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On the way back from swimming, I mentioned that - in olden times - sailors couldn't always swim, which took us to press gangs, and Nelson's navy. Now I have to explain economic warfare. He already knows about merchants, and mercenaries, so after I explain tax, he quickly grasps that money is indeed the sinew of war.
"Darwin saved us, Daddy!" says Kurtzhau (aged 5).
"What...?" I say, and add mentally, ...the fuck?
I take a good luck at my son.
We've just watched the BBC documentary about "Ida", the 47-million-year-old monkey-lemur who might well have been on grooming terms with one of several missing links the Creationists are always saying we don't have.
And Kurtzhau's eyes are lit up like a little crusader. It's a little scary.
Thing is, our atheism isn't a faith.
Darwin isn't some sort of ersatz prophet - which is why posthumous attacks on his reputation or certainty (did he make a deathbed repentance?) are so very thoroughly off target. He's just one of a line of thinkers that privileges evidence over faith, and refuses to shrug and claim ectoplasm oils the gears of the world.
So, for a few heartbeats I'm thinking: Has Kurtzhau picked up some Christianity from school, and created his own inverted mash up, and if so, how the hell are we going to untangle this and won't we look stupid in front of our more religious relatives who will be unbearably smug...
"I mean," says Kurzhau, "that Darwin saved us from having to believe in God."
"Well, there were atheists before Darwin," I say. "And I'm not even sure what Darwin believed in. But..." And we talk a little around how it helps to have good answers for when proselytisers come knocking on our brains.
Then. "Daddy. It makes me feel sad that Ida was six years old like me... But if they bring out a model of her, can we buy one?"
His eyes are still afire with the wonder of rain forests covering Germany, of volcanic lakes spewing deadly CO2, of a motley international band of paleontologists unravelling the ancient tragedy of a little girl with a maimed hand who suffocated and drowned a mere 20 million years after the dinosaurs.
And also, I think he's glimpsed the web of past, present and future. And his joy reminds me that I've seen it too.
No, we don't have a religion. Why would we need one?
"Let's look for Buzzantin pictures, then." Kurtzhau cuddles up while I google...
Oh Jesus! I think. I'll end up having to help him reverse the conversion - and that means sorting out about 60 confusion Imperial Legionaries. But I cannot lie to him. "You'd have to put pointy helmets on all of them, and give them round shields and long spears."
Me: Right that's it - you're pestering! I'm using my Daddy Jedi Mind Powers to take back that film we just watched. (I raise my hand to his forehead.) Woowoooowoooowo. Right, it's all gone.
Well, we just had one, in what has to be the best holiday cottage in mainland Scotland.
Kurtzhau yells, "Over THERE daddy. Get the big gun! Now! NOW!"
Bring me my broadsword....
Unfortunately - as explained by Frau Hau - cake versions of diamond-shaped tracks and side-turrets would just collapse. 



Back when he was just starting to talk, he was riding my shoulders around the Scottish National War Museum so we could look at the swords, and there – Lo! – was a tank regiment recruiting video… khaki behemoths howling across some suitably bumpy plain, blazing away with massive guns. Then one crushed a car!
It started with “Dino Kings” a Pokemon-inspired series on Jetix. It quickly moved to buying toy dinosaurs and demanding to see them on YouTube.
I made sure he watched the The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs so he knew that the on-screen carnage was not real. This was an instant favourite. Not only did it show rugged palaeontologists at work, and explain how they knew things, it also showed animators slaving over hot computers to bring the dinosaurs back to life...
Kurtzhau walks around and around the shop, "Hey, that's a Tiger Tank! Are those British? Is that Sopwith Camel?"
Krumphau, Big German and I are practicing Zwerchhau under the gaze of Kurtzhau and his older friend Langort, aged 8. | S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
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