bookmark_bordern+1

As with most of my hobbies, I tend to fling myself into them wholeheartedly from the get go. I’m the guy who signs up to the forums, does copious research on the internet, takes notes as he goes, learns as much as he can as fast as possible, and then goes and buys the gear. The topic doesn’t really matter as long as it’s something I’m interested in; as a teenager a friend got me into fly fishing and so (as this pre-dates the internet) I got the books and magazines, talked to the owner of the tackle store, and got the best rod and reel I could afford, and enjoyed a couple of (mostly unsuccessful) years wading into the River Leven and casting away to my hearts content.

Looking back I know I spent a lot of my pocket money on that hobby, hundreds of pounds just to get all the things I thought I needed only to find out that I didn’t need them at all. Fishing can be a very expensive hobby (can’t they all) but the basic satisfaction of standing in the river, the quiet burbling of the water as it flowed around me, and the simple setup I started with remains a fond memory.

I’ve dabbled with other hobbies, been through the DSLR camera stage, with multiple lens and filters and goodness knows what else, and today I solely use my iPhone because the best camera you have is the one you have with you.

More recently my hobbies have had a more serious bent and have largely been based around my fitness. Driven by my advancing years and expanding waistline, not to mention a much keener sense of self that has developed over the past few years; I now have an established (almost) daily meditation practice, I’ve managed to get back to running again and, thanks to lockdown, I realised just how much I enjoy cycling. It’s something I’ve mentioned here before, the simple joy of freewheeling down a hill bringing that instant return to a truly child-like state (with all the OHMYGODWHATIFICRASH background noise of being adult, of course). And man, oh man, if ever there was a ‘hobby’ ripe for geeking out on, cycling might just be at the pinnacle.

Not being a millionaire, I’m a league away from the top of the range carbon road bikes (unless anyone has £10k to spare?) but with some research I found a ‘budget’ road bike with a good set of components, lots of great reviews from seasoned cyclists and trade websites, and so the geekery begins….

This can be as simple as looking at any accessories your bike came with – mine came with lights but they are more ‘to be seen’ than ‘to see with’ and so I’ve upgraded them. Same for the bell (although I went for style over substance and I’m already regretting that a little, a quiet bell isn’t much use), and I’ve already changed to clipless pedals over the standard flat pedals provided. With a dark blue bike with very subtle orange accents, I’ve also gotten two bright orange bottle cages, and two orange end caps (the bits at the end of the handlebars, oh yes, there is nothing you can’t customise on a bike!), just to make it look a bit smarter.

Then there are the practical things you’ll need, inner tubes should you get a puncture and a pump, or perhaps it’s time to look at CO2 canisters which are faster (a real consideration if you are fixing a puncture on a rainy day). You’ll need tyre levers too, and it’s probably wise to have a small multi-tool just in case something works its way loose. Ohh and where are you going to carry all this? Do I get a handlebar bag? Or perhaps an on-frame bag? Or one that mounts under the saddle? Or maybe a carrier that I can throw in one of the bottle cages for shorter rides??

What’s next? Ohh yes, clothes! Yup, I’ve joined the ranks of lycra wankers. Why? Because it’s the best thing to wear if you are on a bike for more than an hour, because you need padded shorts and something that won’t chafe. And yes cycling tops are specifically useful too because you can’t really have pockets in your shorts, so those pockets at the back of the top are super useful, holding a lightweight waterproof (hey, it’s Scotland, even on the sunniest days it still might rain an hour later), my phone, and a few snacks to keep me going.

Ohhh snacks, a banana is fine, but maybe it’s time to look into gels, and is that just water in your bottle or is it an electrolyte replacing, caffeinated combo to make sure you don’t run out of energy?

For the safety conscious among you, yes I wear a helmet, and the rest of my ensemble includes cycling gloves, and cycling shoes (that clip into the pedals), and glasses with interchangeable lens (including clear ones which stop your eyes drying out too much on dull windy days). And yes, all of these little things make a difference, I’ve got the research to prove it.

And so it goes.

