EDitorial ± 14-Jan-2003

Mother Of Invention

You know that famous Beatles song - possibly by McCartney & Lennon - about getting older, doing the garden and digging the weeds? Well, my mum, lawd bless 'er, is nowhere near that particular age. Heavens no. Today, in fact, she became exactly a quadrennium short of that figure. So it's Happy Birthday Mum!

Well, the telephone is ringing
Is that my mother on the phone?
— The Police, Mother

This is the same mother who, on reaching 50, roped us in to doing a parachute jump (as a pilot friend of mine used to say, there's two kinds of people: those who fly in aeroplanes, and those who jump out of them). Me and little sis ended up descending solo from 2000 feet: one of us sustained serious injuries, but hey! Mum went five times better and was roped to an instructor for a tandem jump from 10,000 feet. Show off.

On the stones at Thorpe Ness

Abseiling down Ipswich Hospital

Official opening of the summer house

Hopefully she/we is/are steering clear of any similar foolishness a decade later. And if she's reading this, I'm still sorry about that incident on Felixstowe beach years ago when a stone I was throwing, which should have sailed mightily into the sea, didn't. Sorry 'bout that.

Be seeing you!

Ed