New life

Pond life

Zenga Longmore

Whenever I take Omalara to the park, I always bring bread for the ducks. At the moment, a duck is Omalara's favourite creature, perhaps because its name is so easy to say.

'Duck! Duck!' I say to her encouragingly, as the feathered fatheads jerk their heads, flail their feet and try to nick breadcrumbs from one another. `Duck! Duck!' Omalara shouts back brightly, glancing upwards to make sure I realise how clever she is.

So far, so good. However, back at the flat, where ducks and other creatures live in picture books, a problem arises. Omalara not only calls a duck a duck, but, in an excess of zeal, she also calls a fox a duck, very firmly and with an air of defi- ance.

`Fox!' I say, pointing to a picture of Reynard.

`Duck!' Omalara roars fiercely back.

It is just as well that Omalara is the only person who uses the word 'duck' for both a duck and a fox. If everyone adopted this custom, Oscar Wilde's crack about the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable would have been transformed into the unflappable in pursuit of the unquackable, which would not have had the same ring.

Yesterday, nine-year-old Stickleback, the son of Clawhammer Jones Bingo, called round to show off his new Walkman radio. Taking an interest in Omalara's duck/fox confusion, he tried to explain the differ- ence between the two animals with the aid of a wildlife magazine. First, he pointed at a photograph of a wild duck in flight.

`Duck!' bellowed Omalara, knowingly.

`Yeah, man. You got it! Ducks fly, right, and foxes walk!'

Turning the page, he started back in amazement at the sight of a bat-like crea- ture clearly labelled 'Flying Fox'.

`Duck!' cried Omalara in triumph.

`Cheese'n'bread!' complained Stickle- back. 'There must be two kinds of fox, y'know. Flying and walking, innit?'

At that moment a Daffy Duck cartoon appeared on the television and Stickleback settled down to enjoy it, peering anxiously over Omalara's head whenever D.D. seemed to be in mortal peril. When the duck kissed a pig by mistake, Stickleback laughed so hard that the child nearly fell off his knees.

`Shame, guy! Blaff!' he gasped. Not a bad example of its genre.'

Not a bad example of its what?' I cried, looking at him sharply.

`Genre. Good, eh? We got this new stu- dent teacher, Mr Forbister, see? He's so trendy he goes to see films that are foreign. He says everything's genre, so I say it too! I said it twice yesterday.'

`Good grief! Who to?'

`Once to myself in my room for practice, and once to my mum. She wasn't half impressed, an' really praised my English, saying it was French. According to my mum, the last person she knew who said the word "genre" passed her PhD 0 level.'

`Are you sure?'

`Posilutely sure.'

`Pardon?'

`I said I'm posilutely sure.'

I gave a sigh of relief. Let Omalara call a fox a duck as much as she wishes, as long as I can be surrounded by a genre of unso- phistication.