An Uneasy Truce

Dear Reader,

It has been a while ( something that I notice appears to be a standard opening line for bloggage these days) and for those of you who have missed this intellectual and articulate occasional series, you have my...deepest sympathy and profound apologies.

I have returned for now, gentle and kind reader and hope to stimulate, challange and entertain you with my acute observations and controversial satire and wit.

Hey!

I have been continuing in my attempts to read GK Chesterton, hence the archaic prose above. Bluds, it SO ain't easy.

So, initially a little round up:
Elyse has to have minor surgery to remove a splinter from the back of her leg.

Jude and Zoe had a party, 21 and 18 repectively, which was fun and groovy.

I had a week off with the kids -We did the pictures, etc and went to the King Tut exhibition at the O2 with my mum and dad. They funded the Gift Shop Challenge and I am grateful to them for that. Can highly recommend the exhibition. It kept us entertained for a couple of hours...well I say us....my dad flew through it and then went to scale the o2 venue, abseiling down one of the sides, before doing a double back triple helix dismount from the top of the Amen Ra statue, as is his want these days in his dotage. It must have been to two Dolce Lattes he had drunk at lunchtime ( extra syrup and sugar!!)

Me, Keith, Joe and Frank ( K's dad) went to watch Arsenal loose to Liverpool at the Emirates courtesy of our good friends, The Starlings. It's brill going there - even if you don't support the home team, it's an astonishing stadium.

Keith and I then had a weekend away in Woodbridge Suffolk courtesy of Tesco Vouchers. Lovely place, lovely hotel, cold weather and Keith was poorly, but to was good to chill ( literally) sleep, read...fast forward to our old age really.

Back to work - good things happening.Amongst other things, ran a training day which was well supported and feedback was encouraging.

So - Joe turned 14 last Friday and his prezzie was to go and fly hawks at Eagle Heights in Eynsham Kent ( great day out).

I went as his guest and six of us were rattled around the Kent countryside in a built for purpose RED minibus to the flying spot. The Hawker ( or Awlstringer) was a very down to earth Indiana Jones type who really knew his stuff - which was good - and he made it very clear that we were there to entertain the birds, not the other way around. He was very entertaining though as were the Hawks who basically had us wrapped around their talons, apart from the times they got literally wrapped around gloves in their Jesses ( baiting).

The technique for getting them out of that was to stand still and hold your arm up and the birds would sort themselves out. One lady really couldn't get the hang of it at all and in the end, her bird just gave up and hung upside down like a bat. She had it confiscated and later the Hawker had one of them land on her head as punishment - oh we laughed!

History lesson:

IN the old days, hawking was a skill that knights cultivated and generally as the sword hand is the right hand, the birds were trained to fly to the left hand. Left handed knights didn't last long
as it was thought they were aligned to the Devil, so were.....got rid of. So the tradition continues and obviously they land on a glove for safety reasons as their talons can puncture a rabbits head.
However, our Hawker was a contrary guy and he had trained on of his hawks to fly to the right hand without a glove. It was pretty amazing - we all had a go. At the same though, there was still an awareness that this bird could, if it wanted, rip into my hand and cause some damage.

Which brings me to our title - 'An Uneasy Truce'

Behaviour is learned and becomes habit and it seems that our family have learned a behaviour called 'arguing about every little thing'. So this weekend was an uneasy truce in terms of us wanting Joe to have good time, so T and E had to let him 'get away' with things that they might usually winge about. Joe was really grateful for his prezzie and so had to toe a party line some of the time which was hard for him - you could see it on his face sometimes - grinning and bearing it. Even Keith and I had to take a deep breath sometimes and 'let things go' to encourage this all age harmony to thrive.

Yesterday Evening Joe and I cooked tea - Stuffed Aubergines - it was really fun and delicious too. I don't cook properly,way enough, so this was re learning some behaviours for me too.

However the truce was broken when the question was asked, in all innocence,
' Do we eat the skin'

Some thought it was good, others didn't even want to try, but really couldn't see the other person's point of view at all.

Happy Days!