We went with Louise, Terence, Joel, Sophie (+ friend Jade) and Ben 10, Marina, Johann, Euan, and Liam

Dorje has so much fun in general, getting him to stay still when eating is normally a tough ask. He’ll take a bite or two, then next thing he’s chasing some motorcyclists in his helicopter.

So it helps when eating becomes part of the game. Pasta becomes snails and worms, and the poor things are boiled alive, usually tossed in one by one and they, screaming, try escape the pot. Then the slugs and other insects (the veggies) get chopped up.

When it’s all ready to eat, again they try escape but Dorje hunts them down, crushing them in his relentless jaws. First it’s a daddy worm with some slugs, thinking it’d made a getaway as it veers around the cushion, but Dorje grabs the fork and down they go. Next a poor little baby worm, now an orphan, making a getaway to a better life. It too is subsumed down the gullet.

It keeps me on my toes, as each one has to have a new tale, and a new reason to live.

If he says he’s full in the midst of the game, you know he’s really full.

Dorje was sharing a song with me last night.

He’s sang this song for quite a while, and until last night, I thought the words were:

Are you sleeping
Are you sleeping
Boys and girls
Boys and girls
Mother’s going to keep you
Mother’s going to keep you
Warm and safe
Warm and safe

Last night I realised the words were actually:

Are you sleeping
Are you sleeping
Boys and girls
Boys and girls
Mother Earth will keep you
Mother Earth will keep you
Warm and safe
Warm and safe

Excited by this new discovery, and ready to launch into a discussion of the Gaia hypothesis, or a discussion of various forms of the mother goddess, I asked Dorje if he knew what Mother Earth was.

“Yes”, he said, “it’s a gnomie that lives under the ground”.