Monday 24 October 2011

The Space-Being and the Iron Man

Chaos HQ is currently preoccupied with giants and robots. There are more of these creatures about urban world than you might expect. So we scour the city for them.

Giants and robots generally don't camouflage well. But grown-ups are usually too busy to notice them.

Ana's fascination with robots goes back a long time. She has been constructing robots from foil and empty boxes for months.

But her fascination with giants is newer. It began last week when a nice man showed up to install fire-proofing stuff around our door-frame at the behest of the local residents' association.

"Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, and that."
 Her eyes grew wide as the man explained his task.

Then she exclaimed: "It's not for fire, it's to keep out the giant robots!"

You see, Ana may be four but she is no turnip.

And of course the nice man did nothing to dissuade her of this notion. Nor did I. In fact we both did our utmost to egg her on.

Since that fateful moment she has become like the neighbourhood watch, only cuter. She is a curtain-twitcher at home, and remains vigilant when out in the big world. She sees robots from her bedroom window on a regular basis, and has an eagle eye for spotting them all over London.

Occasionally we hit the jackpot and locate an awesome giant robot like this one, thus killing two electronic birds with one virtual stone.

This guy happens to live at the British Library, where a continual stream of deep-in-thought people flows by him, unblinking, unnoticing.

Amazing how the human eye can miss the giant in the room. Which makes me thank my lucky stars for doorway fire-proofing stuff. Were it not for that, I might now have a household giant metal man infestation on my hands.

11 comments:

  1. Not a turnip you say?

    She sounds very brave. I can remember being terrified of giants. And wolves and foxes and vampires and monsters and spiders. And oh, just about everything.

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  3. This is why children are so marvelous. "My boy" and I went dragon hunting just the other day.

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  4. Dragon hunting sounds fabulous. Will try that when we get tired of giant robots.

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  5. No shame in being frightened of giants. Or spiders. or giant spiders.

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  6. She sounds like a character from a children's book. Brave and wide eyed and very wise beyond her years! I remember running away from a life sized Mickey Mouse when I was her age.

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  7. Thanks Romina! She definitely lives in her own world. I reckon Mickey is pretty scary, especially full-sized Mickey...

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  8. your kids are hilarious!

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  9. Surely you should keep the giants out, didn't you know that? We've started a bit of a thing for robots here, too. No giants in sight just yet.

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  10. Robots are a gateway toy. The giants will be there in no time. Watch out ;)

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  11. Hah - well if they are slapstick comedians, then I am the butt of most of their jokes.

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