Crinklybee

The A-Z of Frankie- part 2- 'Gone' to 'Moop'

G is for... Gone. 

There's nothing your average two-year-old likes more than providing a running commentary on life as it passes by- and there is no word more invaluable for this commentary than the past-participle of the verb to go, which can be called into service to describe people, animals, and things which have left the room, become temporarily obscured, flown off over a hedge, been tidied away, been eaten, or simply done a runner.

Frankie (overjoyed): 'birdie!'

Jonathan: 'where's the birdie, Frankie?'

Frankie (suddenly downcast): 'birdie gone'.

Also reported 'gone' during the last 24 hours: the postman; the bubbles in the bath; the 18:21 train from Levenshulme to Hazel Grove; a plate full of Asda cocktail sausages; the tall, thin, drunken Irishman who lives at number 24. 

H is for... Hey hey

The Koala Brothers is a charming Australian animation about a pair of helpful marsupials who phut-phut around over the outback in a battered old bi-plane looking for characters in need of assistance.  The theme tune features the line 'hey hey hey hey help is on its way'.  From this line Frankie has derived his own name for the show:

Jonathan: 'Let's see what's on the telly, shall we?  Oh look- University Challenge!'

Frankie (having none of it): 'Hey hey!  Hey hey again!'

I is for... Ice Ceam Man

Some day Frankie will learn how to pronounce those tricky words with two consonants together.  Until then, we get to sigh with delight every time he misses the 'r' out of 'ice cream man', because it just sounds so goddam cute.  See also 'posan' (postman); 'uh-sairs' (upstairs); 'seepy' (sleepy); 'pam' (pram).

J is for.... Jooloo

Frankie's name for Charlotte's sister Judy. 

K is for.... King ladder garden

Sometimes Frankie will come out with nonsensical statements- jumbles of quickfire unrelated words- which he will keep repeating until the desired response is forthcoming.  Usually we can work out what he is getting at- but occasionally we will be reduced to nodding our heads earnestly and just agreeing, like you might do with a cantankerous pensioner at the bus-stop:

Frankie (casually, pointing at slide): 'King-ladder-garden!'

Jonathan: 'what's that, love?'

Frankie: 'King ladder garden!  King ladder garden!'

Jonathan: King ladder garden, love?  What can you mean, exactly?

Frankie (furious at parent's inability to grasp simple concept of 'king ladder garden'): King ladder garden! King Ladder Garden!  King Ladder Garden!

Jonathan (deadly serious): Yes, love, that's right.  Of course it is.

Frankie: [apparently satisfied, wanders off in general direction of Stockport Road]

L is for... London

Our house is half-way up a short cul-de-sac of Victorian terraces wedged between the A6 Stockport Road and the main Manchester to London train line.  Every twenty minutes or so the houses at the train line end shudder slightly as a bright-red Virgin express hurtles by at 135mph.  Frankie takes a break from the important task of transferring all the pebbles in the garden into a bucket to tell us where he thinks it is off to:

'Yed train. London. Gone'

M is for... more moop

'Moop' is Frankie' word for milk- so it has become me and Charlotte's word for milk as well.

Charlotte (shouting down the stairs):  'Jonny, can you bring up some more moop?'

Jonathan (the next day at work, during an important business meeting):  A coffee Mr Rigby?  Yes of course- and would that be with moop at all?'

Mr Rigby: [stares at Jonathan like he is some kind of mad person.  Starts to stuff files hurriedly into briefcase]

...

Next time out we delve into our two-year-old's head again, and fish out another half-dozen items of choice everyday vocabulary, starting with a certain two-letter word beginning with 'n', which we have gotten very used to hearing at bed-time, dinner-time, and at sundry other times where we would really much prefer to hear a three-letter word beginning with 'y'.

The A-Z of Frankie- Part One- 'Again' to 'Fafaf'

Frankie, aged two years and four months, has just learned that the word 'again' has magical properties.  By saying it he can command any grown-up within hearing distance to repeat whatever entertaining thing they have just said, done, or sung.  Fantastically, there appears to be no limit to the amount of successive times grown-ups (especially dads, for some reason) will respond to this simple two-syllable command, as long as you make sure to pronounce it in your cutest two-year-and-four-month-old voice.  Here are some of the things I have done 'again' (and then again and again and again) this weekend:

-slid Frankie down a park slide.

