What a year, 2013 was!

2013 has been a memorable year for me and Ishbel.

As you know we have 5 grand kids and as they get older they get funnier and our love for them just keeps getting stronger and stronger.  They have managed to bring so much laughter into our lives and I am sure they will continue to do so.  Even as I 'pen' this little year end tale I can hear Holly Kennedy laughing and giggling, she has just been to the loo determined not to copy grandmas's earlier disaster who apparently went to the loo, got her onsie off only to discover she sat on the loo with the sleeve of said garment IN THE LOO, and then proceeded to pee on it, what can I say, it is New Years Eve and she did have a glass of the red stuff with dinner ..... which caused much hilarity and rolling on the floor holding sore sides from laughing at poor grandma. Me I don't have that problem with my onsie as mine has a double action top to bottom and bottom to top zipper, oh yeah we guys have it easy, don't we.....

From L to R: Shannon (7), Lacey May (2 &3/4s), Holly (7), Charlie (7) and Mollie (10 &3/4s) 

Although I do feel for poor Charlie sometimes when the five of them get together and he is outnumbered and outflanked at every turn, bless him.

Talking of onsie's, Jennifer has been threatening to buy one for me for months and I said she shouldn't waste her money as I would never wear one, but she could bury me in it, if and when I ever die; as usual, she ignored me and so as dad's and granddads do all over the world, I had to bow to the inevitable ......

On the left with Charlie and Holly and on the right with Lacey Mae, Mollie and Shannon...

The things we have to do to please our loved ones and in doing that nothing else really matters does it?

2013 was entered into with the same note of optimism that Ishbel and I enter every New Year, hoping that the new Year will always be slightly better than the last.  And, all in all it has been a good year.  The kids continue to grow in stature (well apart from poor Mollie who continues to not grow horizontally, but that smile....)  as well as in learning. Their love of all things life, is inspirational.  We continue, as their Mums and Dads do, to always learn something new and to read everything they can get their hands on.  Charlie won a reading competition a few months ago and his prize, to manage the local library in Raunds one Saturday.  He asked if Holly could be co manager and so she too joined in on that.  I did get a pang at that as she can be a right wee bossy boots and I pictured her in my minds eye marching up to some unsuspecting patron to demand that they keep the noise down and that they should turn the pages quietly, but apparently it went off without a hitch. All 4 biggies continue to get praise and awards and certificates from their respective schools and they love the learning process too.

We had some great days out too during the year, tiring but great with visits to fun parks and picnics in the park, the kids continue to face time me relentlessly, checking up that I am not overdoing it and taking it easy.

Since the news in May of the dreaded cancer it has put a bit of a damper on things, but I am determined to not let it spoil anything for me, Ishbel or the kids.  Mindful that the outcome is probably inevitable and it surely must be as I made one phone call to the insurance company, they sent a one page questionnaire and then paid out within a couple of weeks with no further contact, so that was helpful and stress free and I hope that anyone else in my position is treated with the same stress free helpfulness as I was,  so well done and a big thank you to Legal and General for that.  The thing is, and much to the annoyance of loved ones to begin with,  I have been more than a little blasé about the news, primarily I suppose since joining the Army in 1971 I had come close to death on any number of occasions: having been shot, crippled in a parachuting accident that nearly killed me, trapped down a pot hole after a storm started and it began to flood, trapped on my own in the middle of a riot while serving in Northern Ireland, canoe sinking on me twice, once in the middle of the English Channel and then in the middle of the not so Blue Danube, Rock climbing and abseiling incidents, couple of 3 ton military truck crashes, entering a clearing in Kenya and being confronted with an angry herd, is that the correct collective name, of Baboons and the list goes on. So, as you can see it has been a long time coming and while the greatest fear for me since leaving the Army was being confronted by a keeky nappy, heysus, I can face down death but put an eeky baby bum in front of me and I just want to run and hide as it always made me gag.... but it had to be done, sheesh.  So the threat of my impending doom from cancer was just another one of those moments.

