Things to do with boys

Georgie by Eben Meyers

Last week was a good one with the boys sailing everyday and William at Willows Summer Camp, with field trips to the Airport and Fire Station where he got to spray the hose and go on our one and only fire engine ( a lovely 50’s Richard Scary-type affair). Little Boy Bliss.

I’m not quite sure why we signed up for mountain biking on Norman Island on Sunday, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. So there we were at 6am – me with a slight hangover having only finished the washing up from the night before at 1am. The Channel was very choppy and we were bounced around a bit, the result of a low pressure tropical wave and all thinking that we would rather be home watching Rango.

Big efforts do reap big rewards however, and Norman Island, which is uninhabited and very beautiful, turned out to be a sparkler.  It was calm with lots of shade in amongst the steep climbs, cliff hanging tracks with dramatic views and pure wilderness (Norman Island is the island which RL Stevenson based Treasure Island on).

After action, satisfaction!

The boys rode the Cadet course, with me hiking some of it with William. Georgie, who really struggled in the beginning, went on to cycle almost 6kms and won with James coming in second.  It was a tough course with real mountain biking, and challenging even for the experienced, grown up riders.

In our politically correct culture which tends to hand out medals just for breathing (we are all winners) it was genuinely rewarding for the boys to achieve something they had really pushed themselves hard to do, and we are proud of them. It was a lovely morning, well worth the slog and we still had time for an afternoon snooze and a quick tidy up before Dad got home from cooking for the Caribbean Heads of State.

My long-term abiding impression of Moms Who Only Have Boys has always been of the hearty, jolly hockey sticks persuasion with booming voices and VW Kombi’s loaded full of sporty stuff, cheering on their team.  It's always slightly worried me that I may end up like this one day with a wardrobe exclusively from Cape Union Mart and ruddy cheeks. 

So not me.

But there I was on Sunday in full hiking gear (from you know where) enthusiastically encouraging my little chaps up the hills shouting : “Come on buddy, you can do it, you’re a Star, what a Champ” and shoving bikes and boys into our large 7-seater Ford Freestyle American Soccer Mom car.  Oh dear.

Boys new favourite expression "knackered"