YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Dear Mary.. .
Q. Our 20-month-old son is just beginning to speak. By necessity I work, and he spends his days with a childminder who also looks after two or three other pre- school-age local children. In most matters she is utterly splendid, but she uses words such as 'toilet', 'telly' and so on. The worst is the highly contagious Liverpudlian (a greeting on a descending third). My fam- ily will be utterly appalled to hear such words on my son's lips, and I will have to endure the comments of my Kensington- based banker brother and his wife, whose son and daughter attend a very select kindergarten and sound as if they are already at Eton and Cheltenham respec- tively. We cannot afford a proper nanny to whom I could issue instructions on this sub- ject and I dare not offend our childminder, since in other respects she is ideal. I may add that, failing the unlikely post-mortem generosity of elderly relatives, our son will have to attend the local primary school at least; so perhaps it would be kinder to let him assimilate.
C.L., Cheshire A. You are quite out of date. Haven't you heard of Eton Cockney, the first language of all grandees under 30? For these junior smarties, Yobspeak is absolutely de rigueur, not just as a camouflage against being beat- en up by genuine yobs but also as a means to career advancement — particularly in the universities, in politics and in broad- casting. Once, professional doors were closed to those who had not mastered Greek. Today, it is Yobspeak. These same youths, although completely bilingual, often keep up the Yobspeak at home to annoy their parents. Your son, by pleasing contrast, is likely to rebel against the lan- guage he has been taught to use, and which will serve him in good stead in the real world, and go out of his way to address you at all times with authentic RP.
Q. Dear close friends of mine with plenty of money live in something of a hovel. The problem is not lack of access to daily women but the fact that both members of this couple work at home and have an overdeveloped sense of public duty. When their daily turns up they feel they have to both knock off to make her a cup of coffee, ask her all about her life as though the two of them were counsellors, and sit listening for hours with gloomy expressions on their faces to the sort of woeful tales which the typical daily is bound to spin if they are coaxed out of her for long enough. How can I shake some sense into our friends and make them realise that neither they nor the daily are getting on with their work and if they want to act as counsellors why don't they do it outside working hours?
Exasperated, Suffolk A. There is currently a marvellous new solution to this perennial problem. Simply contact a cleaning agency, such as the Merry Maids, and ask for two dailies to be sent at the same time. When two dailies come together, it is fair to say that they do the work in a quarter of the time, since they talk to each other, and work-at-home employers are free to continue guiltlessly with their own concerns.
Q. What puddings are currently fashion- able?
G. U., London SW11 A. Meringues have recently made a come- back.
Mary Killen
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