I am sitting on the floor of my living room, immobile and surrounded by objects, all on important underwater business. I, too, am in the deep sea, and must remain there until further instruction is forthcoming. Having discarded it as a younger child, my four-year-old son has come back to Octonauts with gusto. If you’re not a fan already, it’s an Irish-produced extravaganza of toyetic edutainment, in which a fleet of cutesily drafted anthropomorphic animals rescue and research marine creatures.
As a result of said TV programme, my son knows everything there is to know about lampreys and the Mariana Trench, and asks solemn, probing questions about the yeti crab and hydrothermal vents. When we had friends round last week, questions about these seabed fissures became his standard conversational opener, leading to puzzled glances from adults who had no idea what a ‘hydo-fermal vent’ was. At night my son pulls me close and sleepily intones that siphonophores are not single animals at all, but several organisms operating in unison.
