Good times bad times

Good times bad times. The weekend started badly. Another trek into Manchester, a city that I now detest as much as I detest a certain Swedish furniture store. It costs £15 each way but its not the cost I dislike its time I use up. I have no issues picking up my son its just that he lives in Manchester a 45 minute drive that actually takes an hour and a half so it’s three hours out of my day. The purpose of the trip was to collect my son because he was about to embark on his fourth attempt at a parachute jump in aid of some MS charities. On Friday the weather was beautiful (although it was raining in Manchester). The following morning I was up at six and we drove off to the parachute club. The weather had changed and there was too much low cloud for the jump to happen. They didn’t tell us that though, well not at first. First they made us sit in a freezing cold shed and buy their awful tea and fried items. It was an old fashioned greasy spoon in a freezer. At one point my son said “Just in case something goes wrong I should let you know that I’m insured for £1 million. If I died it all goes to Mum”. I asked him if he had made any arrangements to get someone into his blog if the worst should happen. He said “I’ve asked my brother to do that”

We eventually went to a warm pub for some real food and rebooked the jump for next Friday. During the conversation my son said that I had an “apathetic” approach to life. It is all to easy to misunderstand the way that others see you. I will have to clean up my act. I think that I am cynical and indifferent to life although I do care about my family passionately. I think that whatever happens on this ball of rock it doesn’t matter at all.

If I’m showing nothing but apathy to the world then it must look as though I don’t care about anything. Perhaps I should stop caring about anything and see if anyone notices.

In the afternoon I did something I haven’t done for years. I watched the FA cup final. It was a mid-life crisis type of day but I enjoyed that part of the day.
It was a good match, I didn’t care who won but in the end the North triumphed over the South so all was well.

On Sunday we did very little. My daughter and her husband (and her very difficult dog) were staying with us as was my son. My eldest son and daughter came by with fantastic news and that cheered me up a lot. After putting off the drive back to Manchester we eventually got back home near midnight.

I love my family more than words can say; the ones in crisis, the ones with debilitating illness and the ones that are merely unhappy. I’ve been in crisis, I have two debilitating diseases and I’ve been unhappy. I’ve got through it all and I’m happy now. I know the secret, its very simple – care about the ones you love. Apethetic? Ridiculous.