Truth be told there isn’t really much I need to add and the only thing I’m considering next is a proper bike fitting – a couple of hours with an expert making sure my seat height, handlebar height and position are correct – and this is only because in September I’m tackling Etape Caledonia and will need to do a fair amount of training for that, so I’d rather not open myself up to niggles and injuries just because my seat isn’t quite at the right height.

After that, who knows? With bikes still being largely mechanical and easy to upgrade there are all sorts of things to consider. Do I want to upgrade the chainrings to something with a wider range? Will a new saddle make a difference to my comfort on the bike, would it help me go faster? I have not, yet, gotten a bicycle computer, nor have I added power meter pedals as that seems a little OTT, and anyway the next key component should really be the tyres, or maybe the entire wheels could be lighter and faster. There really are so many things to consider.

My geek is well and truly on, it’s true. The more I read the more I wonder if changing THAT thing will be worth it for me or whether it’s only really the pros that would even notice. There is an entire subset of cycling geeks obsessed with the weight of their bikes, with each single component examined for any potential gains that could be made. It’s the kind of thing the Sky/Ineos team do, look for the smallest gains everywhere and by the time you add them all up you’ve made a leap forward.

I’m not quite there yet, although this all does feel a little different to my past deep dives into various hobbies. At the simplest level I have a bike, I know how to ride it, and all I really need to do is get out on it for as often, and as far, as possible. Everything else really is just noise, something you realise when you are cycling and all you need to do is focus on the road ahead. To that end the instant enjoyment is what I think will make this a longer lasting hobby, and in time I may even start to consider myself a cyclist.

I know myself well enough that I will make little changes and tweaks to my bike over time but I’m doing my very best not to fall into a well known cycling equation that is (semi) jokingly used in every cycling forum I’ve looked at.

The correct number of bikes for you to own is n+1. N equates to the number of bikes you own, therefore you should always be looking to acquire your next pride and joy.

Given that my new bike is still less than a year old I think I’ve got a ways to go before any n+1 thoughts. Although I’m largely going to have to ignore the fact that my (to be) in-laws are all cycling enthusiasts and will very much be prime enablers of any future bike purchases.

For now I’m more than happy with the bike I have, the joy I have using it, and the eagerness to which I look forward to my next ride. That’s the key for me, get to a place where I’m happy and comfortable and I know this hobby will become more than that, if it hasn’t already. With warmer days approaching I know I’ll be itching to go out more and more often, and my bike is always waiting patiently to whizz me along on the next adventure.

bookmark_border6 weeks later

6 weeks = 42 days = 1,008 hours = 60,480 minutes = 3,628,800 seconds.

That’s how long it was from the 18th of January to the 28th of February.

I mention this with purpose as I set myself a little challenge which lasted for – can you guess? – 6 weeks, but I confess it wasn’t wholly my idea.

At the start of the year I wrote that I didn’t have any aims for 2021 and that’s still true; this year will (still) be mostly headlined by the pandemic and whilst life goes on, I’m not really looking to upset my own apple cart. What worked for me in 2020, the habits I built and which I get the most benefit from, will continue on through 2021.

However it’s fair to say that over the past couple of years I’ve had a much longer term plan forming in my mind, the type of thing that starts off as a vague notion then slowly starts to crystallise into something more solid until one day, all of a sudden, you realise you’ve already decided what it will be. This plan may, or may not, have something to do with the fact I will be leaving my forties in a few years time.

It was just over six weeks ago that, with 2021 stretching in front of us, Becca and I were chatting about some of our longer term desires as a couple, where we were hoping to end up in the next few years, and what our own individual thoughts and dreams were alongside that. While I had some vague ideas for myself and certainly knew roughly the direction I wanted to head, it was only when we started discussing our joint future that things started to take shape.

Throughout 2020 I’ve been slowly building habits that will stand me in good stead for the future, more outdoor exercise (the dogs help with that obviously), daily meditation and the like. And my general fitness levels definitely benefited from the increase in cycling mileage as well. I’d even gone for a few runs and enjoyed it more than I realised. But talking about my long (very long) term plans and trying to explain my thinking and some of the ideas I had to make them happen, well the more I talked the more impossible it seemed, and I definitely do not want to set out to try and achieve the unachievable, why set yourself up for failure like that?

