I am recycling a story from a friend here. I suppose it is a new low but I rather liked this one so you will have to suffer. My friend’s father, a retired neurosurgeon and all round no nonsense man, went walking with my friend’s sister and sister’s son by the river. The child, aged four, was on his bicycle with stabilisers. His grandfather described his outfit thus to my friend with mounting outrage: the child was wearing a helmet, a high visibility vest, knee pads, arm pads and…water wings.
I wondering how long it took to get him prepared? My experience of small boys would suggest that an outfit like this could take several hours to put on and frankly, I would run out of energy before we got going!
Some years ago I spotted my neighbours’ children playing in the paddling pool in our back garden wearing their school uniforms & bike helmets…
We thought their mother was being uncharacteristically safety-conscious. Turns out they’d been so excited by the pool that they couldn’t be bothered to take the helmets off!
Lucy, I suppose this might have led to grandfather burn out also.
Liz, that’s quite appealing, really.