Product Description

'Nana, your face needs ironing!'

'The nativity play's off, Miss - the Virgin Mary's got nits'

'When you're dead, Grandpa, can I have your watch?'

'When I was little, I thought that God was like Captain Birdseye without the fishfingers'

Young children are nothing if not honest, and their honesty is invariably disarming and comical. Who better to discover their innermost thoughts than best-selling author and former school inspector Gervase Phinn? From his lifetime of school visits, and talking to parents and grandparents, Gervase has put together a delightful compilation of children's wise words, insightful observations on life and their amusing comments about others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16697 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

From the Author
One delightful and unexpected result of the publication of my autobiographical accounts about my time as school inspector in the Yorkshire Dales is the phenomenal amount of mail I have received. Interested readers have entertained me with letters, cards, anecdotes, poems and little stories about what their children and grandchildren have said. Some were witty, others hilarious and a few were deeply poignant.
Robert Flanagan, director of Dalesman Publishing, suggested that I might like to let others share in my enjoyment of the pieces and further suggested that we ask readers of Dalesman magazine to submit their own ‘little gems’ to add to the collection. Hence this anthology which I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I have compiling.

About the Author
Gervase Phinn leads a very full and busy life: he is a teacher, freelance lecturer, author, poet, school inspector and educational consultant.

For fourteen years he taught in a range of schools in Yorkshire until, in 1984, he became general adviser for language development in Rotherham. Four years
later he moved to North Yorkshire where he spent ten years as a school inspector, which has provided much of the material for his three bestselling Dales books and his four collections of children’s poetry. He was subsequently appointed principal adviser for the county. He now teaches, lectures and directs courses throughout the country and abroad, and is in constant demand both as a speaker at social after-dinner events and at educational conferences.

Gervase Phinn is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the visiting professor of education at the University of Teesside and an honorary fellow of St Johns College, York.

He is married with four grown-up children.

Excerpted from Little Gems: Things Kids Say by Gervase Phinn. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
That’s no lady, that’s my grandma
Grandparents

The relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren is rather different from that between parents and their children. Grannies and grandpas, in my experience, tend to be more patient, better listeners, less critical and, dare I say it, more indulgent than their own offspring.
It was the weekly ritual for my mother, well into her eighties, to come around for Sunday lunch. From her vantage point in the most comfortable chair in the corner of the sitting room, she would watch as my wife Christine and I attempted to bring up our four children. One Sunday I had occasion to chastise Matthew, then aged six, for his untidy bedroom. Stabbing the air with a finger, I ordered him: ‘Up those stairs now, young man, and tidy your bedroom. Do you follow my drift?’ Matthew at first looked suitably contrite but a small smile soon appeared on his lips, then a grin, to be followed by giggles and finally guffaws. I ballooned with anger. Then I caught sight of my mother in the mirror. She was sitting behind me pulling the most ridiculous faces and wiggling her fngers in front of her nose.
‘Mother’, I snapped rather pompously, ‘I am trying to instill some discipline here. You are not helping matters.’
‘Oh, do be quiet’, she told me. ‘You’re not talking to teachers now.’
‘Mother…’ I began.
‘Don’t mother me. He’s a lovely little boy is Matthew. He’s kind, compassionate, gentle and well behaved. You should be telling him that, not hectoring him. Goodness me, there are more important things in life than an untidy room, and yours was like a tip when you were a boy.’
Father and son were stuck for words.
She continued. ‘I don’t suppose I should tell your daddy off in front of you, Matthew’, she said, ‘but he’s wrong.’ Then she gave me a knowing look and one of her smiles, and added, ‘And he’s my little boy.’
Having read this account, you will understand why the poem which begins this section on grannies and grandpas has a particular resonance for me.

At our granddaughter’s third birthday party, I was taking photographs when one little boy chimed up: ‘Jamie Lee, that lady is taking your picture.’
‘That’s no lady’, said my granddaughter. ‘That’s my grandma.’

Granddaughter asking her rather diminutive grandfather: ‘Granddad, why are you so small for your age?’

Overheard, my small grandchild and her little friend in deep conversation:
‘Well, my daddy says my grannie’s past her sell-by date.’

‘Grannie’, said Bethany, aged five, ‘I know the ‘F’ word.’
‘Oh dear’, I said in mock horror, ‘you must never say it.’
‘I don’t, grannie’, she replied. ‘I say trump.’

When I was honorary curator of the Manor House Museum, Ilkley, I encouraged children to bring finds, always hoping something of importance would turn up. In came a little girl with three stones in her hand.
‘What are these, dear?’ I asked.
‘My granny’s gallstones’, was the smiling reply.

Grandson to grandfather: ‘Who’ll get the fish and chips when you’ve gone to heaven?’

Granddad, collecting his small granddaughter from school, asked her to take her school bag and coat out to the car. ‘You’re not too old to carry things yourself, granddad, you know’, she replied pertly.

At lunch, my small grandson asked casually: ‘Granddad, can I have this house when you pop your clogs?’

Grandson: ‘Granddad, we’ve been asked to take something very very old into school. Will you come in with me tomorrow?’

My Granny
My grannie says I am a little chatterbox.
She says I talk ten to the dozen.
Chatter chatter, chatter.
Natter, natter, natter.
My grandpa says, ‘Never mind poppet.
You take after your grannie.
Chatter chatter, chatter.
Natter, natter, natter.
She’s the world champion talker.’

A niece, now in her sixties, had a grandfather who had very large ears. One day she said to her mother, ‘When grandpa dies will he become an angel?’
The mother replied, ‘I expect so, dear, why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I thought he’d become an elf’, replied the child.

I’m eighty-two years old and was having an afternoon snooze on the settee when in comes my granddaughter. ‘Wake up granddad’, she ordered, ‘this is my new friend, Michael. He hasn’t got a granddad and I’ve brought him in to show him what one looks like.’

I explained to my grandson, aged five, who had asked where my dog was, that Rusty was very old and tired and had had a long and happy life and that the vet had ‘put him to sleep.’
‘When will you be going to the vet then, grandma?’ he asked.

I am a very careful driver, if a little on the slow side. I was taking my small grandson, Harry, aged six, to a birthday party and we were running rather late. As I trundled along the road, he gave a great heaving sigh and said in a very exasperated tone of voice: ‘Step on it gran, for God’s sake. We’ll be here all day at this rate.’
On another occasion I nearly crashed the car because of my uncontrollable laughter. Harry, strapped in the back, watched fascinated as an impatient young driver overtaking me after a road junction, made a very rude sign in my direction.
‘Grannie’, Harry said cheerfully, ‘I think the man in the car in front is showing you his poorly finger

Felicity, aged three, asked me why she hadn’t got a granddad. I explained to her that he had gone to heaven.
‘I suppose you’ll be next’, said Felicity in a matter-of-fact little voice.
‘There is great grandma’, I reminded her.
‘Yes, but she doesn’t go anywhere by herself’, replied the child.

Customer Reviews

Priceless Gems
These anecdotes, so faithfully recorded, really take us back to childhood. Such great reminders of the innocence of childhood. Thank you Gervase Phinn for another great compilation.