My weekly treat is to lie in bed on a Sunday morning reading the Guardian's Weekend magazine whilst consuming bacon.
I am always fascinated by the little column, "Ask a grown-up" where children under 10 offer a single question doing just that. The language and tone that the various specialists and celebrities use to address their young correspondents is really telling and very educational for a person like me, whose working life is taken up mostly with modes of communication across age groups.
At the moment, in a lot of my speaking appointments at conferences and so forth, I find I'm dwelling on the importance of listening to children and young people - in listening we learn how to more effectively communicate.
I'd be really interested in what that Guardian column would be like if it were altered to, "Ask another child".
Pondering this, I was reminded of watching ballet on television one Christmas many, many moons ago with my two young cousins, around 4 and 6 years of age at the time. The boy, the eldest, asked his sister, "What is that lump on the front of the man? That lump, that lump there, at the top of his legs, in front, poking out, what is that?"
I remained silent, eagerly anticipating the explanation. When it came, it was delivered with the serious tone of an academic pronouncing the obvious to the ignorant.
"That is a step. A step so that the lady can get up onto his shoulders."
Read it and weep, grown-ups.
Professor Smedley of Storytelling