August - September 2010 From Bitter to Sweet.

"Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Finley, Happy birthday to you" Here we are, another year on from that amazing morning in Halifax when you and your mum changed my life. It seems like only a second has passed and yet so much has happened, some of it wonderful, much of it very challenging. Happy birthday Finn, thank you Beccie.

I love you both,

Let's eat cake, more cake and even more cake.

These have been difficult days my boy. The weight of pain and toil produced sores that needed to be lanced and healed. It wasn’t easy, we both felt so much hurt, but we wanted to get through, we had to get through. You see the alternatives were too terrible. We both love you too much not to try harder, even when we are feeling at an end and lost. I thank you again for that.

Anyway, these months we spent mostly at home in the UK. Little if anything happened on the chantiers. Some zeliging, the last of the decapping, letting the air clear from the smell of too full sewers.

Happy birthday For Finn in Wales.

Back home we celebrated your birthday…more than once…and why not! In Wales, where summer did what it does in Wales and poured with rain we kept warm with verses of happy birthday and yet more chocolate. Despite the wet we baked you cakes and over came Bryn and Lois with their little girl . It's great to see this of my friends. For so long we were just singlies out there being singlies.

Bryn and Lois come to celebrate your birthday.

Now Ian, Bryn, Andy, all have children, it’s another world, a better world. I wouldn’t have given up our “youth”…umm, we all left adulthood pretty late, but this is great. I look forward to us all growing up together in the many years to come.

Not that it was only us who celebrated your birthday, oh no, granny and granpa came over too to add to the celebrations and to raise a glass, as you would say...cheers.

Granny joins in singing in the rain.

We all took the opportunity to get out in to the great British countryside, with the great British weather and, as so ably shown by your Great British Granny, with the great British sense of humour that sees silver linings in any cloud. I have to say at this point, Granny and Grandpa did so very much to help us through our own cloudy weather and as with you, many, many thanks are due to them...thank you both.

We all eat cake again.

Anyway, given the chance to eat cake again and again, you did so with glee…is that a trait from mummy or daddy? Perchance it's the both of us...Which ever, I know we all joined you to finish off what you'd left. It's simply great to see you getting older and bigger.

As I said at the begining, this was a time to celebrate you and what you have brought to us. It was also a time to reflect and recommit to what we all are, together and individually. You are so very much the encapsulation of that and thus, finally we began to heal our wounds and to look past what aren't so much problems as growing pains. We have so much and so much potential, but we need to work hard to realise it and to build upon our strengths.

Home again.

Ultimately we all came home, our home and began to relive our life, looking to a future that we have the chance to shape for ourselves and in which we play such a significant part for and with each other.

Must say tho, I hated having my hair cut by my mum when I was a lad....you seem to be taking it in your stride!