Pilcrow Read Free Page B

playing a game, Mum and I. She wanted me to have a wee so I would drop off to sleep right away, and I didn’t want to, for exactly the same reason.
    The next memory after Mum saying ‘ Dou-asíss ’ is of Dad saying, ‘You should blow on it, m’dear!’ That was his stock form of address to his wife, a phrase so stylised that it hardly counted as an endearment.
    Under the hood of my big black pram it was almost as dark as the womb. It was wonderful to be wrapped up in swaddling clothes with my face breathing in the cool air. I would wait for the blissful warmth to creep up all around me. It was impossible to maintain this bliss for more than a second or two without falling into sleep, but I wanted to enjoy sleep as a conscious condition. I was a precocious investigator of states of mind. I wanted to stand on the shore, on the very edge of the tide of sleep, and feel myself being washed away. I was drawn to examine the moment that consciousness gave way to one of its opposites. I wanted to freeze that moment, to savour my awareness as it slipped from me, and my secret weapon in the quest was a full bladder. That focus of discomfort kept me on the edge of nothingness, preventing me from dropping off. Then when I could hold it in no longer I would relax and let it all flood out. It was bliss to feel the gentle warmth seeping into my swaddling clothes, before I fell properly asleep, for the few moments before Mum woke me with an exasperated sigh.
    It must have been very frustrating for Mum, who had to keep changing my clothes. ‘He’s being impossible today – I’m at the end of my tether. I’ve only just put him into fresh clean clothes and now look! He’s soaked them again!’ That was why she was so keen on making me ‘go’ before putting me down to sleep, and why Dad came up with his crucial suggestion: ‘Blow on it, m’dear!’ I didn’t actually hear Mum say, ‘Dennis, I’ll do no such thing!’ but with my later experience of her I can absolutely guarantee that she would have used that form of words. In the end she didn’t have to do it. Dad would do it for her. I remember the feeling of the cool air flowing over my body, and seeing Dad with his cheeks puffed out, as he blew cool air over the clenched bud of my infant equipment.
    His tactic was sound. I let go immediately, and on this first occasion I hit him right in the face, while Mum shrieked with horrified laughter. After that he managed to dodge the jet. Mum and Dad made gratified noises.
    I was happy to be the cause of such sounds, even though it meant I was being cheated out of a few precious seconds of nirvana. From now on, when I was wrapped up I had no way of indulging in this delicious game, playing Grandmother’s Footsteps with oblivion. I just drifted off. It wasn’t long, though, before I began to enjoy Dad’s blowing technique in its own right. I remember seeing the jet of water rising high into the air, and being very proud that I’d managed to achieve this. How they managed to catch the proud stream I don’t know.
    I soon discovered that any source of fresh air could act as a trigger, so when I came to toddle I started to experiment. Even opening the little flap of my dungarees was enough to start the tingle of release.
    I have a separate memory of sitting in a shaft of sunlight and realising that everything around me happened by my say-so. Everything was conditional on me. Logically, of course, this is a memory of successful potty-training. The potty has been pushed out of the picture, but I know it’s there. I’m a little king, and I’m sitting on a foreshortened throne. My gross happiness is the immediate radiant aftermath of being told I was Mummy’s clever boy for doing my siss or my ‘ tuppenny ’ (the family word for defæcation) so beautifully in the right place. That’s something that disappeared early on – excretion as one of the pleasures of life, expressive as a smile, not some dark duty that dominates the