Ady's Graduation

Ady’s been back about 5 minutes and already he’s dragging us up and down the country at a moments notice! I tell ya, that lad…

Only jesting. This is a rather important blog. It’s a celebration, in fact. Cos ADY GOT A FIRST!














I must admit, I’m jealous! But I put it down to all the guidance and advice I gave him as he was growing up. He wasn’t responsible at all!

Nah! No chance. It was all down to him. Every last bit of it. In fact, if anyone deserved to get a first, he did...

Every time I rang him last in his final year, he’d be talking in hushed tones because he was in the library. Mum, Dad and I really wondered for a while whether he was overdoing it. And the reason he was working so hard? To make sure he got a 2:1!! The beauty of it was that he didn’t expect it. At all. But he sure was good enough. Aced his dissertation and a few exams to crash over the finish line. First!





























So these pictures are of the Swinbourne family (minus Edwin, still in recovery from appendicitis) munching our way through Bristol this time last week. To celebrate we had a fish meal, an organic breakfast, noodles, you name it! As ever, I had problems escaping the paparazzi...















As did my Dad.















Ady was somewhere between Canada and America when he heard about his uni grade. He didn’t believe it – needed it confirmed by Dad. Later, he called me while I was walking through Regents Park one summer’s evening to tell me the news. I was made up for him. I wanted to buy him a beer. But it'd take five months before I was able to!














It must have been weird for Ady, after all those months of romancing exotic and beautiful women in tropical climes to be back in rainy Bristol, searching for a pretty face. But as ever, even during the ceremony, he seemed to find a few, not least the demure blonde on the back row - we saw ya Ady, whispering sweet nothings in her ear...

And then again after the ceremony, his dissertation tutor (apparently 37 but looking nothing of the sort) came up for an elongated chat. She wanted him to do an MA! (or so he said!) No wonder she marked him so well..!














I left Ady to his partying in the evening to begin another train journey back to the big smoke (my third in a busy week). Finished a great book - The Midnight Bell - by Patrick Hamilton, which is set around the Euston Road in London - where I live. Fitting, because it was the midnight hour by the time I got home, let me tell you that now...














By that time, Ady was tripping the light fantastic in a Bristol club - presumably chatting up some more eligible blondes. Truth is, with a first in his back pocket, there's probably few more eligible than he. Don't tell him that, though - don't want it to go to his head..!

And he's coming up to London today - so there'll be a chance for another beer!

Have a great weekend.