Distracted Dad
Richard Hearn is introduced to the Boy’s new buddy
At breakfast, The Boy announces: “I like old-fashioned toys.” He eats a spoonful of Cheerios, adding: “James also likes old-fashioned toys.” I hadn’t heard him mention James before. “Is he in your class?” I ask, but we get interrupted, and I don’t hear the answer.
A couple of days later when flicking through the TV channels, The Boy asks “What’s James doing now?” It’s like my ears are focusing and laying the two mentions of ‘James’ together. They are the same person.
James is not an influential school friend. It is James May, the bloke from Top Gear who made Toy Stories, a series which included a life-size Lego house. Suddenly The Boy is referring to him on familiar first-name terms. I’ve pinpointed why this is so strange: over the years he’s known various characters off the TV – Noddy, Iggle Piggle, Ben 10, Spiderman, Homer Simpson – but none of them are real. Until now. James is the first. Six months ago, if you’d ask me to name someone with big hair and a surname of May, I’d have said “Brian”. Life has changed.
“James is not a school friend. It is James May, the bloke from Top Gear. Suddenly The Boy is referring to him on familiar first-name terms”
When we watched the Lego house programme, The Boy’s concern was all about where James (as I shall call him) normally lived. He seemed genuinely bothered if James had a roof over his head – whether made out of Lego, Plasticine, or even Scalextric. After watching the programme numerous times (it is “on recorded”), these concerns over homelessness have given way to plastic avarice, in particular when James gets a delivery of Lego and says: “Three million bricks. All mine.” The Boy always turns to me, repeats these lines and adds: “That’s really cool, isn’t it?”
The Boy is inspired to dismantle his Lego TIE fighter, and make his own, smaller house. He positions the tiny Darth Vader and asks why, in the films, we never see him at home with Luke Skywalker. “He is his daddy, after all.”
“It’s complicated,” I say. The fact that he’s growing up in a nuclear family has its downsides, such as making it harder to explain less conventional upbringings. Like when your dad’s half-man half-robot. Oh, and spends most of his time trying to destroy you with a light-sabre. Not to mention spending his day job building something called the Death Star.
If they did live together, it could make a great sit-com. ‘At Home with the Skywalkers’. The funny side of the Dark side! One episode, Chewbacca might come to stay with hilarious consequences! In another, Yoda might arrive for dinner on the same night as the mayor!
This could just about work. The icing on the cake would be if the set is made completely out of Lego. By James.