-driven a toy ambulance across the floor and up Frankie's T-shirt while supplying full ambulance sound effects.

-performed the opening lines of 'This Charming Man' by the Smiths (complete with imaginary gladioli).

Now my Morrissey impression is a first-class one, even if I say so myself.  So you will not be surprised to learn that 'again' is Frankie's very favourite word right now.  But the boy does have a quaint and rapidly expanding vocabulary.  I thought I would present you with an A-Z guide.  Starting with....

A is for 'Again'.  See above.

B is for 'Bool'.  Which means 'blue'.  Frankie hasn't quite got the hang of colours yet.  Until a week ago everything was 'bool':

'Bool car'.

'That's a red car, Frankie'

'Yed car'

'Clever boy!'.

Now of course, everything is 'yed'.  A 'yed cat'.  A 'yed dinner'.  A 'yed man'. 

C is for Carrieoo.

Frankie is struggling up the stairs.

Charlotte: 'Mama carry you?'

Ten minutes later, Frankie needs help transporting his teddy downstairs:

Frankie: 'Mama carrieoo teddy!'

D is for Digger-digger.

Last week Charlotte took Frankie to the Tatton Flower Show.  They didn't get to see too many of the award-winning floral displays, however, because Frankie was obsessed by a manufacturer's stand displaying working vehicles.

Charlotte (reading from promotional brochure): 'Oh, Frankie.  Look at this dramatic sunken terrace.  Isn't it marvellous how the designer has combined Oriental and Mediterranean influences to produce a thoroughly Twenty-First century take on the urban water-feature?'

Frankie: 'Digger-digger again!'

E is for 'Eyes Open!'.

Up until a few weeks ago Frankie wouldn't go to sleep in his cot- he had to fall asleep in your arms first, and then be gently lowered in.  Now we have made progress: he will go to sleep in his cot- eventually- as long as you are in the room with him.  No dozing off yourself, mind, or you will be firmly rebuked:

Frankie: 'Eyes Open!'

Jonathan (slumped against bedroom wall, emerging from light slumber):  'What?  Oh- er, my eyes are open, Frankie.  Time to sleep now'.

ten minutes later-

Frankie; 'Eyes Open!!'

Jonathan (flat out and snoring on bedroom floor):  'Zzzz.... Eh?'

F is for 'Fafaf do it'

Fafaf is Frankie's name for himself.  Well it's a lot easier to say than 'Frankie' (all those darn consonants), and seems to go well with 'Mama' and 'Dada'.  'Fafaf do it' means 'thanks very much for the offer of assistance, but I'm quite all right, really':

Charlotte: 'Mama carry you up the stairs, love?'.

Frankie: 'Fafaf do it!'

....

It's a good job me and Charlotte have both got degrees in Modern Languages, otherwise we wouldn't understand a damn word.  Next time out, G to M.  Starting with 'Gone'- like 'Again' a favourite of two-year-olds everywhere....

The Case For Zizou

So it's all over and we can get back to our normal lives, or at least try to remember what exactly it was that they involved, and then take things from there, let's not try to run before we can walk, shall we?  In the end I made a last ditch attempt to salvage some dignity from what has been a punishing World Cup campaign, logging onto the internet betting account with ten minutes to spare before kick-off to throw a last desperate virtual fiver at the first outcome that came into my head, which was 2-1 to Italy in 90 minutes.    I was throwing good money after bad, of course; as we now know, the smart money was on 1-1 after extra time, the Italians to conquer their long-standing aversion to the penalty shoot-out to emerge victorious, and, as a bonus double, the French captain and talisman Zinedine Zidane to open the scoring with a cheeky penalty then get sent off for headbutting an Italian in the chest after he called his mother a whore in Spanish.  I would imagine you would have got about 35000-1. 

Just five minutes had elapsed since the World Cup reached that dramatic denouement, and the pitch was still awash with delirious Italians acting in what you have to say was a most unitalian manner. Left-back Grosso was parading along the touchline in a giant foam tricolour hat, while the bearded midfielder Gattuso had stripped down to his underpants (giant white Y-fronts that looked like they could have come from British Home Stores) and was dancing around the centre-circle like a demented garden gnome.  Back in the BBC studio, however, the mood was altogether more sombre.  A Gary Lineker-led inquest had begun, with furrowed brows all round- and a universally damning verdict on the red-carded French playmaker:

'He must be absolutely ashamed of himself in the dressing room there- the loneliest man in the world'

'A sad stain on a glorious career- what a shame it has to end like that!'

