When your five year old gets more interesting email than you do…

Nanna and Gonad are in Europe, today they are on foot in France discovering castles. Inigo requested a picture, as he has only ever seen them in picture books, and wanted to be sure they are real.

So Nanna sent a picture of her at a castle.

And tonight I was chatting with one of his Fairly Odd Parents on the phone. Paula and Jason moved to Melbourne when Jason got a job as a beamline scientist at the synchrotron. Jason’s job has been explained to Inigo in very broad terms, and he gets the impression that Jason is the go-to guy for science matters.

Recently he’s been asking me what air looks like. Since he understand the difference between invisibility, and things just being too small to see, but beyond that I am not much use, he decided to ask Uncle Jason. And less than two hours after the question was posed comes a beautifully constructed email, with age appropriate language that isn’t patronising, and some beautiful images to illustrate the concepts.

Every kid should have an uncle with a PhD in inorganic chemistry.