Tag: Love

12 Things I love about my teenager

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post called 12 things I love about my son. At the time of writing, he was a soft, squishy five year old, and absolutely the apple of my eye. He still is, but he’s now a gangling 12 year old, just finishing his first year of high school and he’s busy cultivating a moustache and an attitude.

What with him slap-bang in the middle of puberty, and me on nodding terms with the peri-menopause, our house is a lively hot bed of hormones. Between us there’s enough shouting and crying to script a Latin American soap opera.

Despite this, we still find plenty to like about each other, and teenagers often get a bad rap, so I thought I’d list some of the things I like best about him, if only so I can look back and read it when he’s locked in his room loudly sulking to himself and telling me to go away.

12 things I love about my teenager

12 things I love about my teenager

  1. He may eat us out of house and home, but he appreciates my efforts to fill his hollow legs, always says thank you and compliments my cooking.
  2. When he gets home from school he always gives me the biggest and best hug of my day.
  3. He always asks to watch funny dogs YouTube videos with me before bed, so we can laugh and wind down together.
  4. He carries my bags home without needing to be asked.
  5. We share a hobby, and although we don’t have much downtime, when we paint together, it’s special for both of us.
  6. He always rushes home to tell me about the small victories in his day; house points won, things he has achieved, jokes he’s told which made people laugh.
  7. He still shares his sweets and treats with me.
  8. He takes pictures of things he thinks I will like when he’s out and about. This week it was a large puddle with a dramatic sky reflected in it.
  9. He asks to spend time with me and suggests interesting things we could do together, like trips on the Metrolink to new places, or he likes coming swimming with me.
  10. He is always coming up with new jokes to try and make me laugh. Some of them are remarkably clever.
  11. As awkward as so many of the growing up, birds and the bees, “all of these strange things happening to you body are actually perfectly normal” chats are, he does listen, engage with me and ask questions, which is such a relief and a good thing. Awkward as heck though.
  12. Sometimes, if no one is around, he will hold my hand while we are walking down the road. No one must ever know this.

12 things I love about my teenager
Those are just twelve of the many reasons why I think he is awesome. I think it’s nice to think about some of the ways the special people in your life make you feel special too, or the things you personally marvel at about them. I know the next few years won’t be plain sailing for either of us, hormones being a big factor in that. But as long as we remember that we love each other, and that we have each others backs, we will hopefully come out the other side relatively unscathed and hopefully not needing too much therapy.

Whatever happens, I wouldn’t swap him for the world. He’s my best boy and always will be.

Recipe: Swedish love cake, or Kärleksmums

A little over a year ago I started learning Norwegian, so I’ve taken an interest in all things Scandinavian ever since. With Valentine’s Day approaching, and my friends at work in need of a little cheer up, I decided to make a Kärleksmums cake, also known as a Swedish love cake. It’s a surprisingly easy bake, but a delicious and incredibly light one to share with your one true love, or just your friends in the office.

Essentially, it’s a light chocolate sponge traybake, topped with a lovely fudgy chocolate, coffee and coconut sauce. It feels indulgent, but that’s only because it is. But, importantly for busy people, or people less confident in their ability to decorate a pretty cake, it’s just a slap it on and go kind of decoration, which I think we can all get on board with.

Recipe: Swedish love cake, or Kärleksmums

It’s not designed to win any beauty contests, but for a mid-morning pick me up, or a simple expression of love, it’s a winner!

I tend to bake my traybakes in a small roasting tin lined with baking parchment. My bakes in this tin are great for cutting into 15 pretty decent cake portions, so it’s good for feeding a crowd. Kärleksmums also freezes incredibly well. I know there are people who I won’t see for a while who also deserve a piece of cake, so I just wrap up a slice, pop it in a suitably sized plastic container and into the freezer it goes.

I’ve made chocolate cake traybakes before, but the coffee and coconut topping really elevates it from nice cake, to very, very nice cake.

Swedish love cake, or Kärleksmums

Ingredients:
50g cocoa powder
100ml recently boiled water
100ml milk
200g butter or margarine, such as Stork
225g golden caster sugar
3 medium eggs
225g self raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon of baking powder
A good pinch of salt

Recipe: Swedish love cake, or Kärleksmums

For the topping:
150g icing sugar
50g butter
1 large tablespoons of cocoa powder
½ teaspoon of vanilla essence
2 tablespoons of coffee granules
3 tablespoons of hot water
50g desiccated coconut, plus extra to sprinkle on top

How to make a Swedish love cake, or Kärleksmums:

Pre-heat your oven to 180°c and line your cake tin, or small roasting tin if you’re me.

