Society’s true innovators, disruptors and mavericks? They’re our under-twos

I’m showing my youngest grandson a pot that I made when I was 14 years old, but the tiny boy doesn’t seem that impressed. He’s only nine months old, and I conclude he’s too busy with other tasks.

Over the coming months he’s facing his own kind of Everest. The expectation is that he’ll learn to walk, learn to speak English and learn to use a spoon – all in the next year or two. Given his quite peculiar parents, he may also be required to learn the banjo.

Imagine if all humans could achieve the progress of the typical baby.Credit: Getty Images

Do people give enough sympathy to the babies of the world and what they are meant to achieve in the first 20 months of existence? It’s a lot! I don’t mean to be rude, but what have you done in the past 20 months? Me? I’ve traded up to a new car, repainted the shed and started a failed crop of coriander. I also considered learning a language, before deciding I wasn’t sufficiently clever.

Meanwhile, the under-twos, under-threes and under-fours are hard at it. My middle grandson went from slippery-dip averse to slippery-dip king just the other day. Pip, the oldest one, instructs Nana when it comes to the names of birds. “That’s a plumed egret,” he observed the other day, which was news to Nana.

What’s true of them, and all their little comrades, is that they never rest. Every day they get better at something. It’s just standard behaviour if you happen to be under-five. Look the other way for a few moments and they’ll have picked up a whole new skill.

Imagine if all humans could achieve the progress of the typical tiny one. Personally, I haven’t learnt anything new since 1983.

Which brings me back to Sweetpea and his underwhelmed response to my pottery. I’m on his side. He’s too busy growing his brain, wiggling his toes and improving the dexterity of his fingers.

All the same, I find myself telling him the story. “I made it 52 years ago, and the teacher who inspired me was obsessed with the pottery of Japan, so we all had to say konnichiwa at the beginning of every lesson. She was such a great teacher, a real inspiration.”

Sweetpea, having been treated to this fascinating tale, does me the courtesy of giving the pot a prod, before being distracted by the dog. Clancy is his chief passion in life. He signals, through a series of wiggles, that he wishes to be put on the floor, and then, once positioned, crawls into Clancy’s orbit, army commando-style.

Clancy’s lead is still dangling, courtesy of a recent walk. Sweetpea, rolling on the floor, grabs it and holds it tight. Looking at the boy, I can hear his thought process: “My first activity, upon learning to walk, will be to walk this dog. So, all things considered, I’d better get cracking on this whole walking game.”

I’m pleased to note his ambition, even if it does mean the focus has so thoroughly moved on from my pot. In fact, Sweetpea’s mother and Nana are engaged in the current love affair between Clancy and Sweetpea.

They think it’s cute that the baby is so obsessed with Clancy. Sweetpea’s mother says the child has had some problems with the use of his right arm, but that his eagerness to crawl towards Clancy seems to be curing the problem. Nana agrees that both Sweetpea and Clancy are marvellous beyond compare, and that it’s lovely to see Clancy being such a positive figure in the young chap’s life.

Oh, give me a break. You hear them talk and Clancy is now a philosopher, a surgeon, perhaps a wise physio. Selflessly, he helps the grandchildren achieve their potential.

True, he is a really good dog. But what about those of us in the potter community? Some of us have a pot sitting here, one we made 52 years ago, which is not getting the attention it deserves.

I’ve been watching the TV program The Great Pottery Throw Down – a version of The Great British Bake Off for the pottery-inclined – and I believe my work is not too bad. Sure, the decoration is inept. It looks like I cut my hand making it and decided to staunch the flow by smearing it on the pot.

And yet the pot, if I say so myself, is rather well thrown. I must secretly have had some regard for it since I’ve carried it around for a half-century, propping it onto various bookshelves, mantelpieces and desks.

The pot, also, is a bit of a portal into the past. Holding it, I realise I remember everything about myself at the age I made it. And I can remember all the houses I’ve lived in for the past 50 years, carrying the thing from one to the other as I discarded other objects, convinced for some reason that this ridiculous pot was part of my story.

But, you know, it is part of my story: Sweetpea just prodded it. And, in that moment, my past and my present collided and – what do you know – I liked it.

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