SMALL TALK

SMALL TALK, a series of fictional conversations between two (rather articulate) twins Arwen and Tamzin as they try to come to grips with the adult world. They are going on 4 years.

1.
Arwen has just got word that their aunt has had a baby.

“So Tamzin, Aunt Lucy had a baby—and she’s called Chloe!” exclaimed Arwen.

“HAD a baby?” asked Tamzin. “You mean she’s gone and lost it somewhere already? Or did someone bad come and whisk little Chloe away? Heaven forbid!”

“OK, HAS a baby!” replied Arwen. “Little Chloe hasn’t been mislaid. Or stolen or anything.”
“Phew! But where did this Chloe come from anyway?” asked Tamzin, always eager to know how the world worked.

“Well, her mummy’s womb, I guess,” replied Arwen.

“Don’t you mean to say room?” said Tamzin, emphasizing the ‘r’, never having heard the word ‘womb’ before. “You really should get that ‘r’ right Arwen. Room, room, rrrrroom! We don’t say ‘wound the wugged wock the wagged wascal wan’!”

“No! I meant to say womb!” said Arwen.

“What’s a womb, then?”

“It’s a place in mummies where babies can grow.”

“Good grief. Babies don’t come from a cabbage patch then? Or brought by a stork, or?”
Arwen cut in. “Forget all those rumours Tamzin—the womb is the room in mummies where babies begin. And that’s that.”

“Well then you admit it. It is a room. Mummy’s womb room. So there!” said Tamzin.

“One learns something every day,” sighed her sister.
Tamzin thought for a moment before remarking “Well, if she’s just arrived she must be aged naught. Rather considerably less than us what’ll be four in a few weeks. Must be rather embarrassing. If someone asks how old you are and you have to reply ‘naught’. In a year I’ll be one OK. But for the moment I am, er, nothing’.”

“Yeh, nothing. So it’s just as well she can’t talk yet and have to admit being naught!’

“You know what, summat else,” said Tamzin. “We will always be older than her. Hah! She’ll always be looking up to us.”

“Not so fast sis. We may be nearly four times older than Chloe now. Yep. But when we are 20 she would be 16. Nearly four-fifths our age! And come to think of it, by the time we get to, say, 80 she’ll be 76. She’ll have almost caught up. And not only that. She could grow bigger than us. We could be looking up to her!”

“Yeh, well, at least we’ll always have seniority,” said Tamzin.

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