Socks & ducks & rock ‘n roll

As my legion regular readers will know, there’s nothing I like more than a humorous malapropism – last weekend’s Guardian had a corker. Thanks to Andrew Miller for…

My twins, Riley and Roxy, are four. One of their favourite games is Playing Daddy’s CDs, which is great for keeping them happy while I am cooking. They sit on the counter beside the CD player in the kitchen and take turns choosing discs from the pile. Roxy always picks What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong and demands that I pick her up so we can waltz around the kitchen together. It’s lovely.

Riley is harder to please. He ruthlessly rejects track after track, after only a few seconds of listening, like a sort of infant Simon Cowell. At first I thought he was only interested in taking the shiny discs out of their boxes and pressing the buttons on the CD player but it soon became clear that Riley will only accept cuts that kick in with 100% killer baselines from the start.

He has recently developed a passion for Ian Dury which has resulted in some serious pogoing around the kitchen. I had to play Riley’s current favourite song four times during breakfast this morning, before packing him off to nursery, happily singing at the top of his little voice: “Socks and ducks and rock’n’roll are very good indeed!”