Shoe-down-the-river stories and other backwaters of family history

Efficiency is a post that combines my great loves – the boy-child and family history (no mention of the Big T, but he knows!)

Shaking the tree

Bath-times with the boy-child in days gone by.

I saw this and it reminded me of a time in the boy-child’s life when bath-time was a supervised, highly social activity. These days, if I accidentally stray within twenty feet of his bathroom whilst he’s abluting, it’s a capital offence, so you’ll understand that the time I’m talking about is long, long, ago.

Anyway, back in the day, when bath-time involved me sitting on the floor, making sure the boy-child didn’t drown and did actually get washed, we developed a kind of tradition where I’d tell what I hoped were amusing anecdotes from my childhood. He called these the shoe-down-the-river stories, after an incident where my little brother “borrowed” my shoe to use as a boat and floated it off down a river. Retrieving the shoe involved several men – including my father – getting comprehensively soaked and not a little…

View original post 463 more words