The Return of Listen With Dudelet

It’s felt like it’s been ages since dudelet listened, really listened, to a record with me. At some point, the toddler who’d boogie in his seat to Aphex Twin or the five year old whose favourite record was Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible became the eight year Harry Potter fanatic who only wanted to listen to the John Williams soundtrack and build towers in Minecraft.*

Attempts at “What do you think of this?” or “Do you want to choose anything?” met with a shrug or a “Whatever.” Meanwhile, Minecraft seemed to be colonising most of the conversations we were having.

Don’t get me wrong – we were talking a lot. But it was 40% Bin Weevils, 40% Minecraft and 10% whining about being required to get off whichever screen he was accessing either of them through. (The remaining 10% tended to be me commiserating with him about the latest bout of appallingness from his little sister. But that’s another story).

Anyway, there seems to have been a sea change. Possibly he’s humouring his rapidly aging father but he caught me the day before yesterday listening to Led Zepellin 2. He paused, then sat, nodding along to the first few bars of ‘Ramble On’.

“I really like that,” he said.

“Uh huh,” I said. I felt like a caveman (well, we were listening to Led Zep) keeping a hungry wild dog in my peripheral vision as it edged cautiously towards the firelight and a scrap of left-over reindeer meat.

“It’s really…it’s got a good tune.”

“I’ve had that record for 32 years.”

“And it still plays?”

Little elf bounced in and sat down to listen too. A few minutes later, supermum stuck her head into the lounge, probably to find out what all the lack of noise was about (apart from the very loud music) and found little elf on my lap, dudelet leaning on my shoulder and John Bonham pounding through a slightly surplus-to-requirements drum solo (‘Moby Dick’ hasn’t aged well). She backed out again, quite quickly.

Yesterday, dudelet asked me to put on “that pretty song” again and gave us a full-on demonstration of virtuoso air guitar. Then I played him the guitar solo in ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and he wanted me to start the record again so he could hear it twice.

Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll see how he gets on with Baroness…

*I feel I should add that there are a million and one things he could be doing that are less worthwhile than the admittedly creative pursuit of Minecraft. But there’s only so many brick-by-brick descriptions a dad can take.