It's Raining this MorningWritten by Ieuan Dolby
It’s raining! I woke up this morning and it was raining, not a startling fact in itself but for a brief instant my life flashed up strong as if viewable on a giant TV screen on ceiling above my head! It’s raining, it’s 7.30am, my wife and baby are asleep beside me and I have everything that I or anybody else could possibly want in life.In fact a large purplish stamp should be embedded upon my forehead that reads “this man is satisfied”! I have a brand new high capacity MP3 player to play thousands of songs that I have downloaded from web on my super duper new self-built computer, with flat screen panel that is just so cool! We have our dream cars parked in our garage below, kitchen is being remodeled next week and we have a holiday home in Spain! I am fit, healthy and good looking, promotion at work is on its way and enormous salary raise will ensure that my bank manager offers me coffee and biscuits when I visit. Yet it’s raining outside! As I look at my son, his face so innocent and pure; as I look at my beautiful wife who brought this magical being into world I can hear ever stronger pitter patter of rain as it lands on roof above! As I look at my family I can no longer see material possessions and wealth that I have accumulated over years, they have no place and no meaning; not right here, not right now! Take away my possessions and give to me a gramophone, a bicycle and a coal fire! Take away my computer; a game of monopoly will fill that gap. I don’t need promotion, my bank manager is an idiot and coffee is bad for health. Take away everything I have in material wealth, everything that I need and want is here in this bed with me. Take away all of those plastic beeping and flashing machines that mean so little when I have most wonderful of feelings imaginable, that of love! That is all I need!
| | The Training BabyWritten by Ieuan Dolby
My kid is only 6months old, yet he has taught me more than I have ever learnt in last ten years of supposed life’s experience. It is amazing really, that one so young can teach so much, that a ball of squeaking immaturity can give and educate others who are theoretically so much wiser and more learned than an ‘incy’ bit of life that has just popped its head out for a look.I mean he has taught me nothing startling like quantum physics or rocket science just simple things, an increased awareness of what is around me and a much better understanding of life and how people think and operate as they do! I have over last twenty years made a career for myself in Marine Engineering, with Diplomas, certificates and degrees falling out of my ears and all backed up by a wealth of hands on experience. But all of this background was so pointless when faced with pram that we bought! What is a pram? A pram is a perambulator, a four wheeled vehicle for a baby pushed by one on foot”! Nothing startling there! What my son taught me was that nothing is what it seems in life and that you can have all certificates in world but they don’t help with prams! This thing that we purchased was so technologically advanced that it took me three weeks to figure out how to raise seat! Eiffel and his Tower, Edison and his Light Bulb or even Ferris and his Wheel had nothing on this “Combi” invention! A fully-equipped mean machine, an all-terrain off-the road and all weather state of art vehicular transport that could fold up into handbag dimensions, perform to 80% even with flats on any two of its eight wheels and turn a circle on a dime (for this last action all wheels do have to be at peak performance). It weighed less than two kilos could shrink or expand to suit size of baby it would carry and it was multi-directional (the baby could be pushed forwards or backwards with flick of a switch). After three weeks of trying to assemble thing I eventually got it in motion. Unfortunately I was so afraid of thing collapsing with baby inside that I went out and bought a four wheeled monstrosity that was un-collapsible, omni-directional and could do not much more than be pushed strenuously along road with a baby inside. It also meant that I didn’t have to carry a puncture repair kit with me!
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