Guy Grieve reminisces after his son's landmark birthday and is proud of the man his boy has become A MAN AMONG MEN

Reminiscing about the glory days after his son’s landmark birthday, Guy Grieve is incredibly proud of the driven man his boy has become

Now we all think our kids are geniuses, or utterly unique in everything or specially gifted in this or that. And this, of course, is how it should be in any supportive parent-child relationship. Not to the point of becoming oppressive (I abhor those hot-house ambitious parenting techniques) but it pays dividends, I suppose, for our kids to always know that we are in their corner.

I write this piece on an auspicious day as it is my youngest son’s eighteenth birthday today. He has now crossed the Rubicon and taken a symbolic step into manhood. Yesterday we took a drive together and discussed all sorts of things from girlfriends (his, and mine) to thoughts about the future and of course his mother who is now with an absolutely lovely man whom we all adore.

We also talked about the symbolism of becoming eighteen and as we talked I remembered some of the moments in Luke’s life that I’ll never forget.

Allow me to bore you. Juliet, Oscar and I were crossing a harbour in Trinidad on a tiny inflatable launch. It was a bright and very hot day. Oscar pointed at an Irish ex-fisherman now living at sea with his wife who was walking along the quayside. All around him the air was shimmering with profound heat. To our disbelief Jerry was wearing a knitted tank top. I called out, ‘Bit hot for that top Jerry surely?!’ He turned and held his arms up and replied, ‘But it’s the only thing I could find without sleeves!’

We all laughed and I then pointed out to Luke where we needed to go. He was at the helm of the outboard. The sea began to curl over the bow and I turned to Luke and said, ‘Luke, you can see you are going too fast, please slow down.’ He looked up at me – a golden haired face against a backdrop of pure blue. There was an expression of glittering offence in his eyes: ‘Dad, I am actually four you know.’ He then shook his head mimicking the adult gesture of disbelief and slowed down.

I’ll never forget those laughs. Now that I think of it we always just expected the boys to get on and make do. To take their tumbles and knocks alone before we came and patched them up. One time we were on an exhausting passage to Cape Fear of about 1,400 miles. Luke stared up at me from where he had wedged himself into the companionway against the swell and looked out across the endless ocean. We were three days out from land and had about ten days to go.

After a long period of reflective silence he said, ‘Dad have you got anything we can play with?’ I looked about for inspiration and found an empty water bottle and threw it to him. He grabbed it like a fish snatching prey and disappeared below.

A few hours later I switched over watch with Juliet and went below for a brew and there they were, lost in an intense game pushing the water bottle along the cabin sole. The water bottle wrapped up and glowing in a firmament of their own imagination.

More recently, at age 17, we applied the same principle of ‘get on with it’ with Luke and Oscar and have handed them major responsibilities helping us to build a completely new venture for our business in Edinburgh. Luke, with his characteristic lack of fuss, has pretty much taken over and run the quite complicated logistics involved in our UK-wide home deliveries and despatch and is the fastest order packer in the family.

Here again he has made us laugh and left indelible memories. A few weeks ago we were frantically packing and had a deadline that we could not miss. Luke looked up and shook his head and said, ‘I’d rather be in the Battle of the Somme than doing this.’ I could go on, but what I like about this boy, now become a man, is that from his earliest to now he has quickly figured out that one of the most important survival tools in his armoury is going to be the ability to laugh and shrug it off when many about him might be sinking into the abyss of negativity and self doubt.

And finally too, son or not, I like the man he’s become and look forward to our friendship growing stronger with every year that passes.

“He has now crossed the Rubicon and taken a symbolic step into manhood