Fear and danger

Children are different animals to adults. On Sunday Pierre, who took the picture below, stood on a chair and hurled himself in a perfect roatation onto his head. He didn't do this in a fit of pique. He did it to illustrate how Buster Keaton walked the plank. So powerful must have been the image in his mind that he had forgotten who and more importantly where he was, and lay on the carpet some moments putting it all together before he burst into tears.
The Buster Keaton was a birthday present from J, three DVDs, so on a freezing Saturday afternoon we all watched The General, and on Sunday, Steamboat Bill. I wasn't sure the kids would like them, they're quite slow, but Jacob did, quite, and Loïc was entranced. He loves slapstick, and stories. When he was about four there was a TV sequence - it was at my mother's house, we were just off to the beach - of a man hopping, it went on for about five minutes, down the hill, along the street, in and out of shops. Loïc laughed, on and on, occasionally glancing at the rest of us, unsure that something so funny could be real. And he kept laughing the rest of the day by the sea - "That man..."
But he's also good at detail. When he was even younger, Christmas, I'd stolen away for a bit of quiet and was watching Bergman's Magic Flute and he joined me. At the point of all the business with the picture and the Queen of Darkness and her minions the telephone rang and I was gone for five minutes. When I came back Loïc explained to me in detail what had happened while I’d been away, so for the first time I understood the plot fully.
T gave me an over-exciting DVD of downhill mountain biking and I spent yesterday, because it was so cold, in the park, practising riding down flights of steps. I'm the opposite end of the courage spectrum to Pierre. I don't dare do things that I am perfectly physically capable of. My cowardice is mental. My body and all the basic bit of my brain enjoy slightly scary things, I like adrenalin. But in winter particularly I come to a drop that I know I can do easily, and I immediately have an image of myself lying at the bottom, concussed or with a limb broken, dying of hypothermia. That's why the park is OK, there are enough people about for someone to find me. Mind you this in itself is a mixed blessing. When I fall off and hurt myself the sequence is, look around quickly as soon as you can to make sure there's nobody nearby; then groan. As loud as you like. As long as you like. But you can make mistakes about being alone, indulge in a feast of elaborate groaning and then look up to see three school girls straight out of Vivaldi's orphanage, with hair like Berenice's, staring down at you.
But the steps in the park - I didn't like the Rough Riders do the long flight that goes down the side of a cliff, due to cowardice - were mostly easy, and I came back determined next time to do the drop-off by Mytholm Bridge; though realistically, I’m not Buster Keaton, or Pierre, and I probably won’t.