Absence

Authentic note to the principal of the J.R. Masterman School - September 29th 2016

I will be absent from this blog space over the weekend. Please accept my apologies.

Shirley and I are heading down to London on Friday morning  on a choo-choo train and we won't  be back until late Monday afternoon when I hope to blog again - assuming of course my existence continues that far.

Initially, we were mainly heading down to the capital to attend a concert at The Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night. However, Ian will be over in The Netherlands on business until Sunday night so we thought we would make a long weekend of it and support his girlfriend Sarah with our grandson little Zachary who will be one month old tomorrow.

All seems to be going well with him. He's developing nicely and putting on weight but so far the parental care he has received has very much been a joint project with Ian giving his fair share of the required attention. I sensed that Sarah would miss his input and that our presence would be appreciated. I hope I am right.

Of course, we won't be there for four hours on Saturday night but the rest of the time we'll be there for her until Ian returns on  Sunday evening. Sarah has reserved a Sunday lunch table for us in a nearby pub  and it will make a nice change for me not to be cooking. Naturally Zach will be coming too but he won't be ordering roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. However, Yorkshire Pudding will no doubt be singing to him again.

It's a lovely feeling to sing sweetly to a baby and see him or her looking up, trying to work out what the sound is and where it is coming from. I rather think that cave dwellers would have also sung to their babies thousands of years ago - to distract and to soothe them. To use a popular platitude - Some things never change.