Through the Years (part 8).

This is the next post on my "Through the years" posts, it has been several months now since the last of these. So to i think to carry on I will go to my Grand children, particularly the oldest Gavin.When they were quite young Sue and I had them quite a lot as my Daughter Pam and her then husband Dave were going through an on/off thing eventually parting. As often happens during times like this there was a lot of bitterness and in fighting/unpleasantness. Eventually Dave left them and their flat in Teignmouth, and moved back to his Fathers house in Dawlish.As a result of this money was very tight for Pam and the kids so she took two part time jobs, of course then who gets the job of looking after the kids?. At the time I worked at "Langdon Hospital" Dawlish, this hospital catered for the mentally and some times phsyically handicapped too.(I could tell some stories). My job (a porter for 10 years) was only four days (4 X 10.5 hr shifts) a week on a rotation system, I then had three days a week off. Sue worked at the time as a Cook, first in a busy Sea front cafe, then for 12 years in Retirement homes. This meant that she usually worked 5 days of 4.5 to 5 hrs shifts. As you can see it worked out we were off enough to have the kids an awful lot, overnight quite often as Pam did 3 nights behind the bar of a local pub. We were obviously a lot closer to these two than to Pams second family 7 years later, for these two's (Thomas & Zoe) early childhood was spent in Germany where Wayne (her 2nd Husband) was stationed for three years with the Army. So at this time we were having the kids 2 or 3 nights and several days a week, we also took them away for a fair few week ends and Gavin even a few whole week holidays. I think I ended up as the Father figure to Gavin at this time and we have stayed especially close ever since. Hayley as the youngest of the two and I suppose being a girl got pushed out by Gavin a lot. As is usual with girls I expect, she got a lot closer to Sue than she did me.
Gavin pictured below all grown up (2 years ago) and almost good looking, takes after me then.
Here's Gavin at his Nan's 42nd birthday party (over 20 years ago). We held this as a surprise Bar-b Q in the back yard, there has never been anything wrong with his appetite.

This picture below is of a regular occurrence, when Pam used to go to work earlyish in the morning, she would come into our house and take great delight in saying to them both, "run upstairs and wake Grampy up", as you can imagine they did this with great delight. Gavin jumping up and down, Hayley just peeping out from behind me. At this time my nick name given to me by Pam on behalf of the kids was "Grumpy Grampy".
This picture was again taken in our backyard, its a little earlier than the first one by around 12 months. As you can see Hayley was still in her Carry Cot at this time. (excuse my bum please)
Gavin is now in his 24 year, Hayley just into her 22nd year. Hayley had a quite serious relationship, moving to Wales with a Welsh boy. It ended after around 18 monthe but she still lives mostly in Wales.We have recently heard that Hayley is unlikely to be able to have children (although not absolutely certain) because of serious ongoing womens problems.
Gavin, Who was also in a long time relationship has decided that women are too expensive and too much trouble. He's now doing well in his career in Computing, traveling 40 odd miles each way to work daily. He moved into a house with several other boys a few years ago, this house was run by a local youth leader and Computer boffin, who taught him his love of this subject, Gavin went on through college and eventually received his honours at it. Just a few weeks ago he took over the rental (with a work coleague) of a bungalow, which became vacant next door to where he lived. He is his Grandads best fishing friend, he says he has a lot more time (and money) now not involved with women to follow his love of Motorcycling and also compete in "Banger Racing". I did intend to post 3 or 4 more pictures on here but I'm afraid I can't find the originals to scan and post.

Joke of the day.

A teacher gave her class of 11 year olds an assignment: To get their parent to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it.

The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories.
Ashley said, 'My father's a farmer and we have a lot of egg-laying hens. One time we were taking our eggs to market in a basket on the front seat of the car when we hit a big bump in the road and all the eggs got broken.'
'What's the morale of that story?' asked the teacher.
'Don't put all your eggs in one basket!'
'Very good,' said the teacher.
Next little Sarah raised her hand and said, 'Our family are farmers too. But we raise chickens for the meat market. One day we had a dozen eggs, but when they hatched we only got ten live chicks, and the moral to this story is, 'Don't count your chickens before they're hatched'.'
That was a fine story Sarah.'
Michael, do you have a story to share?'
'Yes. My daddy told me this story about my Aunty Sharon. Aunty Sharon was a flight engineer on a plane in the Gulf War and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory and all she had was a bottle of whisky, a machine gun and a machete. She drank the whiskey on the way down so it wouldn't break and then she landed right in the middle of 100 enemy troops. She killed seventy of them with the machine gun until she ran out of bullets. Then she killed twenty more with the machete until the blade broke. And then she killed the last ten with her bare hands.'
'Good heavens,' said the horrified teacher, 'what kind of moral did your daddy tell you from that horrible story?'
'Stay the f.... away from Aunty Sharon when she's been drinking"