Mix together the cocoa powder and hot water and leave to cool a little. Once it is cooler, add the milk to the cocoa mixture.

Using a hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, taking care they are completely incorporated into the batter.

Sift the dry ingredients into a separate bowl – that’s the flour, a pinch of salt and the baking powder.

Add the flour and the milky cocoa mixture to the butter and sugar mixture, whilst beating the batter, taking care to ensure everything is well incorporated. As with all cakes, take care to make sure it’s all incorporated, but don’t over beat it.

Pour the batter into your lined tin and bake in the middle of the oven for approx. 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. My over is a little on the slow side, so mine took 25 minutes.

Once baked, remove your Kärleksmums cake from the oven and leave to cool on a cake rack. While it is cooling, you can make your simple topping. The topping is ridiculously easy, you just put all the ingredients into a saucepan and warm gently, stirring regularly until it’s all combined and a lovely glossy sauce. Pour the topping over the cooled cake and sprinkle with a bit more desiccated coconut, or some other sprinkles if you like. It’s your cake, your rules!

Recipe: Swedish love cake, or Kärleksmums

Leave the topping to set in before serving. You can speed this up by popping it in the fridge if you’d like. Serve with a lovely pot of coffee. It doesn’t need anything else, but it would also be good with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

If you enjoyed this, you might like to try;

Recipe: Swedish love cake, or Kärleksmums

Recipe: Heart Shaped Danish Butter Biscuits

Valentine’s Day is the ideal opportunity to show off your baking prowess to any potential or existing beau. During these long lockdown days, we’ve been baking a lot more than usual, so we needed to come up with a romantic treat which is a bit different to our usual bakes. Step forward, heart shaped Danish Butter biscuits.

Danish Butter Biscuits are a real classic. I remember tins of them around my Grandmother’s house at Christmas time. They seemed so fancy and posh at the time, and so different to the hard biscuits of my childhood. Danish butter biscuits are soft and short and crumbly in all the right ways. They’re also pretty easy to make, the hardest part is piping them out; but if you don’t fancy doing that, you can just bake dollops of them and they still taste as good.

Recipe: Heart Shaped Danish Butter Biscuits

Heart Shaped Danish Butter Biscuits

Ingredients:
375g butter, room temperature
250g caster sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
500g plain flour
Milk (entirely optional)
Glacé cherries

Method:

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla essence and mix in thoroughly.

Beat in the plain flour, I tend to do this in batches so the kitchen doesn’t get covered in a flour cloud. Once it’s all mixed in, you need to decide if your mixture is loose enough to pipe, or if it needs letting down a bit. My hands are a bit arthritic, so I added a couple of tablespoons of milk and beat the mixture again.

Heat the oven to 180° and line some large baking sheets with parchment paper. If you’re choosing to pipe your biscuits, select a wide piping nozzle and put in your piping bag. I prefer to use disposable piping bags and a Wilton 1M nozzle, but you use whatever you’re comfortable with.

Carefully pipe heart shapes onto your parchment paper. I used a knife to help poke them into shape as my piping was a bit rusty. Once you’ve piped a tray (leaving room for them to spread a little), pop a glacé cherry in the centre of each one and sprinkle them with a little extra sugar. Put them in the oven to bake for 12-15 minutes. You don’t really want them to get brown, because like shortbread, these Danish Butter biscuits are supposed to be pale and interesting.

Once you’ve removed them from the oven, leave on a cooling rack until they are properly cool. Resist the urge to eat them all, as you’ve baked them for your paramour, but maybe you could sneak one or two for yourself.

Recipe: Heart Shaped Danish Butter Biscuits

If you’re gifting them, wrap them in tissue paper and pop them in a box for your intended. If you’re keeping them all for yourself, they keep very well in a tin for a couple of weeks; though I doubt they will last that long.

