Grandchildren..? 15 3 11 (15) 25 1 23

As a thank you to my most recent big-time hitter of this blog, plus my other perhaps more regular viewers ..?

No, the best thing about being a Grandparent is that you don't have to wait around for an introduction but instead get immediate acceptance for being just the person you are, one of the merry band of four individuals if your charge should be so lucky...

And I would have to say that being a Granddad is probably the best deal of all because you probably made a mess of being a father the first time around and so you try perhaps just that bit harder than the grandmothers of this world when you get your second chance..? 

It was certainly a bit like that with my own single grandfather who survived into my childhood, when my own father had made an untimely exit during WW ll, to the extent that whenever I praised him to my mother his second of three daughters and forth of six children overall, she always ended up biting her tongue and saying: “He was no good to us, but he has been good to you...”

Then next week we are to visit our two teenage grandsons whose parents, my older son and his wife, take a week long spring break of 5 or 6 nights away leaving me I guess as the main grandparent to be around in their absence. This became apparent just a wee while ago when my wife announced that we shall be leaving early this coming Saturday, so we can arrive in the capital in good time to leave our car parked nearby our son's home, so we can back-track by Metro into the city to spend the day celebrating the birthday of one of our generation, a sister-in-law of my wife's, before returning in the evening to take charge of our grandchildren... Only my wife will be departing for home late on Sunday to be here Monday and Tuesday for other business to return to be with us on Wednesday... Nay bother!

And my own sister is tarred very much with the same brush… But then she brought up her family of 3 boys and a girl almost single-handed, a mother who in their Anglo-Irish family stayed home with their children most of her working life, whilst her husband, was also an absentee father as I, who now when she and he have a total of 10 grandchildren is not so enamoured about baby-sitting duties, because she has found a new life for herself in retirement: visiting her church and tending the sick in hospitals etc., etc., etc. Whilst it her husband my brother-in-law who has regular child-minding duties… hahaha

Over last weekend I was both surprised and delighted with the older of my two grandsons we are to child-mind next week when I contacted him with the WhatsApp of my new smart phone to ask when it was that we visited Stockholm together on another such child-minding exercise, when we made a visit to the Museum of Technology there? When I was delighted to visit the section which dealt with some of the more famous inventions of women, which I mentioned in my last blog honouring women on International Women’s Day, and the exchange of messages appeared interminable as he was so interested to engage his Granddad, the only one he gets to meet incidentally, and there was no way I was about to cut him short... Well I ended up saying how we were looking forward to our up-coming visit when he responded yet again concluding his message by boasting “No parents for a whole week!” suitably adorning the message with smileys showing both shock horror at is own irreverence but overall delight nevertheless.

Have a good day everyone and if are fortunate enough to be so gifted as a Granddad just make sure you don’t blow it as I did the first time around..!?  

pics from International Women's Day party in local Town Hall: of Kurdish ladies who made the delightful meal and a lady singer who sang some memorable songs including Amazing Grace in English.

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