Writing is important.

The boy and I have been writing a sentence every evening. It’s not just to learn how to shape our letters, but to explore the delight of capturing your thoughts in the way that you can share and remember. Writing for recreation with a good fountain pen is one of the least harmful and most sensual pleasures around.  WIth any luck it will stick

At the same time, he’s fascinated by rugby union and the role of dad, admittedly more infrequent these days. The referee in a little boy’s eyes is a person considerably less athletically capable than the players in the field, but who nevertheless gets to tell everybody what do. As a metaphor for five-year-old’s ideal world it’s a good one.

Among the recent sentences we’ve committed to paper in the pre-tea ritual are milestones in a boy’s day. “I fell over in the playground and banged my knee” does sterling service, and my particular favourite (see earlier post) “My Daddy and I made the solar system.”

We’ve now brought together these two fantastic activities – writing and refereeing – into young Master Griffin’s Laws Of The Game of Cushion Fighting. Boys, you see, are entitled to put their full weight and howling laughter into smiting the paterfamilias with any soft furnishing that comes to hand. But when it comes to taking as good as you get, players are referred to Law One, as articulated by The Boy in the epistle of 27 May.

“Daddies must bash boys gently.”

There you have it.