The Freddie Mercury fan club has a new member

I suspect this might polarise people, but I largely believe that there is no topic that should be out of bounds for discussion with the little people in our lives, providing it is done in the right way and in a context that they can understand. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but I made up my mind pretty early on not to shun any topics that F (or in the future D) wants to talk about.  Which is how we got on to the topic of death.

F has a passion of Freddie Mercury (or Freddie Merclear as she calls him) that has taken us all by surprise. We can't make the 5 minute drive to her nursery without her begging for We Will Rock You or Radio Ga Ga, and if you just need 10 minutes of quality time with a hot cup of tea all you need to do is play Queen's set on Live Aid & she is mesmerised.  You can see where I am going with this - F wanted to meet Freddie. At which point, I explained that a long time ago (i.e. before she was born) Freddie had been very poorly, and the doctors at the hospital couldn't make him better, and sadly he died.  She asked a few questions, and generally dealt with the whole thing very well. Not much else was said about this until my mother-in-law popped round only to be told "Nonie, you'd better sit down. I have bad news. Freddie Merclear's dead". After I packed away the defibrillator - being told to sit for bad news by a 3.5 yr old does tend to get the heart racing - my m-i-l and I spent some time assuring F that Freddie would have definitely been her friend were he still alive today (funny what they care about).

All in all, hubbie and I are grateful for her desire to listen to Queen over her previous preference for ACDC.  These days we spend a lot less time creatively changing the song titles and lyrics to be appropriate for a little girl to sing!