Number one son turned up late yesterday. He works a fishing boat out of Eastbourne, but trained up in Grimsby - if that means anything to my Northern friends, well, he's had any vestiges of Southern Wuss beaten out of him and is now completely qualified to take the piss out of everybody else who goes slower than him, running round the deck doing press-ups and chin ups and pretending to fall asleep, waiting for another ton of crabs or lobster to be chucked his way. Adrenalin junky.
The picture is pre or early fishing days - he is much leaner now with outrageously disproportional arms and calves - a skinny, six-foot-something Popeye. It's becoming really rather hard to see skin from scar tissue on his forearms.
He seems to have grown up mentally, for his latest girlfriend, and is off to Tenerife this week with her family, having saved for something for the first time in his life. Every other time so far, the available cash has become more of a temptation than the original goal. Hurray, Andy can balance the books. Finally.
They leave at the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning so today they have already had a couple of panicked phone calls about shopping for sandals and shorts, and changing up the money, all of which he will have to do tomorrow, when she wanted to spend the day packing.
I guess its different for a girl, but all a bloke seems to need is one set of real clothes for lift off and touch down in England, half a dozen t shirts and pairs of swimming trunks or shorts, and a good pair of sandals, plus sunblock. A supermarket carrier bag, effectively.
Sunscreen and moisturiser are going to be the things he decides he won't need, I am sure of it. He never wears any of that on the boat, is as brown as a jar of coffee and toughened, but theres a difference between telling him the dry heat of Tenerife is not the wet heat of England (let alone the English sea spray) and getting him to appreciate it.
If he ends up shut in the villa with cracks and burns, I am certain she will kill him. I would.
Eeeh, its a scary and bittersweet thing watching your kids grow up, even from a distance.
5 comments:
Awwww. He looks cute in that old piccy. But I bet he'd deck anyone that dared to call him cute!
He'll feel a great sense of achievement from paying for his holiday. Good on him.
Cute? No if it was a woman, any woman, he would grin from ear to ear.
If it was a huge brick-outhouse kind of a bloke with hands like bunches of bananas, he'd probably swim for it!
:-)
I believe my mother is still waiting for the day I can balance the books. I'm getting on it. ;)
I hope he has a great time on vacation, hopefully someone will have an extra bottle of sunscreen.
I don't know about scary. Sometimes it's bloody terrifying.
Oh man, two days back to work and I am so far behind…
He is beautiful, and I mean that in a manly way of course. Those huge eyes, like yours. Those perfect white, straight teeth, and I love the grin, biting his tongue, you must have been teasing him, or he was teasing you.
I agree entirely, watching our children grow up is frightening and it seems to be more so watching young men grow up, at least that has been my experience. I have three children, a daughter who is twenty five, my oldest son who is twenty three and my youngest son who is eight. So like you, I have more to watch come up. My daughter, apart from dropping out of college has never given me any reason to worry; she’s strong, she’s resilient, she’s independent, my oldest son, well he is another story…but he will make it. I think it takes young men longer most times, maybe.
Parenthood never ends though, and no matter how old they are we still worry about, fret over and love them like mad, and we probably wouldn’t have it any other way, at least the loving part.
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