My eleven year old son came home from school one day after having participated in a swimming class. Unpacking his stuff, he advised me :

‘Mum, you didn’t even give me a proper towel today. You gave me a….’ I could see him searching for the word he was after, looking for it in the air. ‘You gave me a Footland,’ he finished.

I narrowed my eyes, screwed up my nose, trying to register what it was that he meant. It came to me on a gust of laughter.

‘You mean a ‘bathmat’?’ I asked between giggles. I was picturing these fabulous, almost regal, little Footlands complete with fabulous little wet foots. Obviously, so was he as he joined me in a gale of laughter.

The word he created has joined our family vocab, sitting alongside such golden words as ‘Dookie’ and ‘Nuff Nuff’, both of which have made it into Go Girl! stories (I’ll tell you about them some other time).

I’m so glad he got his mords wixed up.