I named him after you...25 4 27
In-between thinking what I crap father I was, when I was younger during the smaller holidays which came up, occasions like Easter, Whitsuntide, etc., I would collect the youngsters together: my two boys with maybe one or two of their friends and take them all off to the English Lake District for a few days hill walking. The friends being "Nidge" and "Russ" most commonly, like the time we all went to Conniston Copper Mines, standing out as a laugh a minute, check in out with S and P!. But also with maybe a cousin "Nick" thrown in as well, like the time my eldest son stayed home: probably to study for his upcoming GCE O-level examinations, when with my younger son P we took the route from Ambleside via the walk passing Kilnshaw Chimney over to Patterdale, then staying at the Patterdale Youth Hostel...
As they grew older and we moved country to Finland their presence on my forages into "the Lakes" or into the Highlands of Scotland were often accompanied by one or other of their cousins, my sister Marion's children. Again Nick would figure when for a long weekend I picked him up and his fellow Royal Marine, Chewing-gum Head, aka John Grace, outside their Barracks in Abroath, shortly after their return from the first Gulf War in 1991, for a weekend when we climbed Stob Ghabhar. Then a few days later when John was replaced by S, my elder son, for a climb involving Ben More up from Crianlarich. Nick's younger brother Gregory getting his first visit to Scotland's Munro Hills at the tail-end of an Easter Weekend with my brother J and his wife M together with their dog Peppa, when my son S also figured: Gleouraich in the Loch Quoich area in 1993, when driving a Rent-A-Runner consumed more oil than petrol for the 400 mile round trip! lol
Sometimes with my wife A-E when we would rent a cottage in the Lakes or Scotland for a longer stay when I recall we got to accommodate even younger brother Thomas or elder sister Louise and her family of husband Dave, with daughter Ella and son Louie. These occasions tying in with twice annual visits I got to make business trips to Brussels, but which I would take a swing through UK and include a weekend so that the expense to the company was reduced by being abroad over the weekend. Or alternately during summer holiday periods when we would visit UK for longer periods. Then if I happened to be required to visit the USA I might take in a weekend visiting England and Scotland en route to get the last hills as yet unclimbed on eg the North Kintail Ridge 13th October 1991.
In a word that despite living abroad in what became my adoptive country of Finland for most of the rest of my life I continued to visit the UK at least 2 or 3 times in the early years which as time rolled on concentrated my attention to finishing my round of the 382 Munro hills of Scotland until 2019 when the advent of Covid 19 curtailed by air travel activities when instead I would continue to climb Munro height of 914.4 metres (greater than 3000 feet in Munro's Day) but in Northern Finland and Arctic Norway.
Over the years then with my wife we did a pretty good job of staying in touch with the British side of the family when in addition to England and Scotland we would also visit North Wales and stay in touch with more cousins, and in the fullness of time get to attend all the marriages of the next generation, though in some cases this involved overseas travel, as did staying in touch with them otherwise, like the visits to Vietnam and Oman as a follow-on to Thomas and Claudia's wedding in Toscany in 2011, and Thomas's several visits to us for sailing purposes and otherwise with his young family.
That one of these members of the next generation would name one or other of their children after yours truly was a totally mind blowing experience but all in all suggested that if I didn't rate myself as one of the best father figures I can't have done all that badly as one of my sister's two brothers, or what, in the role of an uncle: always a special person in Persion culture, my Persian friend Reza once advised me!?
This a pic taken of another example of someone from the third generation who became the recipient of a very respectable name of someone belonging to yet another culture..?
As they grew older and we moved country to Finland their presence on my forages into "the Lakes" or into the Highlands of Scotland were often accompanied by one or other of their cousins, my sister Marion's children. Again Nick would figure when for a long weekend I picked him up and his fellow Royal Marine, Chewing-gum Head, aka John Grace, outside their Barracks in Abroath, shortly after their return from the first Gulf War in 1991, for a weekend when we climbed Stob Ghabhar. Then a few days later when John was replaced by S, my elder son, for a climb involving Ben More up from Crianlarich. Nick's younger brother Gregory getting his first visit to Scotland's Munro Hills at the tail-end of an Easter Weekend with my brother J and his wife M together with their dog Peppa, when my son S also figured: Gleouraich in the Loch Quoich area in 1993, when driving a Rent-A-Runner consumed more oil than petrol for the 400 mile round trip! lol
Sometimes with my wife A-E when we would rent a cottage in the Lakes or Scotland for a longer stay when I recall we got to accommodate even younger brother Thomas or elder sister Louise and her family of husband Dave, with daughter Ella and son Louie. These occasions tying in with twice annual visits I got to make business trips to Brussels, but which I would take a swing through UK and include a weekend so that the expense to the company was reduced by being abroad over the weekend. Or alternately during summer holiday periods when we would visit UK for longer periods. Then if I happened to be required to visit the USA I might take in a weekend visiting England and Scotland en route to get the last hills as yet unclimbed on eg the North Kintail Ridge 13th October 1991.
In a word that despite living abroad in what became my adoptive country of Finland for most of the rest of my life I continued to visit the UK at least 2 or 3 times in the early years which as time rolled on concentrated my attention to finishing my round of the 382 Munro hills of Scotland until 2019 when the advent of Covid 19 curtailed by air travel activities when instead I would continue to climb Munro height of 914.4 metres (greater than 3000 feet in Munro's Day) but in Northern Finland and Arctic Norway.
Over the years then with my wife we did a pretty good job of staying in touch with the British side of the family when in addition to England and Scotland we would also visit North Wales and stay in touch with more cousins, and in the fullness of time get to attend all the marriages of the next generation, though in some cases this involved overseas travel, as did staying in touch with them otherwise, like the visits to Vietnam and Oman as a follow-on to Thomas and Claudia's wedding in Toscany in 2011, and Thomas's several visits to us for sailing purposes and otherwise with his young family.
That one of these members of the next generation would name one or other of their children after yours truly was a totally mind blowing experience but all in all suggested that if I didn't rate myself as one of the best father figures I can't have done all that badly as one of my sister's two brothers, or what, in the role of an uncle: always a special person in Persion culture, my Persian friend Reza once advised me!?
This a pic taken of another example of someone from the third generation who became the recipient of a very respectable name of someone belonging to yet another culture..?
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