The part which brings you joy

I do love a Saturday morning when the children are here. It means morning cuddles, giggles and on occasion, questions from left field. This morning from m’boy: what is the UK doing about Afghanistan?

Blimey son, start with an easy one! I made an attempt at providing some backstory to the short answer which is of course: “Now? Not a right lot, mate. We gave it a go over the course of the last 20 years, but it fell apart in ten days.” I tried to highlight the differences between Eastern & Western culture and how each views the other, which they seemed to understand. Wherever possible, I would always encourage them to try to see the other side of the debate, but when later on and following our discussion I showed them the prescient headline of the Taliban excluding girls from secondary schools, the flip side of the coin becomes impossible to see.

M’boy mentioned a note he’d seen which said that “The 21st century sucks” and The Youngest chipped in that there were a lot of bad things happening in the world. I agreed that this was true, BUT that there were also a lot of good things happening too, which we didn’t hear about as much. I’m trying to instil in them a philosophy for life taken from landscape photography. That when you have a panoramic view of something so vast, you can’t hope to capture it all through the lens, so instead just focus on the part which brings you joy and you shouldn’t go too far wrong.

We seem to have accomplished that today. The car ramp & tunnel was adjudged to be in need of lighting, so we popped out for a could of bits and picked up some fairy lights, which were taped to the ramp and seem to have done the job. “It looks like a proper racing tunnel now!” We then took a run out to Ulverston to see The Eldest in action in her job in a cafe (The Youngest dressing up a little for it) and it was lovely to watch the wee ones watching on with pride as The Eldest took orders, swiped cards and provided a first-class service. Tips may have been thin on the ground, but she earned a tight hug from The Youngest.

We had a bit of time to kill before we could all head home for chippy tea with visiting grandparents, so popped in to the Laurel & Hardy museum (Stan Laurel being of Ulverston descent) and had a good giggle at ‘Brats’ which was playing. I loved the fact that we were all laughing at prat-falls and jokes from a short film almost 100 years old. There is a lovely, warm kind of magic from films of that golden age, an innocent inventiveness, which is still making people laugh decades later.

I think we could all benefit from a little more of that right now.