There’ve recently been 2 celebrations: birthday lunch with my surrogate family and Father’s day with the boys and Ali.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember those aren’t your chocolate buttons
and on Father’s day you don’t get to do the work
Ageing is so interesting, its swings and roundabouts better navigated after a few laps around the block. Things are more easily appreciated for what they are, as opposed to how they might appear to greener eyes. I’m reminded of Pandora’s box, when hope remained behind after the miseries of the world had flown, and Julian of Norwich’s dictum “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
The year ahead looks set to be more memorable than miserable, with children making their way in the world and the old Duck on the bench waiting for the rat adventurer within to escape its flawed design.
Hiding somewhere under the cardboard is a swan – if you know your onions.
Then there’s the business of creating a business…
Nowadays, birthdays come with a reminder not to take things for granted; that strength, mobility and wit have a shelf life and need looking after. So mornings begin with sun salutations, prayers, a triaging of the to-do list, and end with a less addled head and a cold TV.
There are better things.
Amen
Something about boys 
“Cynics object to treating hope as a virtue because it rarely bears fruit. But that, say hope’s defenders, is to see things upside down. Hope is a virtue independent of its realisations; it is an intrinsic value, an end in itself, allied to courage and imagination, a positive attitude full of possibility and aspiration. For that reason you discover more about a person when you learn about his hopes than when you count his achievements, for the best of what we are lies in what we hope to be.” AC Grayling