New Years.
Created | Updated Jan 7, 2012
Well, here I am at 20.30 sitting at home in front of my lap top, on New Years Eve. Now years ago my Dad once said to me, "there will come a time cowboy, when you will stop going to pubs, and running around doing pub crawls".
Now, I never knew at that time, but he was right, yet as well know, our parents are always right. In fact I haven't been to a pub in years now, and the fact that I am sitting at home on New Years eve just proves he was right.
I'm not sure if its my age that has mellowed me with the years or the medication that I have to take these days, but the last drop of alcohol I had was a few years ago, and it tasted of aluminium, leaving a rather bitter taste in my mouth, nothing like the way it used to taste in my younger years.
Just thinking back to the time my father said those words to me, leaves me feeling rather guilty that I never got to know him, when he was alive.
He was always working you see, seven days a week, running his own ice cream van, then later opening up a restaurant and guest house. In later years he started to study theology, and eventually got ordained as an Episcopal priest, which sent him and my mother further up North, to cover the large constituency the Bishop sent him to cover.
Of course, by that time in his life, I had my own family to bring up, and after the oil construction site near our home closed down, I had to travel further afield to find work. Working away from home for weeks, months at a time both on and off shore, and even overseas, so I never saw much of him, or indeed my own family very much, during, what I have called, my dark years.
Alcohol became a friend of mine during that time, in fact you could say it was compulsory, but obviously not while working off shore on the oil platforms.
I often think back to things my Dad said to me, but around this time of year, when the alcohol flows and folk go out and celebrate, his words come back to me. So come the midnight hour, I shall raise my cup of tea and think of absent family and friends.
Happy New year, and all the best for 2012, to each and every one of you.
Smudger. 12/11
Now, I never knew at that time, but he was right, yet as well know, our parents are always right. In fact I haven't been to a pub in years now, and the fact that I am sitting at home on New Years eve just proves he was right.
I'm not sure if its my age that has mellowed me with the years or the medication that I have to take these days, but the last drop of alcohol I had was a few years ago, and it tasted of aluminium, leaving a rather bitter taste in my mouth, nothing like the way it used to taste in my younger years.
Just thinking back to the time my father said those words to me, leaves me feeling rather guilty that I never got to know him, when he was alive.
He was always working you see, seven days a week, running his own ice cream van, then later opening up a restaurant and guest house. In later years he started to study theology, and eventually got ordained as an Episcopal priest, which sent him and my mother further up North, to cover the large constituency the Bishop sent him to cover.
Of course, by that time in his life, I had my own family to bring up, and after the oil construction site near our home closed down, I had to travel further afield to find work. Working away from home for weeks, months at a time both on and off shore, and even overseas, so I never saw much of him, or indeed my own family very much, during, what I have called, my dark years.
Alcohol became a friend of mine during that time, in fact you could say it was compulsory, but obviously not while working off shore on the oil platforms.
I often think back to things my Dad said to me, but around this time of year, when the alcohol flows and folk go out and celebrate, his words come back to me. So come the midnight hour, I shall raise my cup of tea and think of absent family and friends.
Happy New year, and all the best for 2012, to each and every one of you.
Smudger. 12/11
