Happy Birthday to my beautiful  eldest daughter, Lily.

I I think it’s fair to say that she had a lovely day. She certainly smiled the whole day long.

I used to take a lot of pictures – of pretty much any event . Now that I can’t move around freely to capture the moment, from the best angle, I rarely take any pictures.

Hopefully other people have, and can send them to me. Several of we parents had a conversation about teenage drinking. We all had common ground in accepting that alcohol is bad for you, at any age /In excess ( or at all, even ).  Beyond that, the perceived ‘realities’  of life as a teenager in a world where alcohol is easily available, seemed to differ to a quite enormous extent depending on where you lived, where the kids were in school and how old they were.  For sure, some parents may be in for a shock, I think ( my only qualification being my own experience, by the way  ). No matter what a parent’s views are on the topic, it’s pretty certain that your kids won’t have identical ones, and quite possibly deliberately opposite ones.

When I was drinking cheap cans of lager in the park at age 14 in Wales ( and actually hating the taste ) it certainly wasn’t because that was what my parents told me I should do.