Dylan, my eight year old grandson and the boy I carried everywhere on my shoulders for his first six years was brought to me at market by his mother last Sunday so that she could have a night in a luxury hotel to celebrate her fifth wedding anniversary to her second husband.
He, Dylan and not the husband, though...... has become surly and argumentative and is now quite frankly more of a pain than a pleasure and thinks that any money he takes at my stall is HIS !
He slept at mine that night and argued his way through plates of food, gallons of his grandma's orange juice and a refusal to go to bed at a decent time !
It was Bonfire night on Blyth Harbour and we just managed to get there two minutes before the start of one of the most awe-inspiring experiences of my life !
By chance we stood about a hundred yards from the crowd in what turned out to be the very spot beneath where the fireworks exploded and no trip to see the hour long New Year's Firework Celebration in London could equal standing for twenty minutes in what seemed to be the epicentre of scores of exploding stars !
The sights and ear-splitting sounds were tremendous and we stood with about a dozen others in HELL before staggering back to our cars in silence because we were totally deafened by it all !
I'm not about to reveal exactly where we stood as we don't want hordes of you spoiling our view next year !
Talking to four parents of eight year olds in the playground the next morning I discovered that their children all also argue that black is white, say, "Whatever!" to any suggestions they make, refuse to go to bed at a decent time, take ages to get dressed, are ridiculously capable on their Ipads, extremely intelligent in class, continue to grow at a prodigious rate and have all become quite intolerable to live with, just like my grandson !
My taking him to school and being in the playground has become rare these days as he insists on going to school on his own and if you watch him swaggering there you'll see that he's got his jacket open, his hands in his pockets and the look of a sneering Mafia Boss about him !
He generally then approaches the first girl he sees and tickles her under the chin !
And they LET him !
And yet he still likes being read to sleep, mayonnaise squirted in individual blobs on his two eggy breads at breakfast and being made a bed in my room to watch my Shrek DVD from !
He won't be cuddled or kissed any more and it dawned on me that when his mother Gemma once asked me why we stopped kissing her at eight, she was exactly the same natured and it wasn't us who stopped kissing her !
In other words, he's growing up, just like all children do and is shifting into the next stage like scuba diving and windsurfing in Egypt .
And that's where we were last week, in a beach front hotel with views over the Red Sea and as much food and drink as you could desire !
Dylan did indeed learn to scuba dive and windsurf and took to them both without any trouble at all as well as quadbiking in the desert !
BUT despite his maturity and abilities way beyond anything I would have been capable of at his age he still wanted to be read to sleep !
So each night, worn out by the day's activities, he would lie and listen to Roald Dahl's 'The BFG' for about five minutes before we were BOTH sound asleep!
Well nothing's changed there then because that's exactly what used to happen when I read to my own children thirty years ago except then it was only me who fell asleep !
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