Daniel:What are the dark ages?
Me:Well, after the Fall of Rome..
Him: With the Goths and the Vandals and the Ostrogoths..
Me: That’s it. Well people forgot about a lot of the things that they used to know and there wasn’t much science but then the renaissance came [Insert digression here on the topic “what do you think renaissance means?”*]
Mr. Waffle: But before that the flame of civilisation was kept alive by monks on a tiny island. Do you know where that was?
Children in chorus: Ireland.
Mr. Waffle: That’s right and there’s a story about how Charlemagne the great Emperor wanted to know about solar eclipses and an Irish monk had to explain it to him.
Herself (slightly sourly): And only look at us now.
*Is it any wonder my poor children tend to wander away from the table over dinner?
My mum was always seizing teachable moments like that. It was kind of annoying at the time, but I still remember a lot of it. Like the fact that the dangly thing at the back of your throat is the uvula – as explained on my toy Kermit the frog.
I think it drives my poor children demented but I can’t help it. And, of course, it’s one of these self-perpetuating things (man hands on misery to man/it deepens like a coastal shelf etc) – bet your sister does it to her kids too.
This would not cheer up the Princess: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/nov/12/pampered-humanity-less-intelligent
I assure you, Praxis, nothing she doesn’t suspect already.