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Still Grey

Another grey Yorkshire day, just a bit stuck under this blanket of greyness. It’s also still very green for this time in Autumn, usually it’s way more yellow and red. Definitely feels like it’s been a longer growing season here. We also still have a handful of Swallows still hanging around, these fellows are usually back in Africa by now. They clearly are not hanging around because of the sun…. Maybe they are just putting off trying to get through the chaos and queues that is UK Passport Control these days. One of my neighbours foolishly tried and failed to get out of the country a couple of weeks ago to go on holiday. Apparently she didn’t look sufficiently like her passport photo anymore. In her words “you try looking like you did 5 years ago when you hit 84…”

Made me check my passport photo. I’m ok, still looks like me, still looks like Shrek.

I remember going to a fancy dress themed party years ago at University. Themed around cartoon characters. I went as Fred from Scooby Doo, back then I could rock an orange ascot….. A friend of mine put in way more effort to go as Shrek. He was mortified when the first couple of people thought he had come as Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock was famed for talking about “always make the audience suffer as much a possible”. My so called football team have clearly been following that principle for decades now….

Another thing Hitchcock talked about was ‘DRAMA is life with the dull bits cut out’. I always think you could take out DRAMA and substitute that with SINGLE PARENTING. I’ve had a few people tell me they were sorry I was a single parent. Don’t get me wrong, it happened for tragic reasons, but actually being a single parent is such a wonderful privilege and experience. Being a parent has been the best experience and it feels like because of circumstances I got the chance to get just a bit more of that wonderful experience. It has been a wonderful experience.

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Bruce

There are concerts and then there are CONCERTS….

Just a bit closer to the stage than the last time we saw BRUCE.

It’s strange how life works out sometimes. When I was much younger, I really wanted to see Bruce but the stars wouldn’t quite align. There was also quite a bit of that ‘shedloads of time in my pockets’ thing going on with me. No rush, plenty of time to sort stuff out.

But the years and decades rolled on. Bruce got older. I got older. That growing, nagging feeling, is there really plenty of time.

Then life hit the buffers. Bereavement. Single Parenting. Life felt like it had stopped. Permanently stopped. Bucket list stuff, things like seeing Bruce seemed like a million miles away and ever receding in the rear view mirror.

But slowly life started to spin again. A different life. Now a growing realisation that I won’t figure most things out in life, why things happen when they happen or don’t happen. That really clever, brilliant stuff is way beyond my pay grade. The other growing realisation, we really don’t have plenty of time in this life, but maybe, just maybe most of us will be given ENOUGH time to get enough done. Enough time to learn and grow. Enough time to experience enough in life, the good, the bad. It’s how we use that time, what guides us, our priorities, the choices we make, the doors that are opened for us, the doors that are closed to us, how we deal with the stuff of life.

No Bruce for decades and then wonderfully, unexpectedly, twice in 13 months. It’s a funny old life.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 39 Comments

Time will run out.

I always wanted to stay a night here. Maybe one day. Almost touching distance of The Eiger, the famous mighty Swiss mountain.

The winter months, the inhospitable weather, deserted paths and seasonally closed cafes. This time of year always makes me more reflective, some would say EVEN more reflective.

I’ve been thinking about parenting, specifically before our family world changed and I fumbled my way into single parenting. With parenting you sometimes get things right, sometimes get things wrong and sometimes you kinda just drift about on the tides of life. Given that there is no parenting blueprint to follow and the propensity of our little raptors to transform the seemingly straightforward into sleepless, stress filled angst maelstroms, we can forgive ourselves for not always being perfect. As a couple we were very different with very different takes on how to bring a child up. Sometimes we agreed, more often we negotiated (possibly argued) our way to compromises. And YES we didn’t get everything right, sometimes we got it spectacularly wrong. Looking back that doesn’t frustrate me, we did our best.

