Mr B and I were chatting in bed last night.

It was our first proper conversation since we got back on Saturday as we’ve just been so busy and so shattered.

We’d had a fab barbeque tea.

Misses E and M were fast asleep and we were in our big comfy bed as opposed to the tiny sofabed we spent last week on so that we could be nearer the girls room.

(There was a bed there for us, but it was at the back of the chalet, while E and M’s room was at the front, 2 doors away, and beside the front door which I wasn’t too comfortable with. I know, I know, neurotic mother, but they’re only little and I like to be nearby in case they need me.)

Anyway, we’re lying in bed and chatting about the holiday and 2 year old M’s reaction to the swimming pool.

Mr B: “She just kept opening her mouth wide every time we got near the water.”

I laughed as he gurned her expression at me.

Me: “Ahh, was it excitement?”

Mr B: “No, she just kept opening her mouth. It was like a rebellion. Every time I said, ‘Keep your mouth closed M,’ she opened it as wide as she could.”

And I imagine this little voice inside her head, ‘Hmmm, Daddy says close your mouth, so like any good two year old, you do the opposite, right?

That’ll show him.

Cough, cough, splutter, splutter…Waaaaaah.’

(If you’re wondering why I too didn’t witness this phenomenon, we were on the same holiday, but Miss E and I like to swim in the deep end, while Mr B and M do not, so we spent much of our pool time apart but waving.)

So, I lay there smiling and pondering on Miss M’s peculiarities, then it struck me.

Maybe she’s part basking shark.

When M was small she constantly had her mouth open in a big gummy grin and we nicknamed her the basking shark, but as teeth arrived, and Miss M became more familiar with her bodily functions, cause and effect and all that, she soon realized that if you left your mouth open for too long it made you dribble, or flies flew in.

So the name ‘basking shark’ had faded to obscurity.

But now, yet again Miss M seemed to be displaying characteristics of this large slow moving and mysterious animal.

I’m not sure where these may have come from as I have never noticed gills on my husband and am not aware of any odd fin like protrusions on the backs of any of my family members,

but Miss M certainly does seem to have developed the wide jaw and slow movements in water, and I have noticed ‘a strongly keeled caudal peduncle, highly textured skin covered in placoid scales and a layer of mucus,’ especially when she is in the bath.
I wonder if I should call a doctor…

Or The Doctor (mmmm David Tennant)…

Or maybe a Marine Biologist?

Hmmm.