Crazy Uncle Pete

Nonna has to announce that, sadly, one of her nipoti (grandsons)* has moved to another country.

No, that’s not as bad as it sounds. My little grandson, Phynn, has moved just the other side of the Welsh border to a village near Abergavenny, with his daddy Peter, mummy Kat and big bro Ben.

Yes, it is sad for Nonna, but I have to admit it is a very beautiful part of the UK. They’re surrounded by wonderful green rolling hills and have a large garden full of apple trees. Idyllic. Weirdly, it’s also twelve miles, as the crow flies, from where my mother was born, in Abertysswg.

The house is amazing, perched as it is on a country estate with several others, all of which, I’m guessing, were once agricultural workers’ homes. The interior is full of white walls and wood – and terracotta floor tiles. Whilst these look good, they’re a bit of a hazard when you have an eleven-month-old baby.

Peter and Kat are now having to buy a thick carpet for the living room. The rug they’ve acquired is too thin to preserve Phynn from several little mishaps he’s encountered. Not quite walking on his own yet, he’s now managing to get onto the settee, then launch himself head first onto the floor.

Oh dear. Not good.

However, I can’t say that I’m surprised at Phynn’s newly found kamikaze tendencies. As a two year old, his daddy managed to climb the closed step ladder at the top of the stairs (yes, I know it shouldn’t have been there). The first I knew was when said ladder came tumbling, top over bottom, down the stairs. To say the look on Peter’s face as he clung on was a picture is an understatement. How he managed to escape without a scratch is beyond me.

Not daunted by this mishap, it seemed to set up an unintentional theme in his life.

There was the time, as a twelve-year-old, his friends brought him to the front door in shock. He’d gone over the handlebars of his bike and had a huge gash on his hand which had to be stitched at A&E.

As a drunk eighteen-year-old, he thought it would be a great idea to jump off one of the walls surrounding Rochester Castle. He dislocated his ankle and Mum had to take him to A&E to make sure it wasn’t broken.

Not long after that, cheffing at a local restaurant, he overdosed on coffee and thought he was having a heart attack. Mum was called in to – you guessed it – take him to A&E. He rarely drinks coffee now.

I wish his incident at Rochester Castle had instilled in him the same caution over alcohol, as a couple of years later Pa and I found ourselves in a hospital in the next county. Peter had imbibed rather a skinful (and who knows what else) at a music festival, and had somehow found his way onto the central reservation of the M25, in the middle of the night. He'd been picked up and taken to hospital. God only knows how he wasn’t knocked down. It still makes me shudder to think about it.

His last near mishap was shortly after, back in Rochester where he’d been staying with a friend. He’d managed to stray to the wrong side of town (yes, apparently Rochester has one). Peter has looked rather alternative for most of his adult life. I can’t remember if he had his dreads then, but if he didn’t, he had long, curly hair and a hippy way of dressing. He was starting to get threatening looks from some of the more aggressive young people in the area and was afraid he’d be beaten up. Mum and her car to the rescue once more!

And these are just a few of the reasons why he became known as Crazy Pete, and later, when LHG was born, Crazy Uncle Pete. Our family seems to foster crazy uncles for some reason. But that’s another story. These days Peter is a more sensible daddy about to embark on a blacksmithing degree. More sensible, but I'm sure he'd agree, still a little bit crazy.

I hope these will be cautionary tales to Phynn and LHG, and that they manage not to have too many mishaps as they’re growing up. And if they do, that they have the charmed life of Daddy/Crazy Uncle Pete. Now, where are those carpet samples…

 

  Watch that wall!

*Confusingly, it also means ‘nephews’ in Italian!