Society

Harrison is loving his music at the moment. Simon taught him a bit of an Eddie Vedder song tonight - here he is...

Stop singing, Donkey!

Simon was singing along to Bernard Fanning while he was driving Harrison to daycare the other morning, and he kept singing after they'd arrived and he was leaning into the back seat of the car, putting Harrison's shoes on. He was just thinking what a lovely father-son moment they were sharing, when Harrison burst out at the top of his voice with "Stop singing, Donkey!" (a la Shrek 1).

Shrek

Harrison's latest obsession (along with everyone else under the age of 10) is Shrek. We have the first movie on DVD, and he loves it. Especially the music. He goes around at daycare saying (in his best Scottish accent) "tha'll do Donkey, tha'll do", and "can't we just settle this over a pint?". He loves to pretend to be the Donkey, and points out that while Shrek calls him dong-keh, he calls himself don-kee. The karaoke bit on the DVD is played over and over and over.

Tomorrow I'm taking him to see Shrek the Third. Unfortunately Simon is working, so he'll miss out on sharing Harrison's first movie experience.

Belfast Mill

Harrison seems to have the same taste in music as his Dad. Simon sang Belfast Mill (the Furey's song) to him the other night, and the next night he asked me for the "town" song as he was going to sleep. I didn't know what he was talking about and asked him to sing it for me. He sang two verses word for word - At the east end of town at the foot of the hill there's a chimney so tall, called Belfast Mill. But there's no smoke at all coming out of the stack for the mill has shut down and it's never coming back. That song and Simon's original song If I were a fish are his favourites at the moment.

Harrison would be delighted to learn that Simon wrote If I were a fish as a nonsense song for kids after we visited Michael and Jenni for Christmas in 1994 when Nathan was about 3. He had a T-shirt with if I were a fish printed on it. In January this year, Harrison met Nathan for the first time and the two were instant best friends. Harrison adored him and Nathan was the most caring and sensitive 14 year old farm boy you could imagine.

I dug out a Furey's CD and Harrison loves listening to the folk music. I tried to sing Marie's Wedding to him yesterday but couldn't remember the words, so he corrected me and sang the whole thing. Of course, the Wiggles do play Marie's wedding on one of their albums, so Irish music has had the stamp of approval. The good thing about the Wiggles is that they do a lot of traditional music. It seems to strike a real chord with kids. Harrison is always on his feet for a Greek or Irish song.