'UH-HUH'

People say that the tones on the horn of an Inter-City 125 are set a musical fourth apart and so with a bit of electronic tinkering you could make the train play the opening bar of Beethoven’s 5th symphony as it hurtled across the countryside and through unmanned stations. Ba-ba-ba-bom!

Now I realised during an exceedingly long afternoon this week that this descending fourth was just the sound made by my little grandson, Theo, whenever he was discovered amid the wreckage of some new household disaster. After he has pulled books from the bookcases or thrown down a carefully stacked pile of labels, he stands in the middle of the carnage, holding his hands out with the palms upturned in imitation of a revered saint performing some penitential act of supplication, and sighs, ‘uh-huh,’ the ‘huh’ being a perfect fourth below the ‘uh.’ The effect is totally disarming.

Where he learned this trick - and I have to keep remembering he’s only 18 months old - I don’t quite know, but it ought to be marketable, and at a hefty premium too. If Tony Hayward, the hapless BP chief executive, held responsible by the US Senate for the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, had just greeted his inquisitors with his palms upturned and a hesitant smile and simply said, ‘uh-huh’ in a note that contrived at once to express boundless regret and also astonishment at the inexplicability of natural disasters, then he might have had an easier ride.

‘Uh-huh!’ As a substitute for an explanation, as a device for turning away wrath, the descending cadence of ‘uh-huh,’ uttered with a sigh to break a thousand hearts, reigns supreme. Especially, when one is at the height of one’s young mischief making and otherwise can’t say much more than ‘biscuit’ and ‘mine.’

Still eighteen months is a difficult age and hence my long afternoon filling in for his mum. It is hard to find constructive activities with which a toddler does not easily become bored. There’s football, of course, played down the long corridor, at which young Theo excels. Not only can he kick a ball with surprising force (and remain upright) but he can direct it too. Then there’s building towers with Lego, though as he enjoys smashing them down more than he enjoys building them up, the towers become shorter and shorter as his attention span wanders. Eventually he gives up.

But, I remembered, water is what Theo liked best of all. So around three o’clock I had the brainwave that we should mop the kitchen floor! He could splash water and mess it around with his feet and perhaps even the mop. ‘Uh-huh,’ he would say as he created yet another puddle and the water ran everywhere, ‘Uh-huh!’

I cleared up. Naturally. Mopping up isn’t his favoured activity. For the ‘uh-huh’ absolves its utterer from any responsibility for a clear-up - another reason why Tony Hayward might have found it useful. I had to slide him around the floor on a old towel.

What else, I wondered, during the course of that exceedingly long afternoon might involve water? The garden beckoned.

We have an old watering can and Theo was about to learn that water came out of garden taps and that it could be used to fill a watering can, though in practice he found it more fun to jiggle the can about so that the water splashed on its lid and ran down his trousers. The little fellow was having such fun with this new way to wet himself that I hadn’t the heart to stop him. For the moment anyway my piles of labels were safe enough.

But now the watering can was too heavy to lift. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said helplessly, with his outstretched arms and his butter won’t melt in my mouth smile. ‘Uh-huh!’

I tipped some out. Somewhere he’d lost a shoe so he paddled in the puddle with his stockinged foot. What is the fascination that small children have for water? Did I once have this fascination, too? The thought made me wince.

We went to water the garden, Theo, humping the big watering can as best he could with me making encouraging noises from behind.

After a few steps he spotted an unassuming weed growing in a crevice between the wall and the path. He took a step back to consider it. Then drenched the weed with the entire contents of the can. The can was now empty. Theo couldn’t quite understand this. He obviously thought that somehow he had broken it for he handed it back to me and raised his outstretched hands. ‘Uh-huh,’ he sighed. ‘Uh-huh.’

It was still only four o’clock.