Whistle

It’s a tiny, pleasant little sound. A gentle ‘tinkle’. It’s the noise the pea makes inside a whistle. Not when it’s being blown, but when it’s being jiggled about.

My daughter ALWAYS has a whistle. (And, just to be safe, I always have a spare one in my handbag).

It serves a very useful purpose: it keeps her hands busy. Without something to fiddle with, she’d be displaying some of the traits she shares with some other people with Prader-Willi Syndrome - obsessive compulsive type behaviour like rubbing her gums, picking her nose, sticking her fingers in her ears, or picking any insect bite or tiny cut in the skin.

So instead, she fiddles. Everyone who knows her is used to her tinkle. You can hear her coming, like a cat with a collar on its bell.

Once, my daughter and her well-known whistle even saved the day at a kids’ football match. We’ve gone to watch my friend’s sons play at the local ground on a Saturday morning, and rolled up a few minutes late, wondering why the game hadn’t already started.

There, looking stressed out, was my mate’s husband, Fraser. Who was about to abandon the game before it had begun because although they had a ref, they had no referee’s whistle.

I believe he was actually in the middle of the phrase: “Where on earth are we going to get a....” when he broke into a huge grin as he spotted my girl ambling across the field towards him, absent-mindedly fiddling, as usual, with the whistle that was slung around her neck.

Video is The Beatles - Two Of Us (It was either going to be John Lennon or Roger Whittaker whistling. Lennon won).

Go-Go

We’re moving house next week, for the first time in nearly 12 years.

Packing, as you can imagine, is a delight.

Mainly because of the considerations I have to take into account when squeezing the overflowing contents of my daughter’s bedroom into an acceptable number of boxes.

You see, I can’t use this opportunity to surreptitiously chuck out a load of old toys or books or sticker collections or soft toys. Because she knows EXACTLY what she’s got. And, while we’re on the subject, who bought her it, whether it was for her birthday or Christmas, and how old she was when she got it.

The obsessive side of her personality has come right to the fore. (This is typical for someone with Prader-Willi Syndrome, but let’s face it, no-one can say what her default trainspotter setting would have been, anyway).

And so I find myself packing three boxes of Go-Gos. These are miniature, stylised collectable characters bought by thousands of kids with pocket money to burn on a Saturday. Think Wenlock and Mandeville, the 2012 mascots, only about an inch and a half high.

A risible set of England Go-Gos were brought out in time for the last World Cup. Which means, thanks to my determined girl’s protestations that she “really NEEDS them”, I have just packed 10 tiny identical, plastic Wayne Rooney effigies.

Although these claimed to be a ‘special edition’ series, they did not include any hair-weave representations, or a bonus figure of an elderly prostitute. I feel cheated.

Video is Fountains Of Wayne - Stacy's Mom