So Becca made the simple suggestion to not focus that far out, and look at something in the near future. “Maybe try six weeks”, she suggested and rightly posited that it’s long enough to see progress (sometimes a month isn’t) but not so far in the future to be unimaginable. It also meant that if I started the following Monday, those six elapsed weeks would take me to the last day of February.

You know that way when someone says something that clicks in your brain and all of a sudden you have the urge to smack yourself upside the head for not thinking of it in the first place, well this was definitely one of those moments, one of those can’t see the forest for the trees moments that makes you feel both grateful to the person who thought of it, and a little peeved with yourself because it’s kinda obvious… why yes, I WILL break down my long term plan into smaller achievable goals. OF COURSE! *smacks self upside head*

Of I went to figure out what that would all mean and how it might work, and it got me thinking back to the times I’ve set myself challenges in the past, knowing how quickly I can get disheartened and how I tend to be a little unrealistic, so with that in mind I decided to give myself plenty of leeway to reduce those pressures, to remove as much of my fear of failure from the outset.

I picked up where I’d left the Couch to 5KM training plan at the tail end of last year but I decided to only run twice a week and ‘do something else’ for a third activity (turned out to be indoor cycling using a turbo trainer and Zwift). That was it, anything on top of that was a bonus, and I deliberately left my weekends free to either be active or not.

As a perfectionist, this all met my deep-seated need to ‘plan the crap out of everything’ but left room for changes to the plan as and when required; for the few days when we had bad snow and ice I only used the indoor bike, then did three runs the next week to catch back up with the plan.

And whaddya know, six weeks later I’ve finished the Couch to 5KM plan and completed my first 5KM run for over 10 years, I lost weight consistently throughout, my blood pressure is lower, and I’m giving myself a hearty pat on the back for completing the challenge I set myself. I’m also giving Becca a big hug for listening to me talk about it and nudging me in the right direction (I’m telling you, she’s a keeper!).

For the record, I did skip a few of my planned sessions, one time because I just didn’t want to do it. We also order takeaway once a week (twice one weekend), and I still eat cake too. My point is that the plan was a guide, not a schedule, and I deviated from it now and again because LIFE. Yet I navigated my way through the last six weeks happy that I was ‘just doing it’. Sometimes that’s all that matters.

Looking ahead it’s likely I’ll do the same throughout the rest of the year, break my fitness plan down into 6-week blocks, and by this Autumn, with a bit of luck, I should’ve gotten my running distance up to 10KM, and I’ll also have completed the 65KM Etape Caledonia (in Sept). And hey, if I don’t manage all of that, I’ll still have been way more active and thinking about my health more which will automatically have the effect of lowering my weight, and more importantly, my blood pressure down to much healthier levels.

Isn’t it amazing what you can do in 3,628,800 seconds = 60,480 minutes = 1,008 hours = 42 days = 6 weeks.

bookmark_borderAnd the keys go clack

Blocked.

Stuck.

Static.

Nothing.

OK, that’s four very similar words, that’s a start. Let’s build on that.

There must be something I can write about.

Somewhere.

Come on brain, let’s do this.

There is something in there somewhere. You know how this works.

Starting writing.

The words will come.

Won’t they?

I read an article about the impact the pandemic has had on casual friendships, those acquaintances you only saw now and then back in the heady days of 2019, it’s definitely something I could write about. How I’ve got a core group of close friends but everyone else is more an acquaintance, and how those latter relationships have been reduced to a few likes and comments here and there on social media.

But that’s not unique. Everyone is feeling that.

What else then.

I read about Joe Biden’s morning routine, I could write about mine, get up, stretch, have breakfast, go upstairs and start work.

Yeah that’s not really that interesting is it…

I’m running again, making my way through the Couch to 5K program, and in a week or so it’ll be complete.

Yeah, so there’s that.

What an odd time we live in.

OK, I give up.

To be honest between our recent engagement, the arrival of Daisy, and just getting on with life day by day, that feels like enough right now and whilst I have the usual morass of nonsense banging about in my head, and about six or seven blog posts in draft, this is about all I can muster up.

And my ohh my what a first world problem this, bemoaning the fact that I’m struggling to write down some words whilst I sit here in front of my shiny laptop in a warm home with food in the cupboards. What a privileged bubble to occupy.

