Trading in for a younger model

My father used to say to me "Shall i trade your mum in for a younger model?" It took me years to see the joke...she was 10 years younger than him and as for being a model, well she was quite a looker for her years.

It wasn't a marriage made in heaven, although i suspect there were some heavenly moments. Like me, she often found a motorbike in the kitchen, or something boiling in molli on the stove, something totally inedible!

There were demands for her to make something, not just babies, but a set of sails, including a spinnaker, or a bee hat. He had this sort of faith that she would innately know how to do something without ever having any basic training in the skills needed.

When i look back, it seems impossible that she make a set of sails. How could anyone expect such a thing?.....HE DID.

.....and she went to the library and got a few books out on the relevant subject, hired a hall to lay the canvas out, acquired the ingredients so to speak, and set to work.

I can see she must have loved him and his belief in her was so complete it swept her along on a tide of "can do".

He never said she ever let him down and i cannot see how she could have.

It was a tempestuous relationship, lots of laughing and joking and singing.....and then there would be anger and temper and he'd lift her up by her hair.

She would go and stay with friends or family.....i suspect until he'd said sorry and it wouldn't happen again......but of course it did.

Reading this, you would think that he was powerful and perhaps abused that power, but she ruled the house and especially the finances with a rod of iron. He rarely had money in his pocket, and certainly not to buy cigarettes or a beer. She kept a set of black books, in which she recorded every significant purchase.

They have been an endless source of amusement with the family and have settled many an argument about dresses or shoes and whether it had been fair or not.

Now he who should never and i, have had our ups and downs but it has always been a secret delight of mine to think he woud trade me in for a younger model.
I often think of him, up at the crack of dawn, walking the dog along the windswept coast, whilst a thin athletic younger woman joggs alongside him, chiding him to run, get fit, drink less. He longs for a bacon butty dripping with chilli sauce but she's a vegetarian and won' t have meat cooked in her kitchen. I visualize how long it would be before she hosed him down, or slept with the windows open in the freezing depths of winter. I could go on and on and be more specific but it's starting to get horrifying. Where i wonder would all the gg's go? not to mention their spare parts. Where would 150 axes and 50 skeins of hemp rope live..... in a little cottage by the sea?

Thinking about it....he rarely trades his vehicles in for younger models, usually older to ancient...perhaps he'll trade me in for an older model!

Bessie in the pub?........errr grim!

Think mr.H had better stick with me....I'm used to doing public service, sacrificing self for the greater good and all that.

Perhaps i could be a new super hero????

If i publish this, i think i'd better go out for the rest of the day, week, month, year!

LOVE YOU MR. H.