Half way there… so far, so good

As it’s my birthday, I thought I would kick off this blog by paying a small tribute to my family and give you some idea of how I have changed over the years. Although this is meant to be a business analysis blog, the fact is that I would not be where I am today without the support of those closest to me.

First and foremost is my mother, who not only carried me for nine months but who had quite a hard time of it giving birth to me forty-five years ago. Of course, my father played his part too by providing the vital Y chromosome.

There’s Mam in her Ava Gardner period and Dad in his Asian James Dean period.

Then there is my brother (pictured below with my parents, my grandmother and me) who took good care of me in my early years, even though he later smothered me with a pillow. By the way, in the photo below he appears to be thinking: “I asked Nanna for a new coat, damn it!” These pictures were taken near Jaffna.

That’s me with the ballons above. I think my grandfather is holding me, wondering where the awful smell has suddenly come from.

There I am aged around five years in Drumcondra (and no, that doesn’t make me a Northsider). I still remember when Mam bought me that hat. And that’s me aged seven the day I made my first Holy Communion. Kevin is still sulking about the coat, as you can see. I suspect it was around this time that he started to associate me with the whole coat/goat confusion and was already making plans that involved pillows.

We skip forward now to when I was twenty-two and the day of my graduation from university. I assure you, the moustache was considered “dashing” at the time. And there I am about two years later in 1987 with my niece, Jaimie.

Slide along a few years and I’m thirty. Here I am in Dalkey with Jaimie again ( you can see her father in that sulky face) and also with her baby brother, Cillian. As you can see I have left behind the dashing moustache and am going for a more gormless look.

And here I am on the same day with their father, Kevin, who is clearly planning something to do with pillows again.

A few years later and I’m thirty-three. Here I am with the lovely Gema, who, as you will see, just gets lovelier with the years. A year after that and I’m sporting a goatee. And why not?

I was thirty-eight when I decided that thinning hair could never look good and this was the result. Tony Bennett may have lost his heart in San Francisco, but I lost my hair in Corfu. Thank goodness for the goatee, otherwise I’d look like a potato with eyebrows. And there I am aged forty outside the cottage where I was born on Hayling Island (and no, that doesn’t make me a Brit).

And finally, here I am earlier this year with Gema in Salamanca. See what I mean about her only getting lovelier?

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