Memories that make you smile.

I was waiting at the bus stop in town when a fire engine passed. There was a small boy also waiting for the bus with his grandmother and he turned so excitedly to her and said, 'Look grandma, a fire engine!' My mind went back to when our boys were much younger. My younger son used to call them dee-dah lorries.

In fact all the emergency services' vehicles were known in our house as dee-dah cars or lorries. At first a neighbour thought that maybe our son had a speech impediment and couldn't say 'fire engine' or 'police car' properly and so called them dee-dah car/lorry. But then my son carefully explained that it was because these vehicles had a light on top that flashed and went dee-dah, dee-dah, dee-dah. They all have dee-dah lights on them. Hence the expression.

I smiled to myself as I remembered us all talking about the dee-dah lights while other people looked at us a little strangely!. Even now if anyone says 'dee-dah' light, to us it means one of the emergency services. Funny how you remember those little things that become part of a family's vocabulary.