“Let’s go to the graveyard!”
“It’s not a graveyard per se, call it ‘The Croppy Acre’”
“They had short hair that’s why they’re called croppies!”

Sediment layers of information are combining into solid concepts. We proceed to the 1798 memorial...

“See Daddy! Gravestones!”
“They’ve never found any bones here actually.”
“Maybe the germs and the worms and the lime trees ate them up?”

Alva, 6, measures my scepticism with solid reasoning. I try to explain that the Lime Tree in Opa’s garden does not consume corpses.

We discuss 1798.
“Look Daddy! I’d have waited until the French came!”
Alva, 6, has become a Napoleonic strategist. Some discussion on the difficulties of military synchronisation in the time before mass communications follows.

I translate the French. Alva is momentarily impressed “What about the rights of women and little children?”

She is asking the right questions. Next the Irish inscription. I am chastised for not understanding it.

The Guinness brewery is spotted. “Why did you buy a can, Daddy? You said it wasn’t nice?!”
All items in the fridge are noted amd require elaboration. I explain how I have discovered a secret process to make tinned Guinness more drinkable.