Stuart Kelly: 'I decided no to correct him with an analysis of the Wehrmacht'

Halfway through a round of Danny's new favourite make-believe game (a kind of crazy mash-up of Green Lantern, Bakugan Battle Brawlers and GemCraft), he sighs with the weary patience six-year-olds reserve for doltish adults. "No, Uncle Stuart. Your electricity attack won't work." I ask why not – having thought an electricity attack seemed strategically pretty sound. "Because I'm in wood form now and wood is not a conductor." Touché.

Since it gave me an opportunity to rest from running around like a daftie, I asked Danny how he knew about conductors. I got a long lecture on electromagnetic properties, how wood wasn't a conductor – even immersed in water – and then finally he mentioned he was reading an encyclopaedia at school. This intrigued me: he'd moved from stories to facts.

Soon he was reeling off the names of the principal Greek and Roman gods, reciting the names of the planets (named, he assured me, after Roman gods) and then started on the "Second World War Two". "Who fought in that war," I asked – surely the rise of Nazism isn't on the primary-two curriculum yet? – and realised, almost with some relief, that he'd got a little muddled up. The "Second World War Two" was apparently fought between Scotland and England, and the Scottish king saw a spider in his cave and learned the lesson that you try, try and try again and never give up. I decided not to correct him with an analysis of the Wehrmacht.

I remember the switch from reading for stories to reading for facts myself – like lots of little boys, I kept books of lists and was thrilled that I could find out anything through books (ah, the bliss of those pre-Wiki days!). Unlike most lads, though, I kept keeping lists once I grew up.

In the afternoon, Danny's much younger cousin, Frazer, and his little brother, Finlay, came to visit. Frazer isn't yet reading dictionaries (although he seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of car types). He is besotted with The Very Hungry Caterpillar at the moment, which we read together. Seeing him going into hysterics on the penultimate pages ("Salami! Watermelon! 'Wiss cheese!") made me realise what a clever book it is – the way the sequence suddenly erupts into Technicolor chaos is pitch-perfect.

But it also, ruefully, made me think that his experience of The Very Hungry Caterpillar is very different to mine. For me, watermelon, salami and Swiss cheese were the acme of mysterious exotica. He has already tasted all of them. Globalisation might not be all bad, I suppose.

#149 This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday on March 21, 2010