But that’s a whole other thing. Right?

Or maybe that’s the point, that’s the blockage right there, the cold realisation that nothing I write here matters. Nothing I post is of consequence to anyone except me.

Yet that should be freeing, that should open the flood gates, if nothing I post here is of note, if it holds no real value then post and be damned! Except it’s never worked that way, has it. This is part of me, a filtered and focused view into my life, the parts of it I want to share with you at least. So dear reader, here we are again, another trip down the introspective rabbit hole? No, not today.

I’ll stop here and revisit those drafts I think, see if they can be cajoled and buffed into something. Anything.

Anyway, enough about me, how are you? Comments are open, what are you struggling with?

bookmark_borderShe said yes

Isn’t life a funny thing.

If you’d bumped into me 3 years ago and asked me what I thought the next few years would hold for me I most definitely would NOT have predicted any of the things that have since transpired although, to be fair, I don’t think most people would have picked ‘global pandemic’ out of the hat for their predictions either. I might have predicted (hoped) for a few things but I’m pretty certain that I would not have said that I would be engaged and living with my beautiful, loving fiancée and our two dogs.

That said, if you’d asked me 2 years ago then I probably would’ve told you that this is exactly where I would be, although back then the proposal I had tentatively planned didn’t end up happening (I refer you to oft mentioned global pandemic) but turns out that just made the proposal all the more special and I don’t think it could’ve gone any better.

She said yes, by the way.

The location of the proposal doesn’t matter, not to anyone else, but it means something to us. To be fair it doesn’t look like much, just few slabs of pavement that hundreds of people must walk on every day, but for us it’s where it all really started.

So that’s where we went, that’s where I asked her to marry me, that’s where she said yes.

Like I say, the place doesn’t matter nor the time, and whilst getting engaged was something we’d discussed and were both ready for, I managed to keep the day itself as a surprise. So it was just as surprising for me just how overcome with happiness I was in that moment. Just a boy, standing in front of a girl…. and yes, there were tears from both of us, I slipped the ring on her finger, we kissed and then floated home, fighting the urge to tell every passerby that ‘Hey, we just got engaged!’.

So here I am, living a life that makes me happier than I’ve ever been, feeling like I’ve finally discovered my true self, discovered a contentment and ease that I’ve never really felt before, and every single morning I wake up with a smile on my face, mostly because of the face that’s just kissed me awake.

Whilst I’ve mentioned my partner here a couple of times in passing I’ve found myself pausing each time, unsure of how much to divulge. However, given we just got engaged I think it’s time to properly introduce her and the role she’s played in my life over these past couple of years.

Her name is Rebecca (Becca), she has beautiful big eyes and a cute bum but, more importantly, her quiet strength, confidence, relentless taking of the piss, and genuine love for me is something I want to shout from the rooftops. I feel seen for the first time in a long time. I feel enabled to be me, with all the flaws that entails. I’ve never felt so sure about something, so positive that this is right. We talk about ‘us’ often and both say the same thing, both of us STILL pinching ourselves that this is real, this is our life, and my oh my are we just so damn happy!

With all that in mind then I wonder why I’ve not really mentioned her here. It’s not like we’ve been hiding away on the rest of social media, but I guess here is where my words land and fail and stand in history for the world to see. Ahhh the world. But the thing is if I’m so happy and so content, why shouldn’t I be vocal about her, why shouldn’t I be writing about her us, about us? What was giving me pause?

At first I think it was to protect ‘us’, and will admit there was a part of me that, considering my previous relationships – throughout all of which I also felt love – wondered if proclaiming that I’ve found happiness again could somehow be construed as putting down those previous relationships, marking them as somehow less important or less meaningful, or just ‘less’ in some way?

I know I’m not the first person to be in this position and it’s easy to say that time moves on for everyone and not every relationship works, I’m a divorcee after all. And it’s not that I look back on my previous relationships and think ill of them, more that they weren’t ultimately right for me (even if I didn’t always truly appreciate why at the time) and now they are over. That sounds cold but it’s the truth. Yes I was happy at times, and yes I felt love for those people, but in the end those relationships weren’t right for me for a multitude of different reasons that I’m not going to get into here (ever).

