Meeting the new member

Yesterday was spent in Manchester, seeing family. It was our first opportunity to meet the new member, Alex, our great nephew.

It was a gloriously sunny day. We saw the nose to tail queue heading north to Blackpool & the Lakes for the Bank Holiday & felt relieved we were going the other way.

Young Alex, just 4 weeks old, is already a charmer. He did little but sleep & feed. He already seems to be trying to focus & be aware of an outside world.

We soon discovered the lad was named after Sir Alex Ferguson, the former manager of Manchester United Football Club. Both parents support the team. Clearly he is expected to when he grows a bit older. (Though the competing grandfathers might have some influence. The Fox’s brother supports Altrincham FC & has already bought Alex his first Altrincham kit. Indeed he was already sporting his Altrincham bib. As for the other grandfather, he’s a supporter of Manchester City, the local big rivals to Man Utd.)

I also got the suspicion he is to be trained like any other young animal. Our niece is a dog groomer & trainer.

Above all we are confident he will be well loved both by his parents & his grandparents, not to mention his great aunt & uncle if we’re given the chance.

The meal, at the pub we dined out the day after the wedding of our niece, was good. It somehow stretched to taking over 3 hours with very little effort.

We’ve come to the conclusion we should do this more often. I hope the others feel the same.