But now, in 2025 something does bother me, frustrates me, makes me feel sad. It’s not the decisions we got spectacularly wrong, it’s the decisions and opportunities that we kicked into the future. We didn’t say NO, we just said not now. ‘Not now’ because of some fairly unimportant work stuff, because it took us slightly out of our comfort zone, because it will complicate things, because we don’t need to push now because we have loads of time to sort this out in the future….

Let’s think about it again next year…

Let’s not do that now but maybe later….

Let’s talk ourselves out of this even though it could be so wonderful, no pressure, plenty of time to get round to it….sometimes sitting doing nothing can seem better than having the time of our life’s.

We were fooling ourselves, time ran out….

I keep going over those moments. Often trips, adventures or holidays that didn’t happen. Like the big Christmas adventure, the chance to take Hawklad to Lapland to visit Santa. Never happened even though we could have done it and we both knew it was a great adventure. Yes just the two of us could do it now but it’s not quite the same after the pesky Art Teacher decided it was time for some festive tough love… What a missed opportunity because we thought there was plenty of time.

Then there are those moments, missed opportunities that yes we can still do (and sometimes have already addressed) but we left it too long for his mum. She missed out. Hawklad never got to experience these moments with her. Disney Florida, Panto, trips to see Whales, Horse riding, skiing, Yellowstone, Kennedy Space Centre, Patagonia….. I could go on. Especially this little beauty, I managed to film Hawklad’s first walk on an old video camera, his mum was at work. The camera wouldn’t connect to the TV, so I needed to get the tape converted to VHS. I never did get round to it, I put it off (plenty of time) and then it was forgotten in both our life’s. She never did get to see that special moment.

Now I feel sadness over those moments, moments his mum never got to experience, Hawklad never got to share with her. It’s a painful lesson.

Time will run out……

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 44 Comments

Sky

Over the last few weeks we haven’t seen much of the sky. Mostly it’s been like this….

But when it has parted….

On another misty, dark day, we were heading back from the City and passed a stricken smoking car. Suddenly I was taken back years. Back to when I was young and Dad’s 4 wheel pride and joy. His MK1 Ford Cortina, 1% Silver 99% Rust and Holes. Top Speed, who are we kidding, there was nothing TOP about that thing. Stationary to walking pace in about 2 days before the inevitable smoking breakdown. I had completely forgotten about that Henry Ford Miracle and strangely I was smiling.

Maybe that caught me off guard….

We drove past a Children’s Play Barn, I brought Hawklad here countless times when he was a toddler. Fun times, so many happy memories. But life moves on, he became too old to venture there. The Xbox world became way more attractive than climbing around a Pirate Ship Climbing Frame. Now he’s doing College and the Christmas Present list is way different now. As I took another glance at the Play Barn in the Rear View Mirror, feelings of melancholy swept over me.

Where did that time go……

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Dad

An evening Yorkshire Forest walk.

A thought struck me as we ambled towards the light. I would have loved to have done something like this with my Dad. Don’t get me wrong, we occasionally had trips out, but they were pretty rare. Looking back to my childhood I can still count the trips. I remember Dad taking me to see the 125 High Speed Locomotive, back then it looked like a Space Age Rocket rather than a Passenger Train as it passed through Darlington Station. I remember a trip to a Train Museum where I found an old ticket machine that dished out things that looked like raffle tickets. As we walked around the museum he eagerly checked out each steam train while I trailed a few paces behind. There was another trip to see a charity cricket match featuring the sporting legend Fred Truman. That was the trip Dad sent me into the players showers to get Fred’s autograph…. Not sure that’s happening these days…. A few trips to the coast to see a storm, sat in Dad’s banged out car, I’m eating chips while Dad is silently smoking.

The whole family would have an annual trip to Scarborough. Dad would frequently disappear for most of the days to do his thing. I can remember seeing him sat on a bench some distance away from the rest of the family as they tried to stop me from falling off the Donkey Rides on the beach.

