Pipistrelle pie? – more from the FYO

He is still the FYO because he is still five. And while he still comes out with these lovely little comments I shall continue to print them. “Mum, what’s bat and bird cake?”

And the next visit to the optician: “When am I going to see the eye dentist?”

Chocolate surprise

I was in Starbucks with the FYO and made the mistake of saying he could have what he liked as a cake, even lifting him up so he could see. What I hadn’t noticed were things-on-sticks that resemble lollies but are actually lumps of marshmallow dipped in chocolate. I kept my word. After eating his sandwiches he set to work on the lolly thing, eating down one side the way beavers gnaw logs. Eventually I could see the whole stick. ‘Why not eat it around the other side?’ I said. ‘That way the rest of it won’t fall off.’ He nods, and off he goes, round to the other side of the table.

Serves me right for not being specific.

the bogwheel

The bogwheel and the TYO…
He climbed on to it and said he couldn’t touch the pedals, which didn’t really surprise me. Then he told me he had managed to find some – he had his feet up on the spark plugs and looked like Dennis Hopper in ‘Easy Rider’ (not that I ever saw the film). Or Snoopy, who also appears to have his feet on the spark plugs.

The bike is 40 years old, a 1969 Triumph ‘Mercury’ (a police T100P for those that are interested). For reasons I won’t bore you with I am sure it once belonged to the City of London police, but somewhere in its history it lost its documents (‘ello ‘ello, lost its documents, you say? A likely story. You and me had better go down to the station…). A few years ago I stripped it down to its last nut and bolt and rebuilt it.

Anyway, it isn’t the police bike I’m currently rebuilding, that’s another one. At the moment that one is a garageful of bits.

So why ‘bogwheel’? I think it is a WWII army term. I first heard it in the police, from an ex-soldier who had been in Burma during the war. For motorbikes used out there I’m sure that ‘bogwheel’ was an appropriate term. Policemen who had been army despatch riders also called our bikes bogwheels.

TYO, not the spark plugs, okay? …please take your feet off the spark plugs…
In the photo he had done that.
Good boy.