IT’S the little things that amuse me.

Those moments that just happen out of the blue, pass most people by, but make me giggle for the rest of the day.

It’s probably my inherent childish nature that these silly little incidents stick with me but I’m jolly glad they do because on cold winter days when I have a gazilion things to do, they kind of keep me sane.

Take this week. A totally normal trip in the car with the Beautiful Wife and the boys.

As per usual we were in rush. Late for a meeting, an appointment or something or other which made the BW in a particularly frazzled frame of mind.

The boys were in their normal laid-back head in the clouds type of mood, which always makes for quite an interesting mix of emotions in the closed environment of a car.

Anyway I started the car and there was a buzzing, which the BW heard straight away.

Now I shouldn’t joke about these matters but the BW’s hearing is the source of much amusement in our family.

Like my son, she has partial hearing loss, which means in noisy environments she struggles to hear what people are saying. It also means I have to turn down my music if she’s doing something so she can concentrate. I, on the other hand, find Rage Against the Machine, Royal Blood and Nirvana are the perfect accompaniments to most things!

That said she still insists on having conversations with me from other rooms, mostly from the top of the stairs, which usually go like this: BW: “Can you get the washing out of the machine and put it out on the line.”

Me (shouting up the stairs): “It’s not finished yet.”

BW: “I said ‘can you get the washing out of the machine and put it out on the line’.”

Me (shouting up the stairs): “It’s not finished yet.”

And so on and so on......

Which is why it was funny that the BW heard the rattling first. I couldn’t hear it, nor could the boys, although they were too busy talking about Portal 2 (but more on that next week!).

“I think it’s coming from my bag,” she declared in a rather bemused fashion.

So she pulled everything out of her bag, listening to each item to see if it was the source of the continuous rattling. My favourite was her phone, just in case she had put it on silent.

Then she looked under her chair before seemingly having a wave of inspiration.

“Boggle!” she announced as she delved into the glove compartment and pulled out a Travel Boggle. I didn’t even know it was there.

It wasn’t Boggle.

After a very amusing ten minutes, I dropped them all off in town and drove back home suddenly realising exactly what the noise was.

Cranking up the air con, the rattling got louder until half a sweet wrapper came flying out, landing perfectly where the BW had just been sitting.

And I’ve been smiling about it ever since!

Thank you to all those who have sent in their requests for Weekend Windows. Keep them coming to neil.darcy-jones@nqe.com and you could get your little message in the paper.

WEEKEND WINDOW

“Hey Rachel, hope you had a lovely birthday this week. Thanks for the curry, it was lush - Catherine.”