This morning, first thing after I had showered and breakfasted (oh, alright then, I did also watch The Heir Hunters just in case some long-lost relative had died and left me a fortune) I telephoned my sister. I needed
to hear, from her own lips, the whole, sorry story about her broken ankle.
Here’s the thing – my sister has now broken the same ankle twice, the first
time being in Germany 31 years ago. As Lady Bracknell didn’t say in The Importance of Being Earnest: “To break one ankle may be regarded as a misfortune, to break the same ankle twice looks like carelessness.” My sister, I could tell, even
at the other end of a telephone, was looking on the bright side...
Looking on the bright side has long been a Family Motto. Long before the Monty Python gang
started humming “When you’re chewing on life’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle” on the set of Life of Brian, we knew how to turn life’s adversities into positives.
I would not be so insensitive, of course, to suggest that looking on the bright side works when faced with the immense sadnesses of life’s tragedies. But for more minor mishaps, like broken ankles, my sister’s
approach has much to recommend it.
I am pleased to see that My Boy remembers the lessons of his youth. Faced last week with two spotty boys, struck down by the chicken pox, he did what any caring dad
would do. He took them to a deserted park and let them have the Best of Times, enjoying the fact that while all their friends were at school or nursery, they had the run of the swings and slides. What fun! Can we have chicken pox again, Dad?
I still remember the Chicken Pox Summer when my Foursome were young. It posed a considerable challenge to the “always look on the bright side” approach. It didn’t
help that they didn’t all catch it at one and the same time but strung out the Spotty Times for more than two months. You can read about the start of the Chicken Pox Summer by clicking on The Way We Were button on the menu to the left of this page.
It was easy to look on the bright side today. The sun was shining, the daffodils were dancing in the front garden, everyone on the Pulse bus was smiling. I dare say
at least some of them, like us, must have heard the weather forecast and the dire warnings that we have not seen the last of winter. But there we were, all passengers on life’s journey – or, at least, passengers on the Pulse bus headed for the
town centre – and we were all looking on the bright side, nodding at each other and chirping “Thank you, driver!” as we alighted at our various destinations.
I took photographs of Young Faris to show everyone at our cribbage group this afternoon. We had had to miss the last session a fortnight ago as that was the day Baby Boy was born – so everyone was keen to hear all about it. “Is it
your first grandchild?” several of the group asked us and we said, proudly, that no, he was our eighth. I think we rather impressed them all with the spread of our family tree. (By the way, over the course of the afternoon I won two games
and lost two games. Looking on the bright side, this is a considerable improvement since we joined the group, back in September last year.)
Going back to my sister, I
must tell you that she is undaunted at her plight. She tells me, cheerfully, that she now only has to wear one sock at a time, thus cutting down significantly on her weekly wash and making one pair last twice as long. Moreover she reminds me
that it is 31 years since she last broke The Ankle and, on that basis, she can probably count on not breaking it again until she is 93.
When it
comes to looking on the bright side, my lovely sister is in a Class of Her Own.