Across the pond

It is the greyest of grey dawns. Black cloud hangs over Stoneborrow Hill. Chesil Beach and Portland Bill are invisible. Two blackish birds are pecking on the terrace. Nothing on the bird table but they are pecking hopefully. Probably magpies. At least they are not crows or albatrosses or other birds of ill omen.

The weather mirrors my mood. My nephew Jim and his two sons have managed to find a patch of reasonably level ground in the back garden for their tent, but it is flapping in the wind and I fear it will blow down before they wake up. And the storm, forecast for Thursday, could easily begin in a few minutes.

Although I currently have no work obligations I have totally failed to maintain my intention of a blog a day. I have still not published that review of the moving diary of the manic depressive young woman or the new David Lodge novel. The Durham Miners’ Gala remains un-reported as does my impressions of the first UK WordCamp.

The only blog I have managed in the last few days was a rant about Gordon Brown. I am not alone in thinking he is making a mess of running the country but who am I to say so, when I cannot even write a blog a day. Worse than that I am not even sure I know anything worth writing about and I don’t even know what I believe.

Yesterday, Kate and James came over from Totnes to show us their new baby. The women were taking turns to cradle it. I insisted in demonstrating that a mere man was capable of learning this skill. She was asleep. She looked Chinese. Inscrutable. And looking as if she knew already far more than I did.

Meanwhile Lucas, who is not quite two, showed none of the murderous tendencies the great Sigmund led us to expect. He entained us all with a rattling good story, triggered by the digger he had seen in our drive as he came in. He told us in vivid detail how he drove his digger, what he picked up in the shovel, and where he put it. He held his audience and carried them on and on. He is already a better story teller than me. When I last saw him a month or so ago he said only two or three words. He seems to have learnt the whole language in a few weeks. And boys are supposed to learn to communicate much more slowly than boys.

No scientist that I have read has come anywhere near explaining just how that happens. And just why learning the first language is so different from learning a second langage. Maybe Darwin and Richard Dawkins have got it wrong and that we could all speak in many tongues if only we had faith.

But so far the only children we have found brought up by wolves had only learnt to howl.