'He's let the team down, the fans down- but most importantly, he's let himself down'.

Well, I suppose they had a point.  And I suppose the BBC can't exactly be seen to condone foul play, so it would have been too much to hope for one of the panellists to come up with the idea that entertained us at work this afternoon- namely that the disgraced playmaker, instead of trooping disconsolately past the gleaming trophy on his way to the dressing room, should have realised he had by now nothing to lose and snaffled the thing up off its trestle table, stuffed it up his shirt, and ran really quickly out of the stadium.  I'm sure it would have taken a good twenty minutes for any of the 68000 witnesses to realise that what they had just seen had really happened- by which time the ever-elusive Zizou, taking advantage of the enviably uber-efficient German public transport system, could have been safely aboard a fast train to Marseilles, from where he could have boarded a boat and gone into hiding in his grandma's house in deepest Algeria, where of course nobody would think of looking.  Now that would have been a way to end a career in style.

Where was I going with this, again? Oh yes- I don't think we should be too hard on Zizou, and would like to counter the sanctimonious bleatings of Lineker and his ilk by offering the following five-point plea in his defence:

1- You would think the World Cup until extra-time in the final had been conducted in an atmosphere of unparallelled fair play.  In fact the opposite was true.  Ever since Thierry Henry reacted to Puyol of Spain's slight push in the chest by throwing himself to the ground and writhing in agony holding his face for the best part of ten minutes, this tournament has offered an unappetising spectacle of pampered players diving, elbowing, and flinging themselves to the floor like tantrumming toddlers at bed-time.  Any tournament where the thuggish Wayne Rooney can stamp on an opposing player's bollocks and still be held up as some kind of Corinthian role model (even if admittedly only by the Daily Mirror) has got to have plunged to a new low where sportsmanship is concerned.  If we're going to damn Zidane for his actions we should at least be consistent, and damn the lot of them.   

2- The Italian called his mother a whore, for God's sake.  In Spanish.  And then reacted to Zidane's really quite charmingly amateurish so-called headbutt (as Glasgow kisses go, this was a mere peck on the cheek, far from the declarations of undying passion to be witnessed along Sauchiehall Street at closing time) by launching himself into a treble backwards somersault and then lying immobile and wailing on the pitch until he was quite sure the officials had noticed his predicament.  I wish they hadn't done, in which case Materazzo would have just had to stand up, dust himself down, and try to get on with the game as if nothing had happened.  Which is, of course, what he should have done in the first place.    

3- The match needed livening up just around then.  I mean come on, nothing of note had happened for the preceding twenty minutes.  As the spectre of penalties loomed, the French players were wandering around the pitch at walking pace, and if someone had placed a nice comfy sofa in the centre-circle the entire Italian midfield would have raced to curl up on it with a good book.  This is not what you want from a World Cup final.  You want passion.  You want incident.  You want the French captain to walk up to the nearest Italian and strike him clumsily in the chest with his head.

4 - You've got to say our man took his punishment with good grace.  You know, unlike our brave boy Rooney, who is seen by 70000 people and fifty high-definition cameras kicking a prone Portuguese defender in the bollocks, then still tries to claim it was all an accident.  I don't think Zizou thought for a moment he was going to escape unpunished- when the red card came he maintained his dignity, put his head down and walked.  He really should have got a hold of that cup on the way past and stuck it up his shirt, but you know, you can't have everything.

5- This is Zizou we're talking about, for God's sake.  The same man who single-handedly dismantled the Brazilians in the quarter-finals, at one point lobbing the ball quite calmly over the head of a fast-approaching hatchet man, collecting it as it dropped into space behind this bemused opponent, then sliding a geometrically perfect blindside through-ball into the path of an onrushing forward.  And that's just the highlight of this week; the guy has been pullling moves like that for fifteen years.  I think we can forgive him one moment of madness, don't you?

One moment of madness, after a decade and more of expressive virtuosity bordering on genius.  Let's remember that in a footballing age increasingly dominated by identikit players lined up in rigid formations and coached by faceless timeserving functionaries to within an inch of their lives, here was a rare, ungovernable talent, capable at any moment of picking the lock of the stubbornest defense with a shimmy and a delicately-chipped killer pass into a space no-one else had seen open up.  Let's remember Zizou for the good times- because we may not see his like again for a damn good while yet.