I guess if you remove all the emotions the reality is simple, those relationships are in the past, they helped me learn and grow, they helped me change, and this is where I find myself now.

But then I found myself pondering what makes this relationship different? Why is Becca so special to me?

Editors note: Yes. He overthinks things sometimes. No. It’s not always a bad thing.

It’s hard to be specific but, as cliched as it seems, the simple fact is that we clicked and fell in love almost straight away. Even if we didn’t want to admit it at the time, we both knew it, both knew where it was heading and it was just a matter of time.

Looking at the early days of our relationship it’s obvious now, that initial attraction was deeper than the usual quick bursts of lust, the simplicity of the emotions I was experiencing made it all seem so obvious and clear and very soon we were spending every minute we could together; I would pick her up from work (late) and drive to her place so we could see to the dogs, we’d fall asleep together in the wee small hours and I’d be up before dawn to drive home to change to go to work. I couldn’t stay away, and the few nights we did spend apart just made me feel listless and a bit lost.

There is a word we both use to describe how things have unfolded; “Obvious”. We both feel it, both love each other as deeply as the other and everything after that is, well, obvious. There isn’t any feeling of surprise about how things have panned out for us, it all seems (now) like this is just where both of our lives were heading and, now that we are here and on this journey together, everything else is easy, straightforward. Obvious.

And I really do feel so lucky to be part of her life. Becca continues to impress me, amaze me, and makes me feel good about myself. We support each other, listen when we talk, and nothing is ever a big deal. She also doesn’t put up with any bullshit which helps if I’m just being a tired irrational grump (seriously, just call me on it, it’s the best way to snap me out of it). We laugh often and when she kisses me awake in the morning I find myself smiling.

She supports me gently, not nagging or cajoling, just makes the odd suggestion now and then (OK, I’ll say it, she’s always right!) and she has given me a quiet confidence, something much more concrete than the blustering confidence I have grown so used to hiding behind. My family and friends can see the difference in me and said as much.

For my part I only hope I am able to support her as much as she has me this past year when my Dad passed away. She was there whenever I needed her, gently and lovingly supporting me and my family, leaving me alone when I needed space, holding me when I felt lost. She is kind and considerate, generous by nature, and passionate about helping others. She is beautiful in so many ways she doesn’t realise. And she has a cute bum.

How did I get so damn lucky?

I won’t lie, it feels odd to be starting over with someone. I presumed I’d passed the age of thinking about such things and whilst I’m not that old (yet) there was a period for a couple of years where I figured that being single wasn’t such a bad thing, I’d had my fun.

Age is but a number though and so here we are, engaged and on a new journey with each other. I’ve no real idea where we will end up and, whilst we have the usual dreams and aspirations that all couples do, this time they feel grounded and possible and have a whisper of anticipation about them, like the things we hope for our future are already out there waiting for us, beckoning us towards them.

And now we are engaged, and will be married, and I cannot stop smiling.

Isn’t life a funny thing.

bookmark_borderDear Dad

It’s been six months since my Dad suddenly passed away. Since then I’ve been working through my grief and, somehow, stumbled across an Instagram account by Dr Laura Williams who shares writing prompts as one way to help people process their grief. It immediately struck a chord with me as my go-to method for dealing with things is to start writing. What follows is a suggestion from one of her prompts (sort of mish-mashed into a couple of others).

I’m sharing this with you all because grief is odd and weird, but maybe you’ve had similar thoughts to me about your grief and that’s ok. It’s also ok if you haven’t or are still figuring it out, no matter how long it’s been.


Dear Dad,

I’m writing you this letter in the hope that my grief will give you some solace. I’m writing you this letter although I know you will never read it. I’m writing you this letter to help myself because you aren’t able to anymore.

I still can’t quite believe it’s only six months since you left us. Six months since those final days in the hospital, six months since the last goodbye, six months since the phone call from the hospital telling us you were gone.

We’d only left you an hour or so before, looking calm and peaceful and already at rest as we told you how much we loved you, and stifled the worst of our tears. We left the hospital and drove back to your home, then the three of us sat together in the living room, waiting for the call. I answered my phone and repeated the awful words to Mum and Jennie.

