A New Son and The World

It is now two weeks since my second son was born. Time enough to settle into some sort of routine and to realise that he does in fact have a name, not “cutie”, “baby” or “it”! For my wife and me it has been a traumatic few years, two miscarriages, a house break-in and a shift from a life in Taiwan to one in Edinburgh, Scotland. But we have managed and as Ewan Patrick latches onto life’s nipples I can now look outward once again to what is hopefully a new start for my writings.

And what has the world been coping with in the last few weeks, nay months? Some guy called Michael Jackson popped his clogs! Gordon Brown of the UK is still twitching in the “hot” chair and that guy over in America, that Obama chap is still well-liked despite having failed to instantly fix the economy with a flash tap of a rubber hammer on a couple of bent and rusty nails! Further west and into the darker corners of the world where journalists report in whispers and dictators wear unfashionable sunglasses, nuclear weapons are still the topic of the day, China’s GDP continually increases and Iceland still shivers from its recent pummeling as a financial powerhouse!

On more domestic matters it is nice to see that the weather is improving. I nearly booked myself a ticket to the North Pole before the good weather arrived in Edinburgh! The news reports from England (which became victim to a spot of sun before Scotland did) was all of doom and gloom, frail-ancients flopping down by the road side, dogs being cooked alive in locked cars, the possibilities of bottled-water prices shooting through the roof with all but the super-rich being able to afford them and of heat waves that would have us all sitting inside the fridge for dinner and cooking the eggs on top! I managed to stop myself buying that ticket and am now enjoying what has turned out to be a pleasant sunny day – bit like summer has always been really!

I better go and change a nappy – my work is only just starting!