Children middle aged..? 17 3 5 (12) 25 1 29

Yesterday my younger son P took the 15:37 train to depart his stay of 2 nights in his parental home to spend the next two nights at his brother S's home in the greater conurbation of the capital before his departure for London and his own homecoming to Suffolk. When he arrived here late on Wednesday he stayed the first night with his brother S to arrive here the following day around 17:37. Typically for him these days everything was arranged down to booking his trains from UK, his return ticket to the capital a distance of 130 km, just over 80 miles, cost him €8 whilst the same journey for me a pensioner paying on the day of travel at a price discounted by 50% would have cost me €14, US $14,87 at today's rate of exchange.

You have to admit he and his family of his wife J and their twin daughters F and Si, both in their 20s, are on the whole the best organised of the three families comprising our extended family. The last time we met P was when he visited with his wife at the end of June beginning of July last year and their daughters visited separately towards the end of July beginning of August. His brother and his wife Sa plus their teenage boys A and D on the other hand we meet more regularly say most months of the year maybe 10 times a year in all either here or our visiting them. 

P is the more precocious of our 2 boys and my wife, A-E would admit to being an early developer herself entering puberty before many of her colleagues whereas S and I were late. They each became parents aged 23 to 24 whilst S and I became parents at 30 and 28.

Now family traits is not something my elder son S likes to discuss in any great detail whilst I don’t have a problem discussing the subject though at the same time I realised a long time ago that people tend in my view to be total mix-ups in terms of which parents they inherits some of their let’s say more outstanding physical features from, like the ones I have mentioned already.

Language is perhaps another case in point because in the telephone when the boys were younger they very easily could be mistaken for being their father me since our voices are very similar and when they were younger their accents were not radically different. Well maybe that has all changed nowadays because whilst I hail from the north west of England my English has kept its northern open vowels, perhaps undergoing a certain refinement to weed out the more colloquial northern dialect but with a conscious decision to retain its northerness despite living for a time in the south of England and more than 30 years abroad in Europe. S too has lived away from the north of England where he grew up for most of his adult life either in the south of England where he studied 3 years, in Japan where he spent the next 5 years or Northern Europe where he has lived since, and his English is not so radically different from what it set out to be. P’s English on the other hand more than ever is now peppered with the long vowels of the southerners of England: “baath” for bath, “draauft” for draught as in beer…

P’s mother’s English is not something she has ever been proud of and one reason for this must have to do with the fact there have been too many northern influences whereas if she had a choice I am sure she would prefer to speak Estuary English..?       

Finally younger brother is well known for his brevity of speech with many jokes abounding about his monosyllabic answers on occasion. I guess too he is a fairly private person not given to telling so much about his innermost feelings… Not that he is unable to hold forth at great length on a great many subjects but overall I would have to say his brother is the more talkative, a trait his mother accuses me of being excessively so from time to time..?

Writing a blog about such things is not something either my wife or younger son would ever do, and my elder son? Who knows maybe when he gets into old age perhaps like me he will write blogs but who would read him? I am happy writing these things down and hopefully in the fullness of time at least my older boy will find something of interest among them? Have a good day everyone!