New life

Shoot from the knee

Zenga Longmore

For the purpose of allowing my six- Year-old niece Kuba and her little sister Comfort to show off their new-found show- biz skills, I took them to the local park on a fresh day last week. When we were well in the centre of things, surrounded by an unwitting audience of old ladies, school- children and rottweilers, Kuba and Com- fort set to work, doing the high-kick to a song they u y had learnt at their playgroup.

`. . . but no pandas?' Omalara joined in as best she could:

I want a Robot Man to hold me tight One that I could count on ev'ry single night. He wouldn't dance with anyone but me 'Cos I'd just have to wind him with a Robot key!

A pair of grannies, who maybe remem- bered the song from their middle years, clapped heartily, delighted by the jazzy feel my talented nieces lent to the original tinny song. 'Well done, kiddies, let's 'ave another!' Even a bull-necked dog, shaped like a hippo, barked an encore.

During the fifth rendering of the piece, a voice sounded from behind my back: `Shame, guy, that's art-i-choke.'

`That's what?'

Turning, I beheld Stickleback, the eight- year-old son of Clawhammer Jones Bingo.

`Artichoke. It's a word we in the Brixton Massive gang use, meaning a load of old rubbish. The song's well stupid.' Curling his lips in contempt, he waved a dismissive hand at the shimmying girls.

`What's your idea of good entertain- ment, then?'

`Videos! I seen this great video called Robocop. It's crucial! It's about this thing, half-cop, half-robot, who goes around shooting crooks. The best bit's where Robocop lifts up his knee.'

`Why does he want to do that?'

`So's to fire a bazooka out of his kneecap and blast the baddy clean to Diddy Wah Diddy. Oh man!' Stickleback's eyes misted over at the memory of that sacred moment.

`Mmm, yes, it sounds really good.'

Listening to the gruesome boy, I was reminded of a racy book by Doris Lessing called The Fifth Child. Here's the gist: Harriet, a perfect mother of four normal, posh children, inexplicably gives birth to Ben, an uncanny baby who grows up to commit terrible acts of depravity, such as drinking lager and eating Chinese take- aways in front of the telly. How, asks Doris, could this frightful thing have hap- pened to a woman such as Harriet? Surely, if you're middle-class, your children dine around the stripped pine table, not out of tin-foil cartons. But Doris has the answer. Ben, and all his kind, are quite simply throw-backs to a bygone age when we were all hobgoblins living in caves, eating sweet 'n' sour dinosaur. The message of the book seems to be that takeaway eaters are born, not made through following fashion. Doris must have met my friend Sara in Camden Town, the unfortunate mother of a super- market robber, and had racked her Darwin-influenced brain for an explana- tion.

Returning to the park later that week, I was surprised to come across a group of gruff boys, led by Stickleback, growling out their own version of Kuba's song:

I wanna Robocop to shoot you dead.

It wouldn't even matter if he had no head. He wouldn't o-bey anyone but me.

He'd just up and shoot you with his Robot knee!