Life is Precious

'So we create safe rooms and we dance our patterns and we talk to our monsters'. This is a quote from the excellent blog of my very good friend Peggy from 'down under' (visit her blog, it really is an excellent read)

I thought of these words this morning as I surveyed my bruised and battered body having spent Saturday evening in the company of my three brats grandchildren, Jack, Hannah and Ava.Their mother, Laura, was busy making tea in the kitchen while her offspring set about their Papa with gusto. I've grown accustomed to Jack and Hannah treating me like a human climbing frame but now baby Ava - two months away from her first birthday - has learnt quickly from her brother and sister. As I lay on the floor of the children's bedroom being subjected to tanks, jeeps and police cars being driven over me, I was suddenly aware of heavy breathing and someone drooling over me. Baby Ava had made her way from the living room and decided to crawl over her beleaguered Papa in order to grab a toy in the corner of the room. She can crawl at a fair pace of knots and I'm certain she will be walking before her birthday in a few weeks.

With less than a year until I hit the half century, it occurred to me that time passes more quickly the older you get. I've started work on a football article marking the 25th anniversary of Hearts infamous loss to Dundee, a result that cost them a rare league championship in 1986 and I commented on how my wife was expecting our first child at that time. It seems like it was only yesterday I was changing Laura's nappies and having her crawl over me but now her own children are doing so and I wonder just how so many years have gone by so quickly.

The traumatic events of Dundee in May 1986 have never left me but neither has the ecstasy of the events of just two weeks later when Laura was born. Seeing the birth of a child is one of the most wondrous life events there is. Seeing them grow up is part of every day life but something one should never take for granted. Now Laura might read this and think 'Dad's gone off on one again' but she and her sister Michaela remain as precious to me as the day they were born and as precious as my grandchildren are to me now. We Scots can find such things difficult to say but, recalling the events of a quarter of a century ago, my sentiments are sincere. Some things are worth saying.

Such as if only Dundee hadn't brought on Albert Kidd as a substitute that day in 1986...