While we were walking up the High Street the other day, my other half told me she was cracked. I felt I could scarcely comment, but I summoned up my courage and asked: 'Oh yes? In what way?'
  'Not enough sleep,' she told me. 'I'm shattered.'
  Ah - cracked as in shattered. Nice one. I shouldn't have been surprised. A little while ago she came back from London with Dylan and her Chinese family and I unwisely asked how they had got around London - not by taxi, I hoped (taxi fares in China are much lower than in the UK). 'Oh no,' she told me. 'We all got lobster cards.' Well, at least I didn't have to work that one out.
  Dylan is not immune to unexpected interpretations. We were watching Federer play Murray and the commentators all considered that Federer was favourite to win the match. There ensued a complex conversation in which Dylan asked me why Federer was favourite, and I said he was probably the better player, and he said yes, but he wanted Murray to win, and I said sure, but he's not favourite to, and he said well, he's my favourite. And at last I understood. He'd interpreted 'favourite' as in 'we all want Federer to win' not as in 'Federer is most likely to win'. Lesson learned.
  All this brought to mind something that happened more than twenty years ago. It was the run up to Halloween, and my sisters-in-law had decided to make a costume for my oldest son, so they arranged to come over to take his measurements. Cue floods of tears from oldest son, who must then have been about six or seven. When we got him calmed down, he told us, still hiccoughing and on the verge of more tears, that he didn't want anyone to take his measurements - he wanted to keep them.