secret writing

Fergus was doing some more of his secret writing this morning - the kind that no-one else can read, when it occured to me that he might like to try out some invisible writing with lemon juice. We hadn't tried this before but I had heard somewhere that if you write in lemon juice and put it in the oven the writing becomes visible. I just happened to have some cut up pieces of lemon lying around, as you do, and a quill feather, and some strips of paper.

It worked! At first it wasn't working too well, so I got out a science book, in which Fergus found it, and on the next page was another experiment using red cabbage water, which changes colour when you add acid or alkali. So I thought this might work with the writing, and fortunately I happened to have a red cabbage in the fridge, which I just cut up and boiled for about five minutes, and it did work! Fantastic! we just let the lemon juice writing dry and painted over it with the red cabbage water and let that dry.

The writing went pink.

We tried it first in a bowl: the cabbage water went from purpley blue to bright pink when we added a bit of lemon juice.

Of course by this time the oven method had worked as well.

I don't think any of these examples are actually Fergus's, but you get the idea. I think he has been inspired by the secret runes in Lord of the Rings, although he has been doing secret writing for a while. I just thought this was a great way of making writing more appealing for him, or less daunting, not to mention the scientific experiment thrown in. This all happened quite spontaneously- it was just one of those great moments that you can't possibly plan but turn out better than you could have imagined. I just love the magic of it changing colour.