If you enjoyed this, you might like to try;

Recipe: Heart Shaped Danish Butter Biscuits

Children’s Books: Five Lovely Books About Love

When my son was just 3 months old he had his first Valentine’s Day. To mark this occasion I bought him a copy of the much-loved classic, Guess How Much I Love You. I’ve read it to him regularly ever since (and he’s 7 years old now).  Guess How Much I Love You and the phrase “I love you to the moon and back” has stuck with us and grown over time; he now loves me to the moon and the stars and the planets and back; and I love him all of that and a little bit more. In celebration of Valentine’s Day, here is my selection of five lovely books about love…

Five Lovely Books About Love

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney is an absolutely gorgeous book which perfectly sums up how much a parent loves a child. Featuring Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare; they take it in turns to try to measure how much love they have for each other. It’s lovely, it’s heartwarming and it’s about the most famous book about love you could think of, for good reason too!

Children's Books: Five Lovely Books About Love

The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle. Eric Carle’s books continue to be adored by children, their illustrations are so beautiful and unique and the stories are appealing. The Very Quiet Cricket is one of his lesser known books, but one we all enjoy reading. It’s a wonderful little story of a tiny cricket who can’t make a sound. As he grows, he meets lots of different insects and can’t chirp hello; until he meets a lovely lady cricket and in the moonlight they chirp hello, hello, hello to each other. It’s a lovely, heartwarming story with a chirping surprise at the end!

Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury is gorgeous little picture book about babies from all around the world. One thing they all have in common is they have ten little fingers and ten little toes. My son loved me to read this to him, probably because he liked to look at all the children, but I liked reading it because it was really about how much I love my baby.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams’ timeless picture book classic has been read and cherished by many generations of children and their parents. The Velveteen Rabbit is the sometimes sad story of a stuffed rabbit’s wish to become a real rabbit; something he can only achieve this through the love of his owner, a sickly little boy. The book was first published in 1922 and remains loved by generations of children.

I Love You Just The Way You Are by Tammi Salzano is a story which will make mums of boys go all gooey inside. The story follows a day in the life of a mother and son. Their day is packed with activities such as dressing-up, reading, painting, having a bath and saying goodnight. The story has a lovely rhyming rhythm which is great to read aloud. It’s the perfect story to read with your preschooler before bed.

If you’re looking for a lovely book about love for Valentine’s Day; or if you just want to share the most wonderful feeling in the world with your child; then this selection of books about love is a pretty good place to start. What’s your favourite book about love?

Children's Books: Five Lovely Books About Love

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my other children’s book round ups!

This post contains affiliate links.

Valentine’s Day Crafts: 52 Reasons Why I Love You

After 23 years of Valentine’s Days with my husband, I’m not saying romance is dead, but the budget has been somewhat slashed. We have for a number of years had a £5 gift and a card policy; which means that Valentine’s Day often requires a bit of creativity. His favourite of the homemade Valentine’s gifts I’ve made for him was the 52 Reasons Why I Love You pack of cards. It’s a favourite of mine too, because it’s so darn cute!

Valentine's Day Crafts: 52 Reasons Why I Love You

It’s remarkably easy to put together. All you need is a pack of cards, a permanent marker and a list of 52 Reasons Why I Love You. That last one is the tricky one. My advice would be to take a few days to list some of the reasons why you love your partner. I found that I could find 30 or so reasons pretty easily, but then I started to write things like “I love you because you take the bins out”; which is a valid reason but lacks a little romance.

You can use a normal pack of cards. I found a nice heart shaped pack of cards and used them, but you can find a similar pack here on Amazon. Using your list of the 52 Reasons Why I Love You; neatly write a reason on every card in the pack. You may want to write the biggest and best reasons on the heart cards, and make sure you write it on the suit side, not the patterned side of the cards.

Here are a few of my reasons to give you an idea of what I wrote –
  • You cook amazing meals
  • You work so hard for our family
  • You’re ace in every single way
  • You’re generous with everyone
  • I love snuggling with you
  • I’ve known and loved you forever
  • I love the way you tuck me in at night

This 52 Reasons Why I love You gift is such a lovely thing to give someone. I know my husband looks at the cards often. The reasons are full of our shared history, our shared interests, our family and all the special things about him which I love and appreciate.

It’s such a small, inexpensive and simple gift. But it’s something that your partner will probably really appreciate and treasure for many years to come.

See what other Valentine’s Day crafts you could make here.

