This year's summer holiday was to Liverpool and the Isle of Man. The weather allowed plenty of swimming in the Irish Sea, and the rare occurrence of accompanying sunburn. The return journey included a stopover in Liverpool.
I thought my offspring would be excited to see the world-famous Cavern Club. Turns out...no. Primark was more exciting, as we don't have one near us. Not only were they not impressed by one of the most famous live music venues in the world ('Can we go now, it's dark and boring'), we discovered that it wasn't just that they were firmly not Beatles fans, but that they actually didn't know any Beatles songs.
Clearly a case of parenting gone wrong, I sought to rectify this, immediately. I know, I thought, the drive back from Liverpool is a good four or five hours. That will give me plenty of time to educate these poor, deprived children.
Cue rapid download of The Beatles 'Essentials'. Don't worry, I felt the hand of Alan Partridge as we were doing it.
And then I thought, it isn't that they don't know any songs, it's just that they don't know they are by The Beatles. Let's see how many they are actually familiar with!
It didn't go well. Gertie had her headphones in, but she did deign to remove them for the opening few bars of each track to then offer an increasingly frustrated shake of the head to indicate that no, she really didn't know this one either.
Eventually, success! We All Live in A Yellow Submarine provoked a spark of recognition. 'I thought it was a nursery rhyme.'
And Let it Be was 'vaguely familiar'. Nothing else though.
'Do we have to listen to any more of this OLD rubbish music? Seriously, mummy, these songs all sound exactly the same.'
Eddie joined in with the general malcontent, putting his fingers in his ears and pointedly singing, 'HATE Jude' once he'd mastered the refrain.
It was a very long journey home.
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