The Star Wars connection

We went to the playground on what turned out to be the last day before the weather got properly cold. We had nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. It turns out that if you stay long enough at a playground, the children will find friends.

Dash was hogging the digger in the sand area. I hate those diggers - the little kids are desperate to have a turn, but once they finally get their little bums up in that coveted seat, they find that their arms are too short and their feet don't reach the ground and they have no leverage to dig the sand, pivot, release. So they frustratedly have to return it to the big boys. I don't know why nobody makes miniature ones for the poor two-year-olds.

A small four-year-old boy hovered in the background, and eventually Dash was persuaded to give him a turn. As I predicted, he didn't last long before ceding it again, and I suggested that he help bank up the pile of sand from the ground instead. A few minutes later he was helping Mabel bury herself under a thin layer of fine, cold, fallen-leaf-riddled sand.

And then the three of them were off to the swings, and somehow Star Wars came up in conversation.

"I'm not so much interested in Star Wars," said Mabel. "I like Ponies."

Our new friend, the small four-year-old, turned out to have quite an extensive knowledge of Obi Wan and the others, and soon, in spite of their difference in ages and heights, he and Dash were firm friends. They all ran to the slides next. Mabel and Dash encouraged the friend to climb up the inside of the enormous tunnel slide.

I sat nearby, beside a very groomed mother, reminiscent of Annette Bening or Miranda from Sex and the City, and we laughed in unison as the dialogue floated down the tunnel and over to us. Mabel was encouraging the younger boy:

"Just a few more steps. You're nearly there..." They were about a fifth of the way up the huge tunnel at this point, but she was lying through her teeth and he was gamely giving it his all. Then a kerfuffle and a wobble in the middle of the tunnel, and they all came down in a happy pile, like puppies.

"Let's go back to the sand pit," said Dash, employing the Irish vernacular.
"Where?"
"The sand pit, where we first met," he clarified romantically.

Miranda and I were enchanted.
"You wore blue," I said.
"All those years ago," she reminisced.

And they were off again in the autumn sunshine.