Valentine's Day Crafts: 52 Reasons Why I Love You

A Mother’s love – how our broken bond was mended

From the first moment I held my newborn son in my arms, I was head over heels in love with him. No, scratch that. Since the moment I knew I was pregnant I loved him. I loved him fiercely and protectively, as a mother should, right from the very start.

He’s six and a half now and I can’t really remember what my life was like before he came along. He has completely changed my life. In the seven years he’s existed I’ve gone to hell and back with my health. I have tortured myself over his health (he’s fine, he’s absolutely perfect, but it wasn’t always so). I’ve lost my career and forged a new one. But most importantly, I’ve discovered what it is to love and be loved back unconditionally. 

A Mother's love - how our broken bond was mended

At various points in his six and a half years, I’ve stopped and looked at him in wonder and thought “right now, right at this very moment he could not get more perfect. This is the best age he has ever been, it can’t get better than this surely?”

I’ve made a point of keeping that moment in my head and storing it away, because it’s impossible for him to get any better than he is at that moment, but it does. I’ve had so many moments of “oh my god, this is the perfect age” that I’m pretty sure that every age is the perfect age.

Before you decide that I look at my son through rose-coloured spectacles, I do not. I am incredibly aware of his faults. I am the person who bears the brunt of his tantrums. I’m the person who has to pick up after this child who walks through the house leaving tornado like destruction in his wake. I am the person who tries to teach him to be a good human, full of care and compassion. My son is not perfect, he is flawed like the rest of us. He’s human, not super-human, but still lovely.

A few weeks ago, over the Easter school holidays we had a night away in Blackpool, just the two of us. We had the best time and it was so good just to chill out and do things together at our own pace. We missed his Dad of course, but it was only two days and he was busy working anyway. 

It’s been a tough 12 months for us. I lost my Dad and he lost his Grandad. It’s been a year of tears and sadness. There have been splashes of light and colour, it’s not all been widow’s weeds and lighting candles in remembrance. But our two days away reminded us both of the good things we have in each other and it has really brought us closer together.

I never thought I’d bond with my son the way I have. When he was two years old I had an accident, followed by two emergency surgeries. I was bed ridden and full of pain medication for 8 months. In that time I was a zombie who couldn’t care for myself, let alone anyone else.

My amazing husband stepped up and parented for the two of us, but in that time the mother-son bond was damaged and it’s taken a lot to get it back. We’ve always loved each other, always enjoyed being with each other, but his go-to parent has always been his Dad and I’ve often felt excluded.

A Mother's love - how our broken bond was mended

Last night my son sleepily presented himself at my bedroom door. He wanted a cuddle because he couldn’t sleep. So he got in with me, we cuddled and then he fell asleep in my arms. I looked at him in the orange glow from the street light outside and my heart swelled with love for him. He is as good as it gets and I am delighted with that.

Right now at this moment, this is the best he has ever been. This is peak Benjamin. He cannot possibly get any better than he is right now. He is funny, helpful, kind, caring, loving and very much his own person. Six and a half is the best age. He is the best, my best and I am blessed by his presence in my life and the bond we share.

A Mother's love - how our broken bond was mended

40 – My 40th Birthday

Today is my 40th birthday and I feel weird. Lots of my friends have turned 40 this year, most have been dragged kicking and screaming into their fourth decade. I feel like it’s just crept up on me. I’ve been too busy dealing with everything which has happened to us this year that my 40th birthday has been the very furthest thing from my mind.

I woke up this morning and I was 40. In all honesty I feel no different to how I did yesterday. It’s just a number. I’ve got bigger things to worry about than numbers.

Right now I feel like I am overflowing with emotions. I miss my dad more than I have words to say, my boy is starting school today and I’m all emotional about that, he’s having an operation soon, I’m emotional about that too. I’m touched that I have great friends who spent some of their weekend with me partying the last days of my 30’s away.

I am conflicted and anxious about a million different things. But in the weeks since my dad’s death and through the summer holidays, I have been reminded of the two most important people in my life, Matthew and Ben. This weekend has shown me all the people who care about me, friends old and new, from near and far. I am very lucky.

