{"id":36384,"date":"2016-11-20T03:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T08:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36384"},"modified":"2019-07-18T10:23:47","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T14:23:47","slug":"know-your-audience-childrens-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/11\/20\/know-your-audience-childrens-division\/","title":{"rendered":"Know your audience, children’s division"},"content":{"rendered":"

M. Harold Page<\/a>, guest-posting at Charles Stross’s blog:<\/p>\n

Little Harry blinks at me through his heavy Sellotaped glasses. “What’s that for?”<\/p>\n

“It’s a submachine gun,” I say. “It fires lots of bullets.” I mime. “Bang bang bang!<\/em>”<\/p>\n

I’m helping out on a school trip. Normally I avoid volunteering – it’s too easy for self employed parents to end up as the school’s go-to. However this visit is to Edinburgh Castle and my daughter Morgenstern was very keen I should put in a showing…<\/p>\n

So here I am helping to herd 5-year olds through the military museum. Morgenstern is nowhere in sight, but little Harry has latched onto me.<\/p>\n

“Oh,” says Harry. He copies my mime and sprays the room. “Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Not like that,” I say. “Three round bursts or you’ll run out of bullets. Plus the thing pulls up.” I mime. “So like this: Bang bang bang!… Bang bang bang!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Solemnly, Harry discharges three imaginary bullets. “Bang bang bang!”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Right,” I say, “Now, the other side have guns too. You have to use cover… better if you have a hand grenade, of course.”<\/p>\n

His blue eyes widen. “What’s a hand grenade?”<\/p>\n

So together we have a great time clearing each gallery with imagined grenade, automatic fire and bayonet.<\/p>\n

Later on the way back to the bus Harry says, “My Daddy says wars are bad because people get killed…”<\/p>\n

Yes, I had in fact spent the afternoon teaching (my best recollection of) World War Two house clearing tactics to the son of a local clergyman and peace activist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. Harold Page, guest-posting at Charles Stross’s blog: Little Harry blinks at me through his heavy Sellotaped glasses. “What’s that for?” “It’s a submachine gun,” I say. “It fires lots of bullets.” I mime. “Bang bang bang!” I’m helping out on a school trip. Normally I avoid volunteering – it’s too easy for self employed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,57,663],"tags":[374,775,1298,1264],"class_list":["post-36384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-humour","category-weapons","tag-children","tag-edinburgh","tag-museum","tag-submachineguns"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9sQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36385,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36384\/revisions\/36385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}