Come Away, Come Away!

So, who knew 'Peter Pan' was funny ? As in " Stop reading Mum, we're laughing so hard we're squashing the guinea pigs! " funny. Yes, the guinea pigs were listening too. Perhaps Lucy and Arwen felt they needed more exposure to the classics...

It was the stand-off between Michael Darling and Mr Darling over the manly and prompt drinking of one's medicine that was the cause of the hilarity.


"Father, I am waiting," said Michael coldly.
"It's all very well to say you are waiting; so am I waiting."
"Father's a cowardy custard."
"So are you a cowardy custard."
"I'm not frightened."
"Neither am I frightened."
"Well, then, take it. "
"Well, then, you take it."

In between giggles I mused on two things. That 'Peter Pan' is about a boy who never grows up. So far (we are only two chapters in) Mr Darling is a premonition, an echo or a mirror of this - clumsy and benignly ogre-like where Peter is fleet and malicious - but a boy nonetheless, lost in his Head of the Household persona. I want to see how this pans out (sorry!) or doesn't, as we read on.

I had also forgotten that the Darling children pre-date the Green children in having a non-human nanny. The prim and devoted Nana is a forerunner to Nanny Piggins, though how we get from Nana (mooning over perambulators in Kensington Gardens ) to Nanny Piggins (cake-fattened and butter-smeared, flying from a cannon over Dead Man's Gorge ) is another post entirely.