I feel a faker but the strangeness of this information mercifully shuts him up, and in any case he’s distracted by the man behind us on the pavement whose openly guffawing at my parental idiocy.
Luckily Spider-boy can now create his own narratives to explain history and anomalies – from why elephant has a trunk to how his brother has been naughty to him all day. He talks about his work and fake reads his bedtime stories. He has a book of facts about nocturnal animals and now mimics me and his father as he reveals his own set of crazy revelations. He’s all ghoulish fascination with the violence of nature and flattering imitation of our voices when he spices up the page about leopards.
‘Did you know leopards eat small animals?’ he says. ‘They eat porcupines too’ he remembers, prompted by the picture. He pauses to think. ‘Sometimes though’ he adds, nodding to assuage any doubts, ‘leopards eat other leopards, tigers and sharks and also… buses!’ He holds the book tight and dares us to contradict him.
But he’s mostly interested in endless nursery tale re-runs, from Grimm to CBeebies via Uncle Walt. I love these ‘again again’ days as he tries to ensnare us all in a world of giants and witches and wolf stews and lost boys and magic beans. On Sunday at a barbecue we replayed Jack & The Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Hansel & Gretel, Tarzan and The Jungle Story (sic).
There are variations on the theme depending on access to dramatis personae but key lines must not be omitted. Jack’s Mum must state he’ll ‘surely break his neck’ as he climbs the beanstalk, the piggies’ chins must be hairy, the wolf stew must have carrots and God help us all of we forget Mowgli’s songs.
Despite his verbal bravura though Spider-boy keeps his options open and covers his back, just in case these aged fables hold any immediate truth. He must be Gretel, for example. Not for any gender bending reason which would appeal to the wannabe literary critic of my youth, but because ‘the witch wants to eat Hansel’. Similarly he prefers to be any bit part over Jack, magic beans having more allure than ground down bones apparently. This said his poor brother, and mother, are usually relegated to the worst part of all.
No-one sane wants to be Station Officer Steel, or the second monkey on the left behind King Louis. And pity the fool who takes up a gleefully proffered part in Tinga Tinga – they almost always entails being Just-So-ed in graphic fashion. But despite the dangers I take any part I’m given as I love watching his imagination centre stage.
Today we play the Three Billy Goats Gruff. Spider-boy, unusually, is the troll. There is much game negotiation over who has more meat on them. We end the game with Spider-boy splashing in the sofa river and Daddy Goat victorious. But only for a short while. ‘There’s another goat, a Mummy goat coming’ says the troll in an alluring and conspiratorial whisper. I step up to the part I’m born to play, though suspicious after a Mummy-goring moment only last week. ‘What happens next?’ I ask, after saying I want some munchy grass. ‘The troll eats you all up’ he confirms and piles in for a feast.