , where he sits with manic joy, in the cockpit of the baddie spaceship, pressing buttons. As he does so, he mutters “Presspresspresspresspresspress…” ad infinitum. There is a dangerous light in his eye.
This, for a male, really is a pull far greater than Stella’s evil charms. Pressing buttons all day wins it for Felix.
Today we found ourselves with an impromptu dinner to prepare with all speed, and a trip to the supermarket was in order. Felix and The Supermarket have a healthy suspicion of each other. There is one bribe which will usually tempt him along, though: buttons. He is bequeathed my iPhone on short-term loan, and times our visit.
To add a little spice we negotiate a time to get from the entrance to the checkout. Today it was generous: ten minutes.
He monitored our progress with his usual officious gusto, and I was not short of advice and frequent timely reminders.
We completed our mission and he announced with a wide grin as we walked out of the shop: “I’ve done 487 laps!”
He had been active, to be sure, but I draw the line short of allowing my youngster to play Eugene Bolt round the aisles. I queried his analysis.
He explained: the iPhone stopwatch is often used by athletes, and so it has a ‘lap’ facility. If you press the lap button once, the phone records that you have done one lap.
So Felix went: presspresspresspresspresspresspresspress ad infinitum.
He passed 500 laps while we loaded up the shopping. He was delighted.
What I do not know about the male psyche is a lot.
And as if to prove my point, a Swedish gentleman has been in all our papers today with a blokish scheme which, quite literally, backfired.
Men cooking up chemicals and playing amateur alchemist are no stranger to me. I will not easily forget the day I came home to find my husband melting lead with a view to using a rubber mould ( an old cats eye with two disc-shaped indentations) to make lead coins.
The smell was horrendous and the fumes probably toxic. But my man was happy. The presspresspresspresspresspress bit of his brain- the bit that says, I wonder what will happen when: that bit was fully exercised.
Richard Handi, the 31-year-old from Angelholm, Sweden who hit the headlines today, seems to have had the same mindset.
Industriously – and one dreads to think how – he went about procuring a little recreational radium, americium and uranium.
And then, he attempted to split the atom in his kitchen.
This necessitated combining the ingredients and heating them thoroughly. Dismally, and perhaps predictably, he only managed to blow up his cooker.
And finally, when he should have kept stumm, he blogged about it. Presspresspresspresspresspress.
He was immediately arrested, and charged with unauthorised possession of nuclear material.
The week’s events have sent me haring towards the parenting books which advise on bringing up these puzzling, highly empirical creatures, sons. The charm of pressing a button or testing a hypothesis is heady motivation indeed for the men in my life.
I have absolutely no idea how I am going to handle the endless possibilities that will bring.
Kate Shrewsday 
That cartoon sounds like a wonderful idea.
I heard about that bloke on the news last night. So barmy, he could have been British.
A delightful post, Kate.
Thanks Tilly. Its a barmy British carton but the sense of ownership among youngsters seems quite high. Lovely to recognise them.
You handle it by encouraging it with as much gusto and fervour as you can manage! The greatest minds, the biggest thinkers all thought “presspresspresspresspress” just before making history.
Gusto, fervour. I am making copious notes here, Ian. I shall understand presspresspresspresspress much better from now on 😀 Thanks for coming by, I loved your blog.
Best of luck, Kate, I have no advice about boys. As far as men goes, I’ve found it best practice to send them to experiment in the garden shed. And the Swede? The entire Scandinavian population seems to be going a bit barmy?
It does, Cindy….some odd peaks and troughs we have had. Check out the interview Pseu has posted in her comment for a jolly good laugh, though.
boys are quite different from reasonable, rational girls 😉
LOL It’s Mars and Venus: I’m just not empirical and I’m suffering from a case of acute incomprehension, Sidey 😀
I love this post Kate! I’m going to have presspresspresspress in my mind forever now, it just captures that thing they do so well 🙂
I tried to find Ten Heart on Youtube but its quite new so he wasn’t there. Felix loved ‘presspresspresspresspress 😀
OMG, Kate! Reminds me of a vague memory about my brother’s class of boys, led by their male science teacher, cracking their school swimming pool with a large chunk of sodium…
LOL What a great story, Naomi! They just have to try it for themselves!
Do you really believe all men are like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Fantasia) ?
Mmmmmh … we might be … presspresspresspress … boom !!! oops … 🙂
LOL Hi Mathias, lovely to hear from you 🙂 Evidence provided by husband and son is quite compelling. Nothing’s exploded here since the lead-into-coins incident. Cross fingers, touch wood….
And you know what ?
I used to be a scientist !!! 😀
..in a perfect position to split an atom anywhere you choose!
No … I was a biologist … 😦
I’m sure that had some interesting possibilities for experimentation…
Oh! Yes it does 😀
The show certainly sounds, um, different!
I have to admit that male humans find it fascinating to cause explosions. As kids we had some highly entertaining experiments with dynamite.
Never underrate the power of the press.
😀 I shan’t, Col, I shan’t….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14403432
bobkers
try again
I howled, Pseu. There’s nothing like an English newsreader for a voice dripping with irony. And he got the stuff from EBay! Priceless!
Sadly, NOT priceless, as it happens!
Erk, yes, Phil was saying he was a bit concerned the bloke could get this stuff so easily…
Yes, I know all about boys…. often wonder what my life would have been like had I had daughters…..
Must join you for a masterclass some time, Pseu!
Oh, my, your Felix sounds just like my younger brother ~ always experimenting with buttons.
He had his first computer (a TRS-80) when data was still stored on cassettes! These days, he works for Hewlett Packard.
presspresspresspresspress
Heaven: a job where you get to press buttons all day!
Oh, Kate, I couldn’t help laughing. Then, again, I’ve daughters. They don’t blow things up and go presspresspresspress. They do carry over disagreements for years, and years, and years, however.
One of my Louie cousins, we have a lot of Louie’s, was, shall we say, precocious as a child. He was the kid lifting manhole covers and curious as to what would happen if you squirted the neighbor’s hose through the neighbors window. He was locked in accordion cases and flooded another neighbors yard (he, like Macauley, had a thing with water) and, well, you get the picture. When my aunt passed away, old neighbors from far and wide came to the wake. They all wanted to see what Louie was like as an adult. He didn’t change much. He does have a son of his own. Pay-back. tee hee
My turn to laugh, Penny, what a wonderful comment! Locked in an accordion case, oh my…..Phil is a presspresspresspresser, and used to take expensive things like fountain pens and watches, and then not be able to put them back together again. Felix has been a wonderful addition for him. Now they presspresspresspress together, and life is good, if slightly unpredictable.
Boys are a different species altogether. Lead was melted in my kitchen to make sinkers for fishing…
Bwahahaha, 500 laps indeed! SOOOOperman!
And all in the time it got to walk from the checkout to the car, Denise…..he wasn’t even puffed out….
Presspresspresspress is what got us from fire to fighter jets in the same amount of time the neanderthals took to get from clubs to pointy sticks.
The reason you are vexed by the male psyche, as you are dangerously near discovering on your own, is that we don’t have one per se. . . so much as an array of buttons that can be pressed. I doubt any of us know what most of them do.
😀 Connor, you remind me that I must fix ‘like’ buttons to the comments on these posts: somehow, in my misted mind, your words are clearing the fog. Button pressing is what it’s all about. I’m off now to find out how many cyberlaps Felix has completed on my iPhone.
Delightful post, Kate.
Thanks Earlybird 🙂
I have two daughters and I don’t understand son’s thought.
However, there is a clear difference between daughter and son, I think.
I’d agree with you 100 per cent, Cocomino 😀