DEAR DIARY…
Last month we took Reuben to Brighton for his first view of the sea & nature untamed. It was an overcast day at the end of a sequence of cloudless skies & Mediterranean heat so we had the stony beach to ourselves. Emma walked Reuben down to the shoreline & they stood facing the English Channel & a brisk northerly breeze. He swept the horizon briefly & then struggled to be let down onto the shingle. There he sat for a few moments, staring incuriously at the rising tide like a small & disinterested King Canute. Then he sighed in a world-weary sort of way & picked up a large round stone from in front of him. For the next ten minutes he studied it minutely, turning it over & over before finally locking all four teeth around it in a final attempt to determine its properties. Its possibilities exhausted, he dumped the stone, turned his back on the great expanse of grey-green sea & sky & crawled up the beach to the blanket where he curled up & fell into dreamless slumber.
Somewhat chastened by Reuben’s indifference to the glories of the natural world, we trudged back into the town & fetched up at Pizza Express. Here Reuben’s interests were immediately engaged. The two young guys in striped Breton-style t-shirts spinning the dough & shovelling the pizzas into the open oven kept him intrigued for several minutes. But most engaging of all, as usual, were the waitresses. A young blonde girl came over to take our order & as she stood, notebook ready, she smiled down at Reuben, who was scrutinising her closely. Instantly he gave her his most winsome smile, one normally reserved for elderly ladies who stop our trolley in the supermarket to gurgle in shortsighted delight at the saliva dribbling down his chin & the bubbles expanding from his nose. As she walked away his eyes followed her. And as she bent over the table again ten minutes later with our pizzas, Reuben reached out from his high chair & with calm, unselfconscious deliberation, he extended forefinger & thumb & goosed her.
Clearly there is interest in the world of nature, but we regret that at 11 months it seems to be carnal rather than aesthetic…
1:37:22 AM 
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