Pop!

Last night my wife was on bath duty with our older daughter, while I undertook the regular evening ritual of attempting to keep our youngest's wailing volume low enough to leave the local constabulary untroubled. Not that my wife had the easier task, you understand. Our house has recently been home to more germs than a damp petri dish. One of many unfortunate consequences of all this illness is that our eldest is a bit fragile at bathtime.

This hour in particular, in recent days, has often played host to screaming competitions between our daughters. One beautiful and precious young lady invariably sets the other off before shrill escalation follows, until someone literally screams herself to sleep. And this is made all the worse by the sickness and the sensitivity which has been rife around these parts.

So it was a pleasure even more immense than usual last night when I heard the standard cacophony of competitive misery replaced by the sound of raucous laughter from the bathroom. My wife's mirth was being shared by our daughter, both of them guffawing away with uncontrollable joy, heads tipped back as happy tears streamed down their cheeks. It was a few minutes before my wife was able to convey to me the cause of this gleeful interlude.

Our daughter had been indulging in another of her recent favourite bathtime habits: attempting to individually burst each bubble in turn with her finger while commentating thus: "Pop! Pop! Pop!..." Clearly this is a somewhat futile activity but my optimistic, paternal pride sees it as evidence of an ambitious and diligent nature. On this occasion, as she turned to stretch for a very specific bubble at the other end of the bath, a humourously substantial volume of gas escaped from her bottom. In my preferred parlance, she done a guffer.

Please do not insult my wife's integrity by assuming that this alone was the cause of her amusement. No. Our daughter reacted to her little accident by looking up at her mum and, after pausing with perfect comic timing, adding one further "Pop."

You had to be there.