{"id":6950,"date":"2011-10-21T23:24:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T22:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6950"},"modified":"2011-10-22T08:06:23","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T07:06:23","slug":"a-day-with-the-young-and-the-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6950","title":{"rendered":"A day with the young and the old"},"content":{"rendered":"

I continue to delight in seeing my granddaughter Catrin whenever I can help out her parents with some childminding. She is now nine months old and at nursery and sometimes – like this Tuesday – I collect her from nursery and look after her for a couple of hours till her parents return from work.<\/p>\n

On Fridays, Catrin doesn’t go to nursery but spends the morning at a swimming class which she absolutely loves. This morning, I collected her from her class and looked after her for a while. Her little cheeks were red and hot and I learned later that her first tooth has appeared.<\/p>\n

We finished up at the Royal Festival Hall where I bought her a banana. As usual, I sliced it up, mashed it, and served it to her with a spoon. But this time I kept half of the banana unsliced and gave her the chance to eat it herself.\u00a0 She adores banana and clearly delighted in the opportunity to feed herself.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n“I can feed myself, granddad”<\/span><\/p>\n

Sitting next to us on the couch was an old man and I engaged him in conversation. He was a Russian who was 75 years old and, as I asked him about his life, a remarkable story was revealed.<\/p>\n

He was born in a town called Rostov-on-Don in the south-west of the Soviet Union. In 1942 – when he was just five years old – the German army was sweeping through the Soviet Union and the local authorities were gripped with Stalinist paranoia.<\/p>\n

One day, the KGB picked up his father who was never seen again. A few weeks later, they came for his older brother who similarly was never heard of again. So the family fled Russia. They travelled through Azerbaijan and eventually reached Iran where they lived for a while before moving on to India where they witnessed the slaughter between Hindus and Muslims with Indian independence. Finally the family managed to reach Britain where they made their home.<\/p>\n

It was magical to see fresh-faced, nine month old Catrin and this 75 year old man with a troubled life etched on his face looking at each other and smiling together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I continue to delight in seeing my granddaughter Catrin whenever I can help out her parents with some childminding. She is now nine months old and at nursery and sometimes – like this Tuesday – I collect her from nursery and look after her for a couple of hours till her parents return from work. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6950"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6957,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6950\/revisions\/6957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}