Things I like

It's a balmy late summer's evening in Cambridge and I have just returned home from Great St Mary's Church after a pleasant walk along the flagstones of St Johns Street. Today Miang left for Heathrow to fly to Tanzania where she will work for a month on a food technology aid project.

I had spent the afternoon with Chris and the boys, before cycling home in the warm afternoon air to a snack and a 5 minute walk to Great St Mary's, opposite the Senate House on Kings Parade. Here, in a free concert, the Trinity College Choir performed Bach, Tallis, Purcell, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Parsons, Byrd and Bax, finishing with a beautifully complex rendition of "Over the Rainbow". This is one of the greatest choirs in the world, and it is comprised entirely of students.

As I sat enveloped in music, glancing occasionally at the choir members, gifted, youthful and inspired, I reflected on what I have experienced here over the past few weeks. I have discovered much that I like.

I like it when Thomas smiles at me when I greet him. I like his pink cheeks when he has just woken. I like it when he curls up in my arms and happily lets me feed him his formula milk from the bottle. I especially like it that as he sucks away, his left hand reaches instinctively for my stubbly chin, and that he pinches it, and grabs the jowls in my neck, occasionally pricking me with his tiny, but sharp fingernails. I like it when he beams with delight as I push him on the swing in the park, and that he opens his mouth wide for another spoonful of his soft food when I whistle.

I like it when James giggles as I threaten to eat his food if he doesn't. I like it that he calls for me to wipe his bottom after a "poo-poo". I like it when James reads to me, and when he lets me design the layout of his plastic railway track. I like it when he is tired and starts to whimper a little as he walks, so that I can compliment him on his fine whimper, and invite him to try other variants, such as whining, coughing, whingeing and screaming like a banshee, all of which he is incapable of doing because he is, by this stage, laughing so much. I like it when he asks granddad to carry him home from the park, and that when I perch him on my shoulders he rests his chin on my head, or, when I carry him "like a baby", he puts his arm around my neck. I like it when we ride on the bus together, discussing the pros and cons of bus travel, and I especially like it when we catch the wrong bus and head off to an unknown oblivion, with James holding granddad's hand and resting his head on granddad's shoulders, and with not the least concern that we are lost.

All in all, I think I quite like being a granddad.