Something very sweet happened to me last week. Chris and I were just coming home from a small shopping adventure at our local Sainsbury’s. Chris had rushed ahead of me and flew down the steps before I had even reached our gate. I was about to go through the open gateway when I turned and noticed a lady walking with a tiny tot wearing reins. The toddler caught my attention because she was rather tall but she had a nearly bald head like a much younger baby. Also, the dear little mite looked right at me in the unabashed way of an innocent who has not yet learned the social mores.
“Hello,” I said smiling.
Would you believe that the tot toddled over to me, put her arms around my legs and snuggled up to me? I was rather overwhelmed with the urge to pick her up and give her a big kiss but I wasn’t sure what her mum would think so, instead, I patted her little bald pate and, seeing that her mother was smiling, I bent down to kiss the scant hair above an ear.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Dot…Dotty,” she said.
I suddenly had a childhood memory of the cartoon character “Little Dot”; it took me back to the time when I was nine and had just had my appendix out. I could hardly move in my hospital bed for fear that my wound would open up and I was reading “Little Dot”. The cartoon Dot was dying of thirst in a desert when she saw a cactus and cut it open for the water… Cartoon Dot awoke with a start from her desert dream as she realised she was just about to eat the cactus pot plant on her bedside table! That had me in stitches! Isn’t it funny what strange things come back to us years later? Just because of a name…
The real little Dot didn’t have a red dress with black polka dots – she was wearing a pink baby dress over grey leggings and she wore pink shoes. Dotty was looking through the open gate at the view of the sea between the rooftops. I picked her up that she might see better the sunshine glittering on the water.
“She loves the sea,” said her mum.
“Well I must go Dotty,” I said, putting Dot down on her own two legs. (Yes, I know you might think I’m dotty already!)
The darling girl took me by the hand and told me, without the need for words, that she wanted to go for a walk with me. Ah, so sweet…
And in early July my son’s little girl is due to enter the world. James and Jaimy say they’ll be happy to let Penelope come down to Devon from Brighton and stay with Grandma and Grandpa when she is old enough. But I won’t be able to introduce Penelope to “Little Dot” from the comic – they finally stopped producing them in 1984.