The Man from Del Monte

Rich and I went on holiday with mum and dad quite a few times over the years. One of our favourtie holidays was a trip to Menorca in, I think, 1999. At any rate, I'm pretty sure I had just completed the first year of my PhD. We actually got there separately and by chance ended up at the same hotel. It was a May holiday and we were all there for Dad's birthday. But perhaps I'll post a pic of us from Dad's birthday on his birthday next week. We still remember lots of stories from the trip, and would often laugh as we remembered the holiday reps speech as we rode from the airport to the hotel on the bus... catchphrases which included, 'Lucky Monk', as she told us about the only Monk living amongst the many Nuns at the local Monastery, or the same woman lamenting that we would find the "best beaches along the coast'. We all pondered about where we'd find the other beaches.

Menorca is a beautiful island and has many virgin beaches that have been completely untouched by human touch. To get to one of these beaches you had to drive through farmland. I remember passing through a field of sweet little pigs, and dad being so tickled by a little piglet that was nudging a sleeping piglet out of the shade so that s/he could get away from the hot sun. Dad agreed that he'd likely have been a vegetarian if he was our age. Indeed he was a compassionate and kind man and hated the idea of suffering. I remember him going fishing with his friends and how he couldn't kill the fish he caught... He didn't go again. 

The thing about dad is that he was such lovely company. We really enjoyed those trips with him and mum. 

Here's dad doing his infamous impression of the Del Monte man. English readers might remember the Del Monte ads that used to run where a man in a Panama hat would taste some fruit to see if it was ripe for picking, and when he gave his approval the tagline would be, "the man from Del Monte - he say 'yes'". 

In other news: today I really felt the baby kick a bit. I *think* I could feel it from the outside, even, as I held my hand over my tummy, but it may have been just magical thinking. I also got my results back from my AFP blood work I had done last week. Happily it showed that the baby has a very low risk of neural tubal defects. That, along with the first trimester screen we had (which showed a 1:10,000 chance of a baby with downs and trisomy 18), was very reassuring and we're now getting excited that we have our anatomy scan coming up. 

Raf still has zero clue what's going on, though he does kiss my tummy - and then invariable blows a raspberry on it in the next breath - but the concept of there being a baby in there is just way beyond his comprehension!