Kids say the funniest things

Yesterday morning, Roger Jr burst into our bedroom declaring that he had done a "rumpy wee". On further inspection this turned out to be his own peculiar expression for "explosive diarrhoea".

I've been struggling since then to work out the thinking that led him to this description. Rest assured, I have never used the words "rump" or "rumpy" around him – with the exception of reference to the fruitily-named Humpy Rumpy the hippopotamus from "The Enormous Crocodile".

Quite why he would then associate the two, I can't imagine. He probably meant "lumpy" – which, on reflection, is rather too graphic and unpleasant an image with which to continue.

Even when he's using real words, Roger Jr can be a little hard to understand. That is because he is functionally bilingual, speaking conventional English at home and speaking the broadest of Bradford dialects when he is at nursery.

He will often tell me that something is "ray-ur-leh, ray-ur-leh big", for example. And when I ask him to repeat it, he'll say "really, really big". So he knows that there are two ways of saying the same thing (NB exposition of the size of things is one of Roger Jr's favourite conversational themes).  

Having moved around a lot when I was growing up, I don't really have an accent. Or rather, I have bits of various accents – and like Roger Jr and Tony Blair, I switch to the most appropriate one depending on the people to whom I am currently speaking.

My wife Elvira, by contrast, spent her entire childhood in Boston – but somehow managed to avoid developing an accent that makes her sound like a brain-damaged farmhand who has received in incomplete course of speech therapy.

That's a joke of course. The Boston accent is a splendid thing, a unique cross between Norfolk and East Yorkshire, between north and south. It's a gem, hidden in the depths of the Fens, overlooked by the outside world and thus allowed to carry its local heritage into the present.

And let's not forget, sometimes there are big advantages to be had in allowing people to think you are not as intelligent as you are.

I suppose it's pretty silly, imagining that some accents sound thicker than others. And by the time Roger Jr is an adult, god alone knows what "normal" English speech will sound like.

Anyway, here's a picture of Roger Jr on the potty – just to guarantee that however he sounds, he will definitely hate me when we do get there.

Fortunately, on this occasion there was no rumpiness.