lit­tle idiosyncracies

We got in the taxi to go to school this morn­ing, Avery all a‑flutter about her exam, and the dri­ver, a cen­tral-cast­ing Lon­don cab­by, said
cheer­ful­ly, “On your way to school, then, my love?” “Yes, today is the ESB exam and I’m SO ner­vous!” she con­fid­ed. He chuck­led and said, “Well, a pinch and a punch, you know,” “No, what do you mean?” “A pinch and a punch, it’s the first of the month! You pinch your best friend and punch your ene­my.” Avery, indig­nant: “Not at my school!”

I offered that I had heard in Mass­a­chu­setts one says, “Rab­bit, rab­bit” on the first of the month and he said that was an Eng­lishism as well. Whad­dya know. He also explained that the word “tod­dler” came from the
days when Lon­don drink­ing water was unsafe and they fed babies beer, mak­ing them…toddly!

Yes­ter­day at pick­up she came hurtling out of the coach (bus to us Amer­i­cans) from skat­ing, shout­ing, “We luh­nt to tuhn!” Say that
pho­net­i­cal­ly and you’ll get an idea of how her accent is pro­gress­ing! She talks that way for about 10 min­utes every­day at pick­up, then grad­u­al­ly reverts to being a lit­tle New York­er. She defends this say­ing, “Well, Mum­my, if you were com­plete­ly immussed in it as I am all day…” I had to trans­late to “immersed”, but you get the idea.

She’s real­ly ner­vous about her exam today, where she has to read a pas­sage for the exam­in­ers, then recite a poem, then recite a story
about an object impor­tant to her. It’s at one o’clock and I’m meant to be send­ing her sup­port­ive vibes at the time. It’s too ear­ly in the morn­ing to ask any of you to do that, I fear, but I’ll report how it all goes after snack­time today. Yes­ter­day because I had had no lunch, I had the most love­ly sal­ad: smoked mack­er­el, beet­root (as always!) and water­cress, with a mus­tardy vinai­grette. Avery of course had ice
cream. I have to think of some real­ly com­pelling snack for her play­date this after­noon. Hmmm…