There were just too many seconds of silence this morning. Oli was having a post-breakfast kip in his cot, I was brushing my teeth upstairs, Max was in the kitchen...and silent. As I came downstairs I realised my mistake. I had cleared away the cereal bowls, the milk, the yoghurt, put away the sugar and picked the cheerios up off the floor. Then on the one occasion I'd put the computer on the breakfast table, I had cleverly gone and left it there, exposed, awaiting destruction. Max was rubbing a soggy string of loo paper across the keyboard. His old toothbrush, the one I threw in the bin yesterday, was lying on the floor.
'What happened?' I tried not to let my vocal chords snap.
'I put toothpaste on the comm-pute-er.' Every syllable is enunciated. 'Then I spat on it. Now I'm cleaning it.'
I rush over to the invalid 'comm-pute-er'. Like a wet child rescued from a dangerous bath I hold it up in the air. Water drips onto the sideboard.
With gritted teeth I say, 'Thanks for telling me the truth', in the hope that one day, when it is a wet child, he'll be just as honest.
'But please don't get it wet, or spit on it, or...'
'Sorry' he mutters.
For the moment we still have power, although the mouse pad is glitching. How long does it take for a motherboard to rust?
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