I wont say that I haven't shed a tear since the news, but they have always been in those special moments we have with our children and our grandchildren or when suddenly a thought pops into my mind about something one of those wonderful five grand kids had said to me recently or remembering something that they had done which made me laugh or smile and there are plenty of those moments, and I suddenly think, hell I'm not going to be about for long to see them grow up and turn into the wonderful caring human beings that I know that they are going to turn out to be, and I do choke up a little and have a bit of a blub, but it soon passes and I am back to being stone heart again accepting the inevitable.  Apparently I probably have less than a year but do you know what I think that is the worse case scenario.

I went on the chemo and felt fine during the first three weeks.  Started the second three week session and felt suicidal so they took me off it.  Once it was out of my system a couple of weeks later I was back to feeling great again. And that's how it has been since July.  There has been the odd week when I thought the damned thing was going to do a John Hurt (from the original and best Alien movie,)on me and burst from my chest shouting 'Baby, I'm home'

Having said that, generally I feel great and I know that I am going to be around for a while yet and with what I hope is my own positive outlook and that of my family and friends I reckon that I will be around to write another year end review at the end of 2014.

Bobby, Jim and John my brothers are all keeping in contact although I seem to have lost Bobs number, tit that I am.  Marylin Shepherd Warner keeps a candle burning for me in the Cathedral of the Plains and +Julia Barrett +Michael Hicks @ian_beckett +Brian Meeks @Julianstockwin from twitter and google all keep me on my toes with their support and friendship as do many many others who keep giving me unstinting support, love and friendship and even although I have largely scaled back my social media interaction you should know that I love you all and appreciate every kind thought and word and not so kind one from Hicks, but I suspect he knows that I know that one of these days Ishbel are gonna turn up on the doorstep and I'm going to take over the kitchen and force feed him whether he likes it or not in Florida and to Jules and Oscar too in Napa ..... one of these days

Have a great New Year my Friends and I'll see you all in 2014 

And finally thanks to my girls Marie and Jennifer and to Brian and Steve and Peter and especially to Ishbel for their love and support and to Jennifer for constantly reminding me to 'stop milking it'

xxxxx

A Ramble

Well, 2012 is just about over and we, Ishbel and me, are ending it, the way it began,with 6 year olds Charlie and Holly, of course last year they were 5. There cousin, Mollie, 9, going on 10 is still the petite and most gorgeous creature on the planet, as are all of our grand kids. O.K. I'm biased but we were just talking about this recently, Mollie and me.

It was her, she started it,and it was about three weeks ago, the telly was on in the corner but it was just being used for music, music and books that's the big things in our extended family, sure we like certain TV shows and movies, but music and books are the main attention grabbers with all of us.

So, anyway the music was playing through the big box in the corner and after a while the picture of what is playing defaults to a random slide show of the photographs on my computer and comments were being passed to and fro about the various stages of growth when Mollie turned to me and said, "Grand dad, was I a beautiful baby?" We'll, before I can answer grandma chirps in with a, "of course you were darling, all babies are beautiful"

But Mollie knows her granddad and turns back to me with those enormous and beautiful brown eyes and says, "Well granddad, was I" Now what can one say to a 9 year old girl when asked that question, but answer truthfully.

"Off course you were my darling, you were one of the most beautiful babies ever born, well at least for the first couple of weeks, but then like most babies you turned into an ugly pumpkin, in fact one of the ugliest" Mollies reaction to this was, "Oh grandad!" And her 6 year old sister Shannon sniggered and laughed until I told her that she was even uglier and truth be told she was, she really was.....

Then of course there is Charlie and Holly separated from Shannon by a couple of weeks, they weren't too ugly when they were born and I think the fact that Holly had to be placed in an incubator with all those wires and attachments seemed to make her look so beautiful, but once again they older they got the uglier they became but as with all four of them, somewhere between pre school and school, they seemed to blossom turning into beautiful little people. People with personalities, people with thoughts of their own, able to converse and read and take on things that are happening around them.

Last Sunday, Holly and I were in the car on our own on our way to pick up grandma and as usual the gramophone needle she has been infected with just keeps going and going and she was telling me all sorts of things when suddenly she started telling me about the children who were the same age as her who had been shot in America! What! She is 6 and she wants to talk about Sandy Hook.