I guess (and I know I’m rambling) that I’m struggling to give a meh about anything. I feel numb inside, I’m overwhelmed by life and the only way I can keep putting one foot in front of the other is to focus on Ben. I feel like in some situations I’m faking emotions and joyous reactions to pretend to the world that everything is fine and normal. I am faking it until I make it. I wonder how many people do that just to get through?

I’m fine and I will be fine. I’m just going through two things almost everyone in the world faces at some point or another, turning 40 and losing a parent. I would turn 40 a thousand times just to have an hour with my dad. 

Today I’m going to try and be in the here and now. I’m going to focus on Ben and Matthew and the special people in my life who love me and care for me. I’m going to smile for the camera, take a walk in the park, blow out the candles on my birthday cake and raise a glass to my dad, and to my Grandma who would have been 103 today.

I don’t fear 40, it’s just a number. I fear life and what it will challenge me with next.

40th Birthday

Taking care of me – why I need some self care

Since my dad died a month ago I’ve been trying to process everything and find a way forward. It’s all become a bit too much for me this last week or so. I know I need to have a word with myself and get myself to a tolerable place before the school holidays start. Rolling around in a mixture of grief and self pity whilst looking after a lively five year old do not make happy bedfellows. Self care is the order of the day.

I have a week to sort my head out as much as I can, so here’s my self care plan:

Stop constantly refreshing Twitter. Take a social media break as best I can. Social Media, Twitter especially is a real life saver, but sometimes I need to step away and stop obsessing.

Go out with friends. I have excellent friends and they shower me with love, support and sarcasm. They will put me in a different headspace and help me process things and move on a bit.

Cuddle my boys. There’s nothing quite as healing as holding someone you love and who loves you right back really hard for as long as possible. Hugs help a lot, so I’ll be going in for them as often as I can get them from as many people who offer them. I may leave the hugee with a slightly damp shoulder. Sorry.

Sense and Sensibility. I have many favourite films and right now I have a very deep yearning to close the curtains and watch Sense and Sensibility and cry my little heart out. For some reason quotes from that film keep popping into my head and I think I just need to spend a couple of hours watching Alan Rickman quietly break his heart and mend it again over Kate Winslet.

Writing. I often (much like I am now) write my feelings out of my head and onto my iPad. Sometimes they end up on my blog, sometimes they get deleted. Either way it gets those thoughts and feelings out of me and it does help me feel better to articulate my emotions, which can only be a good thing.

Sleep. I hardly sleep anyway so it will do me no harm at all to aim for some decent restorative kip, even if it means taking pills to achieve that. I usually get around 3 hours a night and I’d like to try for 5. Anything above that would be something of a miracle. No, I don’t know how I function either.

Work. I continue to dabble around the edges of work. I’m freelance so that’s a luxury I have, I can’t really afford that luxury but for the sake of my sanity this is how it is. I’m pickier than ever because I’ve only got so much inner battery life in me each day. Work is useful, it occupies me and gives me some structure to my day, but I don’t want to overwhelm myself when I’m already feeling pretty overwhelmed by life.

Food. Well this is the best diet ever. I’m either not eating at all or eating tiny portions of stuff. Not great stuff, not overly nutritious stuff, but I’m trying to eat something every day.

Plan nice things. I’ve got a couple of nice things in the diary coming up. Again I don’t want to overwhelm myself but it’s good to have things to look forward to. Like my best friend coming to stay and us making a dent in the case of red wine I’ve got sat gathering dust.

Plan nothing. I also recognise that importantly I need time by myself to recharge, regroup and gather strength for whatever lies ahead.

Times of emotional crisis of this magnitude are thankfully rare. It’s times like this when true friends and the people who really do care step up and offer support, either by sending the odd message of support, taking me out for a pint or offering a shoulder they don’t mind getting cried on.

I’ve been lucky that some excellent people have been there for me and helped carry me from one day to the next, but I’ve found the odd person who you think will be there for me through whatever and they’ve ditched me. That’s human nature, it’s a particularly crappy side of human nature, but it happens. 

Over the coming days, weeks and months I’ll be focusing on what is best for me and my little family. I’m running on empty, but I hope some self care will help me gather the strength to continue and return to a version of my old self again.

self care

Grieving: Mending my broken heart

My broken heart just really needs a big cuddle right now and I need to learn how to do that for myself.

