Today, I tripped over a toddler, I don’t mean he ran into my path causing me to stumble and fall. I mean I stuck out one of my size elevens and he went hurtling over it, crashing to the floor in a wail of tears. That makes it sound a bit like I was a footballer desperately lunging in to stop an attacker from scoring the winner. It wasn’t quite like that; it was a genuine accident. In fact, it was his brother’s fault. For it was the older brother who had decided to pull his trousers down in the middle of the street and take a wee. Shocked by this behaviour, I wasn’t looking where I was going and the younger of the two happened to be where I was putting my foot.
Now, if you are going to trip an under-five over, and I don’t condone it, but if you have to do it, I would recommend doing it in Japan. There are some parts of South Wales, yes, I am looking at you Barry, where you would likely get a severe beating if you were to trip over a pre-school kid, however accidental it might be. (And whatever you do don’t say I was watching his brother have a wee.) But here, it was the infant’s parents that were apologising to me. I bowed in apology, they bowed lower, I bowed lower again and they bowed yet lower or at least I thought they were, until I realised they were just bending down to pick up their howling baby.
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