Wednesday July 17th 2024 - "Men! Have you shaved your eyebrows today haha!"

Dear reader, here's another personal question for you! And do tell me if I'm "crossing any forbidden boundaries here, won't you (!): (a) Are you male or female (or a mixture, or anything similar), and (b) are you an "adult"? Lots of us are, aren't we - adults I mean - and if so, you may have experienced a "coming-of-age" ritual at some point in your life.

And hopefully it wasn't the sort of coming-of-age ritual they give to young men in the Congo. Do you remember Ben Fogle's shock exposure, back in February, to the way they do it "down there" (and when I say "down there", I mean "down there" in more ways than one!!!!).

Do you remember also the relief that Fogle, the seasoned traveller, expressed in his BBC-rental-car as he sped away from "that Congolese village" (!), simultaneously recalling his own, more leisurely coming-of-age "ritual" in 1980's London. 

Remember?

Yes, and thankfully, in the West, the coming-of-age ritual is likely, at worst, to consist of no more terrible an injury than the sort of brief ceremony such as happened to this young boy in Tigard, Oregon [source: Onion News]:

This whole "coming-of-age" issue has been very much on the minds of my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me, because our grandson Isaac, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, is coming up to his 14th birthday next week.

Last year, for Isaac's 13th birthday present, Lois and I got him  a "magic water bottle" that cost about £30, which he could take with him whenever he did a "run" or something vague out in the countryside. Lois and I didn't  quite get the concept, but apparently you can get some flavoured "pods" with the bottle, that make you think you are drinking flavoured water but you aren’t actually. (???).

What madness !!!!!

This year Isaac is going to turn 14, and we got the shock of our lives today, when Isaac's mother, our daughter Alison (49) told us that this year for his birthday, Isaac wants a bottle of some sort of "personal fragrance". 

What???????!!!!!

This can only mean one thing, Lois and I suspect - that Isaac has "discovered girls". Yikes !!!! Time marches on!!!!!

one of three choices of personal fragrance, that our daughter

Alison is suggesting we could give Isaac for his 14th birthday

Could it be coincidence that Isaac has recently returned from a 2-week school trip to Tianjin, China with a mixed-sex group of about 25-30 students from his school in Liphook, Hampshire, where the group are studying Mandarin Chinese, a group that included maybe half a dozen or so girls?

Let's hope nothing untoward happened on the trip, but some of the girls in the party may have caught Isaac's eye, at least, that's for sure!

flashback to last week: our grandson Isaac with a group of fellow students 

from his school in Liphook, Hampshire: all students of Mandarin

Chinese: pictured here in Tianjin, China on their 2-week "study trip"

It can be every mother's nightmare, can't it, when her son starts bringing girls home - it hasn't happened yet with Isaac, I hasten to stress (!) - but it can only be a question of time, can't it.

And that mother's-anxiety-for-her-sons was beautifully expressed, just the other day, by actress Wendy Craig, as middle-aged mum Ria, in a rerun of the old 1970's TV sitcom "Butterflies". Did you see it?

And it's not just the girls' youthful appearance that "get's Ria's goat". It's more their attitude.

Ultimately, however, it's the loss of subtlety and delicacy, isn't it, that's the first thing we "old codgers" notice:

Poor Ria !!!!!

Well, as regards Isaac, however, Lois and I will just have to wait and see. And we'll get an opportunity to gauge Isaac's level of "maturity" in a couple of days' time, which we're looking forward to, to put it mildly.

This is because Isaac's whole family - minus Isaac's older sister Josie (17) who's on a school trip in Tanzania, would you believe (!) - will be spending a long weekend in the Malvern area starting on Saturday. That's to say, Lois and I will get the chance to "hobnob" with our daughter Alison, her husband Ed, plus Isaac and Rosalind.

So watch this space !!!!!

flashback to January 2020: the family watching a women's soccer match

at Reading Stadium, (left to right) Ed, Josie, Isaac, Alison and Rosalind

Change - it's just part of modern life today, isn't it, and Lois and I are just going to have to "roll with the punches", as they say. 

Isaac's turning 14 and really growing up now; his sister Josie (17) is now routinely driving her car to her school in Guildford, and this week she'll be helping villagers with projects in Tanzania; and Rosalind (16) jetting off to Ecuador next year to do something similar. Yikes!!!

flashback to yesterday: Josie (front, second from left) on a bus

with fellow students from her school in Guildford, Surrey,

leaving Dar-es-Salaam on a 300-mile trip to the village school

in Maendeleo, where they'll be helping residents with "projects"

Meanwhile, our other daughter Sarah, who returned to the UK last year with her family - husband Francis and twins Lily and Jessica (10), after 7 years "down under" in Perth, Western Australia, may soon be on the move again. The twins are finishing their primary school's summer term at nearby Alcester this week, so, after that, Sarah will now be free to take a new job if she sees a good one.

Maybe they'll be moving somewhere else in the UK, but the family have got the "travel bug" after their time in Australia, so who knows where they'll go next.

flashback to 2018 and Gnarabup WA, where the Indian Ocean meets

the Southern Ocean: I sit at one of a seaside café's outside tables in my

then shiny-new grey 'Margaret River Region' hoodie, with our daughter Sarah, 

son-in-law Francis, and our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica 

- awwwww!!!!

Will they move to somewhere in Europe next? I personally don't think so - Sarah and Francis aren't the "linguist" type, so I can't see them struggling with a foreign language.

That means it'll have to be an Anglozone country, somewhere in the world. Their best friends in Australia were a couple with 2 children of similar ages to the twins. The mum and dad were in what could be called a "mixed marriage": the dad was Australian and the mum American. 

The two families were very close friends out there. And the twins still speak to their old friends Samara and Diana in Perth, every Sunday via zoom.

flashback to May 2023: our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica,

newly returned to the UK after 7 years in Australia, talk on zoom on 

their mum's phone, to their old friends Samara and Diana in Perth WA

Samara's parents have for a few years been talking about moving to the States, where Clarissa, the mum, has all her relatives, naturally. So it could be, if that happens, that Sarah and Francis would also move there. However the US is going through a volatile phase politically at the moment, so they might settle instead for Canada, or even move back to Australia, or try New Zealand maybe. 

the Anglozone - plenty of choice there for Sarah

and Francis' next destination!

The US is going through a politically volatile phase currently, but who knows, it may not last long. It was in a much calmer time, certainly,  when Lois and I first got to know the country - we spent the years 1982 to 1985 in Maryland. I was working as a "UK integree" in a US Government agency between Washington DC and Baltimore, Maryland.

flashback to 1984: Lois and me with our two young

daughters Alison (9) and Sarah (7), exploring the

Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia

When I first arrived at my job over there, Ronald Reagan had recently become President, and my American colleagues told me how, soon after Reagan took up his office, they had noticed that the agency's toilet-paper had gone up several notches in quality, and that fell quite nicely for me, the "Reagan dividend" I used to call it haha!

I was there, kind of working for the US Government, but also keeping my status as a UK civil servant. And my American colleagues used to smile at me wryly whenever an official communication to me from the UK Government "plopped" on to my desk. The buff envelope that it arrived in, always carried the familiar marking "On Her Majesty's Service".

Happy days !!!!

 a typical "On Her Majesty's Service" (OHMS) envelope,

this one a bilingual one from Canada.

So watch this space (again)!!!!!

[That's enough spaces! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!