{"id":20285,"date":"2016-08-23T10:54:51","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T09:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=20285"},"modified":"2017-08-19T14:09:37","modified_gmt":"2017-08-19T13:09:37","slug":"im-a-granddad-again-and-i-couldnt-be-prouder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=20285","title":{"rendered":"I’m a granddad again and I couldn’t be prouder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, at 9.30 pm local time last night, I became the proud grandfather of a second granddaughter born to my son Richard and daughter-in-law Emily in Nairobi. Mother and child are both doing well and the baby weighed in at\u00a07lb\/3.4kg.<\/p>\n

Granddaughter No 2 has a great name:\u00a0Kara Jo Darlington.<\/p>\n

The Kara name comes from\u00a0Thomas Sankara<\/a> who\u00a0was a Burkinab\u00e9 military captain, Marxist revolutionary, pan-Africanist theorist, and President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. Viewed by supporters as a charismatic and iconic figure of revolution, he is commonly referred to as “Africa’s Che Guevara”.<\/p>\n

The Jo name refers to<\/span>\u00a0 Joanne Cox<\/a> who was the British Labour Party Member of Parliament for the Batley and Spen constituency from her election in May 2015 until her brutal killing on 16 June 2016. \u00a0Emily – who was a Labour Party candidate in the same General Election – knew Jo well and was one of the organisers of and speakers at a commemorative ceremony in Nairobi.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, as Kara Jo grows up, we will always remember when and where she was born.<\/p>\n

I try to make \u00a0a Skype call to the family in Nairobi each week and I hope that this week I’ll see Kara as well as Catrin and then in October I’ll be going over there for the week of Catrin’s half term. I’m so proud of them all and will be so excited at seeing them all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"