wordchild

Yu Hua’s hit novel Brothers, misfiled under his given name ‘Hua’ rather than his family name ‘Yu’ at Waterstone’s on High Holborn.

A display in my local card shop.

In the Ford Young Visitors Centre at the British Museum – a basement area that during the week is probably crawling with hundreds of noisy schoolchildren, but on a Saturday morning is blissfully empty and serene.

My local library has a section for books in Chinese. Most of it seems to be popular fiction, especially Romance.

Watched the wonderful BBC Brian Eno documentary last night. Inspiring in so many ways. Having a bit of a Being John Malkovich fantasy in which everyone in the world is Eno – surely all that’s needed to make the world a better place?

I took the kids to the British Museum in the morning. At the sight of this ancient Greek statue, which represents a rather large-nosed man, William said: “Daddy, he looks like you!” I asked William why he thought the man looked like me, and a nearby museum-goer, overhearing this, laughed. “Perhaps best not to ask”, I said. “Perhaps not”, he said.

I wasn’t the only man to feel vaguely slighted during the course of today. On the tube journey there was a change of driver, and we were in the front carriage. William was fascinated by the coming and going of train personnel, so I told him to say something to the new driver. “Are you the driver?” he asked the man getting on. The man looked slightly annoyed. “That’s what they call me”, he muttered, and headed bad- temperedly into his cabin. William, however, was very happy that his question had been answered.

Eating his pizza, William said: “Daddy, you give me small pieces, but Mummy gives me big pieces.” Ah, the exploitation of parental differences. That’s my boy.