Will’s World: Spring turnout, Evans family style
© Richard Stanton Age is just a number, right? After all, unless you’re the senior resident in the nursing home, there’s plenty of people around who’ll have many years on you, especially in an industry like ours where the average farmer goes on working until they’re about 102.
Nevertheless, I’ve been feeling quite old and tired lately. Like most things in my life, I blame this squarely on my numerous pre-teen and teenage daughters.
They’ve just gone back to school after the Easter holidays, and as much as I love them and would do anything for them, the current stage of parenthood that the present Mrs Evans and I find ourselves in is both mentally and physically exhausting.
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If they’re not fighting like cats with each other or flouncing dramatically out of rooms, they’re constantly messaging their friends via some app that I’ve never heard of, laughing at an online video that I don’t understand, or just being embarrassed by my very presence.
Despite the challenges all that can bring, I’m only too aware that the little girls they were just a few short years ago are rapidly growing into independent young women and won’t be needing us for too much longer.
I suppose that’s what makes being a parent so wonderfully bittersweet.
War and order
So over the holidays, with the weather being not particularly fit for farming, we managed to head off for a few family days out.
The first suggestion was mine. What could they possibly enjoy more than a trip to the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester?
A few hours into the visit, though, and despite my riveting commentary on the development of tanks and artillery, they were flagging. “I’ve misjudged this,” I thought miserably.
Until, that is, we came to an exhibit on communication. It started with soldiers in the trenches sending up pigeons, then went through the earliest two-way radios they used in the Second World War, right the way through the decades to the mobile phone.
What do you suppose was the model they used in the museum exhibit? A Nokia 5510 – the first mobile I owned, much to my daughters’ collective delight.
Oh, how they laughed. “Daddy, they might as well put you in the museum too!” the little darlings cackled, as I silently resolved to rewrite my will and leave everything to the local dogs’ home.
White-knuckle ride
The next trip was more to their liking: Alton Towers with some good friends.
Once I’d got over the cost of admission, I eagerly volunteered to try CBeebies Land with the youngest, as the rest of the party enthusiastically headed off to the hardcore roller coasters. I’m relentlessly for the quiet life these days.
After a few hours we all met up again, and the eldest daughter convinced me to go on the Wicker Man with her.
As the bar came down to fasten me in, I was questioning every life decision that had led me to that point.
Suddenly we were off. As we hurtled through the sky at terrifying speed, she grabbed my hand.
I may be embarrassing sometimes, and they may be growing up far too fast, but at that moment she still needed her dad.
It was tiring, it was expensive, there were a million things we could have been doing on the farm.
But as we drove home and listened to the girls’ excited jabbering about everything they’d done, we knew that none of that really mattered; what counted was the memories we’d made together.