I have to admit I was thrown and stuttered, I don't stutter, ever. But this made me miss a beat. So I asked what she knew. She replied that her and Charlie had been in the car with mummy when it came on the news that a bad man had broken into a school like theirs and shot a lot of the children! I asked her how that made her feel. She said it made her "feel sad as Santa would probably already have their presents in his sack and they won't get them and their mummies and daddies will be sad too. Once again I have to admit to being a little thrown by the turn the in the conversation and just as I was preparing to give a profound reply, we had arrived outside the department store grandma works in and Holly says, "Where is she?"

Ah the sweet refrain, in this case, for me at least, of safety. I don't know what I would have said to Holly on that subject as I certainly couldn't repeat what I and others had been saying in the office about the person who did this and the stupidity of the laws in America that allow you to buy a gun with very little background checks, or of a country that has so many guns that even if you are not allowed to buy one, you seemingly can easily obtain one along with super magazines to hold extra bullets to allow you to kill more people or children with one squeeze of the finger, but you can't buy a kinder egg as it has been deemed unsafe and a child may choke on the small toy inside the chocolate egg! Merry Christmas to the NRA then for their continued obstinacy on gun ownership.

We had a visit in September from Julia R Barrett and Oscar from California. Friends we made on Twitter, it was a fleeting visit but highly enjoyable and cemented our friendship or at least Ishbel and I hope it did. Oscar has promised that if we ever manage to get out there to visit that he will be taking me to watch the San Francisco Giants Baseball team in action, their home team. Julia and another Twitter friend Tim, TWDitmer, seem to have a bit of a grudge fight going on over their respective teams and the conversations are funny to observe as they discuss live, the merits of their respective teams as they play bat and ball..... Bless

Twitter has brought so many people into our lives this year, far to many to mention but a few special ones are;

JWManus
PenelopeRomance
Wee Mickey, Michael Hicks
Julian Stockwin
ChefJohn Malik

and so many more and Marylin Warner who is not on Twitter but always has a kind word, even for an old fart like me, through the medium of her blog which can be found at:  Things I want to tell my Mother

Oh, we went up to Inverness at the beginning of December (I know, still no blog..... There is a draft in here some where) for our niece Sarah's wedding to young Mark Surherland. David and Jill, Sarah's mum and dad gave them and us, a perfect day, weather wasn't great but then it was December, but it did stay dry for the occasion and the reception and party after, just hit the right note. We wish them many happy years together as a married couple to add to the seven they have already been together.

I hit a bit of a hiatus in September too after Julia and Oscar left, nothing to do with them, work related and it can be seen in the number of blog posts I had been writing prior to that, in double figures every month up to then, and then barely in single figures. Still recovering from that but really hoping that 2013, as we do for every year, turns out to be better than the last, for all of us.

Politicians and politics have been getting right up my nose this year but I haven't really even been able to find the where with all to even berate them on my blog. In many respects I think it has been a case of, 'well, you ignore us and do what the hell you are going to do anyway, regardless of what the majority thinks, so I have been ignoring them, which is not good. But even political commentators on twitter are largely as bad as the politicians themselves bad mouthing the other party for things that they do ignoring the fact that the party they support, do the same things, but it's OK when they do, cos we support you. One guy this week was whingeing on about the number of Conservative party donors who were awarded honours in the New Years list, but what about the number of Labour Party donors who get the same honours when Labour is in power; hypocritical dick heads, all of them and they wonder why we are sickened by them all! Even one of my favs in the Labour Party Diane Abbot was having a go this week about biscuits of all things - give it a bloody rest will you ....

Oh, Got a surprise comment on one of my recent blogs from Rob McMeekin, a name from my past who hopefully will be in touch again soon.  One of the Nicest, Most Helpful, Well Mannered Men on the planet and my good fortune to have been acquainted with and I suspect the good fortune of everyone he comes into contact with #TOPMAN

So, anyway this has just been a wee ramble and I hope not too depressing and all it remains is for Ishbel and me to wish you all;

A Happy New Year