Don't wait to make your son a great man - make him a great boy *

The artist's son lies asleep in the lower bunk. Sometimes it is as if we are on a ship and our destination is undetermined, though I am happy to report we are fully capable of imagining it to be a beautiful tropical island. Meanwhile, the cars outside, like modern day cockerels, though numbed, status-like, and submissive, continue to announce the working day. The son stirs, but nods off again. He is lying on his back and looks like a tourist on a beach, catching the rays of his own sunny sleep. His head is like a pineapple on a plate. Afloat in outer sleep, it is rested on an anti-allergy space rocket pillow while the likes of Jupiter and Mars and Mercury orbit the surface of the duvet cover. He stirs again, opens his eyes, looks the day up and down, like a stranger. His hair is pointing skyward, like one of those great cartoon characters after they have stuck their hand in an electricity power point. Anyway, several moments of apprehension are monitored on his face before they develop into meditation. 'Go away,' he says to me when I stare down at him, like a face in a Lucien Freud painting. Puffing his cheeks, he pulls the duvet cover back over again. (I must say: he has a wonderful inner strength and is not easily swayed.) When he does rise he makes his way to the sitting room like a mountaineer slightly bored with the descent. His shoulders are dropped only for the cameras and his cheeks are deliberately loose, as the need to be alone is expressed in 5-year-old Garbo-like eyes. He slumps on the bright red sofa with a sigh. A character he has grown fond of on TV soon spirits him away. (We have thought about this, but have decided an exposure to imagination is OK at this time of day.) The character is Ben 10, who is Ben Tennyson - nice poetic touch there, I thought. It is about him and his cousin Gwen and grandfather Max. Ben has a watch called an Omnitrix which gives him the ability to transform into a variety of alien lifeforms. This he sometimes does with mischief. The artist's son has one. Anyway, the programme ends and the realities of the day begin in earnest. Passing the artist's two works on the wall after breakfast, he brushes his teeth and dresses, his hair still sticking up as if in shock. He says he wants to build a rocket this weekend. And I bet he does.
* Anonymous