We all paused as it sank in.

Then we all gathered around Mum and cried together, the depth of our love growing with each sob as reality tried to push in; but we weren’t ready for it yet, so we held each other close and pushed it away, a closed circle of quiet strength, it was just too awful to consider our lives without you in it.

This was the form my grief took for the first few days, a constant battle of pushing away the horrible truth, keeping it as far away as possible so as somehow to keep it from being true. It just wasn’t possible, you couldn’t be gone, not yet, not with so much more life to witness, so much more love and joy to give. It wasn’t fair.

It still isn’t.

Since then my grief has morphed and moulded into something else, a constant companion waiting in the wings to interrupt at random moments; it’s odd the things that trigger memories of you, of us, but I take comfort that they are all happy memories even though they are now tinged with the sadness of losing you.

I cry sometimes without warning and give myself willingly to those moments, whether they are just a few silent whimpers or deep anguished sobs. Sometimes a single tear is all there is to mark another day without you in my life.

My grief is not constant.

Sometimes I catch myself realising that I didn’t think about you at all the day before. Is it a good thing that the time passed without you in it? Does it signal a lessening of my grief? Or is it a bad thing, marking the beginning of your slow removal from my conscious thoughts? I ask you these questions even though I know you can’t answer, even though they aren’t the kind of thing we’d even have discussed before. Before.

It’s funny now to think of the clichés that I’ve read and seen repeated too many times to count, all rendered true by your passing. I didn’t spend enough time with you, that’s for sure, but such things are clichés for a reason, no-one ever spends enough time with their loved ones. I don’t regret that, I have nothing but fond memories, joyful moments shared, to look back on and they always bring me the solace I expect.

I always thought my grief would be a huge mess of emotions, days of surviving, of clinging on to any scrap of love or happiness to get me through this unthinkable event. Then at some point I’d move into the humdrum days of the life of the fatherless, crying would become less and less frequent, thoughts of you would start to dim, a slow fade to black, sands dropping through the timer until empty.

But it isn’t like that at all. I knew this, of course, I’ve read enough accounts of grief to know that there aren’t defined stages, that they don’t follow or loop or arrive in any order, nor do they stay distinct, and nor are they the same for everyone. It is one thing to read about grief, quite another to experience it so profoundly but please know that I’m finding living with it is both harder and happier than I imagined, more bearable than I thought possible.

It’s odd to be learning about something new when all I want to do is walk in to the living room and see you sitting in your chair.

I learned a lot from you, inherited other things. My curiosity, my love of books, my propensity for tears, my silly sense of humour, my kindness, my geekiness.

I find myself diving deeper into my grief at times, not to wallow in it but to better understand it. I get an odd comfort from dredging up long forgotten memories, and I can feel the relief of still having those available to me, the emotions washing over me despite the cold melancholy that accompanies them. These moments are not a wailing, sobbing, grief but a nurturing one, a balm on my rawest emotions, a salve of all the love you gave me whilst you were with us. It’s nice to still be able to feel that, to sense you and know and trust the love you had for me, to keep you with me that way.

It’s been six months but we are coping, we are learning how to live without you by, I think, keeping us with you. We talk about you still, laughing at some things, bemoaning others and it makes me understand, now more than ever before, just how much I am my your son. The realisation makes me smile and cry all at the same time.

This is my grief, these constant combinations of emotions, never distinct, always tumbling over each other for attention, a morass of frustrated glee and quiet discomforts. A few times I’ve embraced the sadness completely.

One day I was overcome by the fact that you weren’t here anymore. I can’t recall what triggered it but it overwhelmed me so deeply. I sat on the edge of my bed and waited for the tears to arrive, but grief cannot be forced, my eyes remained dry and the lump in my throat, the rock lodged there, refused to yield. Later that day, walking Dave in the evening gloom, a line from a song suddenly brings tears to my eyes. I walk on and let them fall willingly to the ground.

I miss you.

I’m still trying to understand how to deal with this grief and all the maelstrom of emotions it brings from day to day but that’s ok, I have so many wonderful memories of you to lean on that as terrible as it is that you are gone, I console myself knowing that my life would’ve been far worse without you as my Father. It’s a constant whirl, a raging hatred of the world that took you away from us, and a blessed calm that we knew you at all. How rich our lives are now, how poor we would have been.