That’s it, I can’t remember any other trips with Dad. Definitely no walks through a Forest….

To be completely fair, back then in our northern working class town travel was way less accessible. Few cars, even rarer aircraft tickets…

At home there was similarly limited Dad time. Dad might be briefly pulled away from reading the newspaper to talk, I might get a few words before he buried his head back into the racing and obituary pages. As Dad listened to his radio on an evening I would clearly annoy him with interruptions, you just know when someone wants you to shut up. Volunteering to take him a cup of tea to him while he sat in his Greenhouse might yield me a few minutes being told all about how to grow tomatoes or raspberries. Even when I was sent on a Sunday to the local Pub to tell Dad that his meal was getting cold, I would be lucky to get a brief nod before I was pointed in the direction of the door. On the way home again I trailed a few paces behind while. We just didn’t talk that much. So few chats with Dad.

Those times were so frustrating to me. I would have loved ME TIME with DAD, yet in reality MY DAD TIME felt very distanced. I’m sure it wasn’t the case but it just felt like I was often a nuisance, a bit in the way, an interruption to Dad’s routines.

The end result was I always felt distant from him. He didn’t understand me and I didn’t really know him. I knew he liked trains, liked cricket, he liked fishing, he liked gardening, he liked beer, he smoked, he was in the army. Looking back, I now realise that he wasn’t happy, probably chronically depressed and I still don’t know him. I will never know him.

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6.30PM

Summer poses its own set of challenges. This season’s weather hasn’t been great with few warm weather days. Yes there has been sun but it’s often felt more like late October than high Summer. But the weather hasn’t deterred the crowds. Try to go anywhere around midday and the car parks are mobbed. Hawklad doesn’t do mobbed car parks….

But leave it until the evening and suddenly the car parks are empty. Ok that usually means the venue is shut but not everywhere. Just like Dalby Forest. A few hours earlier this walk would have been rammed with hikers, dog walkers and mountain bikers but now at 6-30pm it’s all change. It’s quiet, we are the only car in the car park. A 2 hour walk and we didn’t see another soul.

Or just like 6-30pm on the North East Coast. A couple of intrepid surfers enjoying warming drinks on the beach. A couple of ball chasing dogs with well wrapped up owners. That’s it. Solitude.

Yes 6-30PM cuts down the places open but it opens up so much space and peace. It works for us. Just don’t forget the Woolly Hats, it is Summer here.

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Moors

Summer on the North Yorkshire Moors.

Just a few clouds make such a huge difference to the mood here.

Did I ever really grieve, TWICE

Back in 2016, almost to the day. I was sorting out mum’s funeral, broken yet my mind was on my seriously ill partner. It felt like grief had been put on hold. Then a few weeks later I’m sorting out my partners funeral and again …..

Was I really grieving, how much was I allowing myself to grieve.

My focus was on our son, trying to keep my head above the single parenting waves. Looking back I was living through Hawklad. If he was happy, I was happy. If he struggled, I struggled. Did I ever really think and meditate about what grief and death truly meant, how it was changing me.

Probably NOT.

Probably figured out way more about me as a PARENT.

Maybe the Mood will change one day and I can start to seek a little more clarity on grief and how it’s changed me, still changing me.

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Powers

There comes a stage when our kids start to develop superpowers as a direct result of trying to live with their strange and ancient parents. It’s the power of second guessing, otherwise known as the power to interpret muppet parents. Maybe it’s the result of too many sleepless nights, too many family crises, too many additions to the ‘to do list’. Maybe it’s not enough caffeine, too much mind numbing tv but often parents function with only 90% of the words they know, the other 10% is either randomly lost or corrupted. The end result is we often don’t make sense and yet our kids can somehow make sense of the rubbish that sometimes comes out of our mouths.

Example one of those superpower from our house…

Asking Hawklad what he wanted for tea… “do you want thingy and chips”. Seamlessly he replies “yes I’ll have an omelette but maybe with vegetables…”

Example two of the superpower….