It’s been three weeks now since my dad died. I’d been doing pretty well until last week, keeping strong and ploughing on. I’ve been outwardly cheery and strong to the point where you’d think nothing of any consequence had happened in my life. 

The first couple of weeks after someone dies you’re busy. You’ve got stuff to do, people to talk to, arrangements to make. Then it all stops and the world carries on without you.

Last week the world quietly took itself off pause and carried on and I crumbled. I crumbled and touched the edge of the abyss and I scared myself. Last week there was time and space for me to open the door a little bit on my grief. I shone a light inside and saw that my heart was broken. I have an utterly broken heart.

I don’t know how to mend my broken heart. Everyone says that time is a healer. I’ve been quoted three months to get over the shock, one year to get through the first tranche of painful anniversary memories and three years to get over it properly. I’m taking it one day at a time and for the record I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.

I am excellent at compartmentalising things. I put little lumps of feelings, painful experiences, whatever, in boxes in my mind and when I’m feeling strong enough I take one down off the shelf and look inside. Sometimes I have a rummage about and wonder what the fuss was about, sometimes I slam the lid shut for it never to be opened again. 

I think this is a box that will become very well worn over time. I’ll take it down, open it a bit, deal with whatever pain and sorrow I can and then close it and put it back where it come from. I also know the box next to it on the shelf contains a whole load of really wonderful, special memories of my dad too. I’ll try and open that box and share its contents as much as I can too.

I love my dad. He was one of the biggest and brightest stars in my universe. I will always love him and I will always miss him and I’m going to try very hard not to fall into the abyss again. He told one of his friends that I was one of the strongest people he knew and I’m going to try and make that true.

broken heart

Nothing will ever be the same again

Grief makes everyone act and react in different ways. On 25th June 2016 my dad died suddenly and I was tossed into that weird limbo stage, part grieving, part organising everything, part comforting his also grieving friends and relatives. It’s been nothing short of a privilege to know my dad, he was a one off in the truest sense and we have been overwhelmed with love and support since he died.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Everyone copes with loss differently. I can see this in my immediate family and in his close friends. There are said to be five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. For me I feel like I rattled through them quite quickly, but even now as I write this just over two weeks since I last saw him, I am very aware of the gaping hole he has left in my life. I will miss him forever. I know this to be a fact.

In times of adversity, and there have been many of those such times for me in recent years, I have turned to my dad, my husband and to a small but loyal band of close friends to help me through.

My dad is no longer able to support me, but I knew him pretty much inside out and well enough to second guess his immediate response and what advice and guidance he would give. I know in this situation we’d be indulging in some gallows humour and bantering our way through the trickiest bits in order to not look the full horror of his loss in the face. I thank the friends who have made me laugh, really laugh at this time. I know he’d probably want to shake them by the hand.

My boy Ben has been fantastic. At just 5 years old he doesn’t really understand what’s happened and why I’m so upset, though I try not to be too glum in front of him. He has granted me extra cuddles, he’s made me smile a great deal and almost managed to tidy his room. If you ever need a distraction from grief I’ve found a 5 year old boy is pretty effective.

My dad and my husband had a special relationship. They’ve known each other since we started going out in 1995. He started working for my dad in 1998, becoming a partner in the business in 2000 and when my dad retired in 2013 he handed the business over to him. They worked together for a long time, didn’t always see eye to eye, but made it work. I think they had a tremendous respect for each other.

My husband has lost someone incredibly special to him. We all have.

My friends have been excellent. Too many to name, all messaging me offering quiet support, making themselves available for trips to the pub, or for lunch and just letting me talk and cry and laugh. I am incredibly lucky to have such good people around me. I know these words to be an understatement.

I think I’ve managed to choose the best friends I could hope for. Every message of support, every card through the door, every whisky raised to my dad has been very much appreciated.

The funeral may have been and gone, and life must for almost everyone return to normal. For me nothing will ever be the same again. It will take time for me to learn to live my new normal, find a way to be without my dad there to pick me up when I fall down.

I always see adversity as an opportunity for change, a chance to alt-control-delete my life. Something big may come, or something small. But whatever happens I know that my dad instilled in me humour, logic, love and the steely determination to get through and succeed in whatever direction I choose to strike out in.

I’ll miss the old bugger. But I’ll keep trying to make him proud of me if it’s the last thing I do.

Nothing will ever be the same again