In the midst of all this there are realities we face as well, we know your IBM was worsening and soon you’d lose the ability to walk, to care for yourself and, undoubtedly more importantly in your eyes, to care for Mum. We know you’d have hated relying on others, to have carers fuss over you, and ultimately we know your end would have been a miserable one as you slowly lost all muscle control. It is not a life I would wish for anyone let alone my own Father, and I think we all take some tiny comfort that whilst your death was too soon and too sudden, at least it spared you that ignominy.

I spoke at your funeral. The words came easily at the time and still hold true, but I wanted to say so much more than I did but that day wasn’t all about me, after all I was speaking to, and for, others. I hope you would’ve been proud of me, I think you would. It took a lot for me to stand there, a fatherless child, but I knew it was something I had to do for you, for me.

I will say these things again, I will say how proud I am to be your son and I know you were proud of me, proud of the man I have become. These recent years, with my own happiness something you commented on, a rare occurrence in itself which made the impact all the deeper, the richest of them all. I learned so much from you, have inherited your penchant for bad puns, questionable colour choices, and a trend towards silliness to make people smile. I have your warmth and care stored deep in my heart, I echo your curiosity for new things, and hope I have your light caring touch when needed.

The more of you I recognise in me the happier it makes me, yet I still remain sad that we can’t sit down and discuss these things, not that we ever would.

Returning to cliché then and I’ll say that I hope I can become half the man you were, and if I can manage that I’ll have done well. And no, no jokes about your height, not this time.

I still can’t look at a photo of you without bursting into tears, I don’t think that will ever change.

I hate that you won’t ever read these words.

I miss you so terribly.

Your boy, always.

bookmark_borderWelcoming Daisy

Hello Daisy,

Welcome to the world, a world that just got a little bit better because you arrived. We’ve known your name for a while now and I have to say it suits you so well.

So in a similar vein, as I have been doing for your big sister Lucy, I thought I’d introduce myself; I’m Uncle G, hello! You’ll see me from time to time along with your Auntie Becca, but all you need to remember is I’m the one who will ALWAYS take you for ice cream.

I know things are all very new right now, but don’t worry, I’ve seen how loving and caring your Mummy and Daddy are so trust me when I say that you are in good hands, plus you have an extra special big sister to look out for you and be your friend. I guess I have to admit that little sisters are ok, and I promise I’ll do my best to guide your big sister in all the ways to help and tease you! Hey, it’s my job, I’m Unky G (blame your sister for that, although I do wonder how you’ll pronounce it).

Auntie Becca and I are so happy you are here and we are both looking forward to spending time with you, getting to know you, and spoiling you when we can although we know you’ll get plenty of that from all your grandparents! One thing to remember though, don’t get used to it, try and play it all down, act cool and they’ll only try harder to win your affections (even though they’ll have them already, but don’t let them know that either!).

I can’t wait to be part of your life as you grow and while I hope that you won’t copy your sister when she was a baby and burst into tears whenever I enter the room (thankfully that stopped after a couple of months) I know that she will help you with so many other things and will be there whenever you need her. As will I and Auntie Becca. That’s all part of the deal of being an Uncle you see, I’ll always have time for you, whenever you need it, even if it’s when you hit the stroppy teenager phase and need some time ‘away from that lot’, there will always be ice cream and hugs here for you. You should know that the same offer applies to your sister though, no favouritism here!

The world is a little bit upside down right now but hopefully, by the time you are ready to venture out into it and meet people properly for the first time, it’ll be a little bit more normal. Until then I’m sure there’ll be plenty of photos and video calls! And as soon as we can we will be there to meet you in person and give you a cuddle.

I know you’ll be loved and cared for so well by your family, and I’ve no doubt that in no time at all you’ll be sharing all your thoughts with everyone, likely at the same time, and speed, as your sister and your Mum. I do feel a little sorry for your Dad, he’s never going to get a word in edgeways.

So, welcome little Daisy, we hope to see you and get a first cuddle very soon!

Lots of love,

Uncle G and Auntie Becca