Asking Hawklad “have you seen the erm, you know”. Without taking his eyes of his book, he points to the sofa, “the remote control is there”…

Example three….

In the car, we were talking history and Hawklad mentioned Theodore Roosevelt. His muppet dad immediately butted in with his Einstein like intellect….

“Theodore, wasn’t he one of the hamsters in that tv thing…”

Almost without blinking Hawklad replied

“You mean Chipmunk…. Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks..”

I was surprisingly close, Theodore was a rodent. As we don’t get chipmunks here, maybe we need a British version of that show. Harry and the Hamsters. Rather than singing pop songs badly, The Hamsters could recite Shakespeare really badly with annoying high pitch voices.

Example four….

“Erm, you had a {…. mumbling as I fight with the vacuum cleaner, …}, erm Whatsaface {…. more mumbling as I’m distracted by the vacuum cleaner bag emptying its contents onto the floor…}, don’t forget”

Hawklad somehow understood what I was trying to say and he went to phone a friend who had called him earlier….

BUT here is the thing, it’s a selective superpower that our children wield. The power seems to fail if the parent starts talking homework, housework or personal grooming…….

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 31 Comments

Care

Our local Market town, Malton, occasionally mentioned in Downton Abbey TV stories. There has been a town here ever since the Romans decided to build a fort here one day. Could have found somewhere a tad warmer….

Just down from this bridge is a small children’s play barn. One of those places that goes through repeated name changes but nothing ever changes inside. It’s a site of much parenting inspiration for me.

The play barn is really tight inside and the owners somehow squeezed in an even tighter adventure climbing maze. The kinda maze that every few minutes a young child loses confidence and cries out for a parent to rescue them. Mums often heading into the maze to make the save, Dads often opting for a non intervention, low risk strategy. Declining to enter the maze, just shouting and pointing approach from a safe distance.

On one trip years back, when Hawklad was a toddler, he went climbing there. Yep he got stuck. As much shouting and pointing as I tried, Hawklad remained stuck. Time to face my mini Dantes Inferno, I had to go in. Uncomfortably claustrophobic, having to climb over toddlers with the bite strength of an African Crocodile. Eventually I made it to where Hawklad had been. Now he was outside, giggling, watching his Dad go through this instrument of torture. I had been done like a kipper…..

But then the parenting inspiration after being the butt of the joke…..

A few minutes later, a toddler properly stuck and needing help. Eventually a rather exasperated Dad decided he had to go in….. I’m no Thor but this Dad was even less of a Thor. Well actually he was way bigger than Three Thors round the belly region…. Seeing this poor Dad get slower and increasingly more stuck was strangely fascinating. The inevitable eventually happened, Dad got stuck. Properly wedged in. His toddler now filled with renewed courage and unable to turn down this unique opportunity to inflict torture, he came in for the kill. Toddler made it to his stuck Dad and started to draw random patterns on his Dad’s bald head with chalk and non marking pens. Other parents now gleefully supplying more and more ammo for this unrelenting assault. Dad unable to move his hands so unable to offer any defence to this unprovoked attack. Finally the Barn owners dismantled part of the maze to free this poor, broken colouring book of a parent.

What’s the patenting inspiration from this….. as bad as things have got for me, and they have frequently been very embarrassing. It’s never ever got close to being as bad as it got for this poor, randomly tattooed Dad. A Dad whose only crime was to CARE…..

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Green Day

Somedays you just can’t touch anything. A few years back that would have shut everything down, locked down in the house or in the garden.

But now we have figured out a bit more stuff, actually you can do so much with a bit of preparation and patience.

200 miles of driving.

Park up in the UK’s third most populous city.

Walk to a big Cricket Ground.

Strike lucky and find quite a bit of space close to the side of the stage. Amazing as it’s a 50000 sell out.

See a double rainbow.

See Green Day, one of Hawklad’s favourite bands.