Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 34 Comments

Bizarre

I remember that morning so vividly. 11 years ago, on holiday in Switzerland and it was a grim start to the day. I’d got up early, before the family woke up, to go for a run along part of Lake Thun. As I started it was chilly and damp but after a few minutes it started to rain, proper RAIN. It absolutely chucked it down, forcing me to shelter under trees. The rain kept on getting heavier and I kept on getting colder. Time to abandon and head back to the warmth of the Hotel. But then an odd sight. A group of joggers and running under umbrellas. How can you run holding an umbrella….. They stopped and beckoned to me, I think I’m joining them…..

A few minutes later I’m running under an umbrella held by an Italian chap who didn’t speak any English, none of them did. But they were clearly talking to me excitedly about something. Then the mad Italian umbrella group stopped. Stopped in the pouring rain and under umbrellas start to pass around a drink from a small hip flask…. I didn’t ask where that flask had been carried as I couldn’t see any pockets on any of the Italians….. I don’t know what it was but it was warm (with no pockets, a little more concerning) and tasted like cough medicine. Stood in a rain storm, shivering under umbrellas, drinking cough medicine with Italian strangers. Without understanding a word we somehow managed to figure out that we supported equally crap football teams. Newcastle and Monza…

What a bizarre morning. Especially bizarre as it was Hawklad’s mums birthday and just 2 hours later we were sat outside, in blazing warm sunshine having ice cream for breakfast….. As we enjoyed the beautiful weather, 5 Italian chaps walked past, waving, and shouting to me “Newcastle, Newcastle, Newcastle”…

Bizarre…….

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 41 Comments

Lake one

Ullswater in the English Lake District. The usual grand weather there….

About 200 years ago the poet William Wordsworth spent much time here, you can see why. A hundred years later Donald Campbell disrupted the creative peace by braking the world water speed record here, over 202mph.

When we visited Hawklad blew my mind, again. Randomly he started to list every top division football champions in both England and Italy. On the patchy internet I checked, every single year answer was correct. Staggeringly that went back to 1889 for England and 1898 for Italy. Even taking the time to fill in the key footballing history, managers and top goal scorers. How on earth does he do that, apparently I’m his Dad and I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast.

2019 – School gave up on him. I remember a Head of Year saying that ‘HE is low attainment with many special educational needs… there are plenty of alternatives for pupils who leave with no qualifications…. College isn’t everything’.

2023 – still on track for his goal – UNIVERSITY.

How many great kids are wrote off by the system when with the right support, THEY CAN FLY.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 38 Comments

San Siro

I guess the rainbow season has started.

“Ok Dad, if I somehow manage to pass every exam then I think that probably means we should do something special to mark that.”

Absolutely and actually why should it be just dependent on the outcome of some random exams whose outcomes can be far reaching. Exams that are such a poor reflections of real person, their effort, the struggles they overcome, their character, just how amazing they are and just how much they have to offer.

So my mind wandered to what that prize could be.

And once again I was so far away from the answer.

“If I do that then can you look into getting me to Milan. Going to see Inter play at the San Siro. I don’t know how you would get me there, maybe we could try to get there using Switzerland as the base.”

Time to get the thinking hat on but I do know that our old Swiss base has direct trains to Milan each day. How cool would that be for Hawklad.