Can you reconstruct a Grandpa?

Attention captured

Another reader

They, our good friends that we are staying with have been married for 48 years and we have been married for 44!  They are still together and so are we!  HE, the Grandpa was given the book you can see him reading…How to be a husband  by Tim Dowling and he, the Grandpa started to read it.  He shook his head a bit at the way marriage has evolved since we were the ones evolving from the pattern our own parents had found to be the normal and then had a little sleep and then I picked up the book and of course found it funny and thought provoking because even we are still evolving! and minor transformations take place from time to time.   The really interesting thing is that the author found some research which suggested that like doesn't necessarily go to like, that nature drives us into the arms of the unlike in order to improve the Gene Pool.  I would echo this and say that it is in the unlike with unlike that the real transformation comes.  If you were weaving a piece of cloth, you would have threads going up and down and threads going across and you have to have tension to make certain that the cloth will fulfil it's function.  So it is with marriage, a little bit of tension, some resolution, some movement towards a common goal makes for strength.  We still bicker about silly stuff but we understand each other.   I really quite like driving but realise that he needs to be in control.  I did object though to being told to get in the back with the dogs this week, well, wouldn't you?

A seaside breakfast read

A mixed reaction!

Marriage is such a funny thing but it works.   Even if you are having a bad day with Grandpa, if anyone suggested that he was a silly old fool, you would jump to his defence.  He is, after all, yours!  And of course you hope he would do the same.  There are so many more things shared than a gene pool, there are shared meals. shared happiness, shared friends, shared sadnesses and particularly shared meditation! So I think when Tim Dowling writes a How to be a Grandpa book and he wants any advice, he could do worse than come to the ones pictured here.

A bit surprised?