Kiz

Kiz

Without question, another puzzle. Another glorious, brilliant, irresistible puzzle.

Capable of simplifying matters with incredible clarity: “we get to the rugby just in time to grab a beer (cider for her), watch the game, have another beer after the game while the queue for the Twickenham trains dies down a bit”. Fantastic. She's the reason I'm hooked on the Harlequins and the Six Nations, and she's an unbeatable rugby buddy. “We get the bus, then the train, then we're there”. She knows how to look after an old codger.

Capable of incredible complexity. From that walking and talking age, everything was a process of negotiation and agreement. If bedtime was to be seven o'clock, the starting point had to be about five thirty, or she'd bamboozle you into agreeing half seven or eight o'clock.

One of my favourite simplifications was the Reading festival tent burning. “But why?” I asked. “You wouldn't want that back. Not after three nights.” “Er, OK”.

She's blessed with the warmest of hearts, and an incredibly generous disposition. She has a knack of making your day. I wouldn't cross her, though...

She's also got a knack for making me laugh. Out loud. A lot. Specialising in throw-away one-liners and visual gags. In fact, she's in a lot of my favourite photos, as a participant and the instigator: the three girls in those plastic granny fold-out rain hats; the three kids wearing those Telly Tubby ceramic dish-lids; peering through the A4 cookbook-enlarging lens; last year's moustache-modelling.

Great with animals, she's always loved the dogs she's lived with, here and elsewhere, and now there's the cats. Just the four, including the imaginatively named Rupert (ginger, after the ginger bloke in the Harry Potter films) and the less imaginatively named 'Cat'.

Happily surrounded by great sets of friends, spread around geographically, I don't think I've met one of her mates I didn't like.

Dads look forward to bullying the first boyfriend a bit (or a lot, if possible), but her first was a six foot something brick outhouse of a rugby-playing Kiwi. That put paid to my cunning plan.

Random memories include:

My poor injury management, including the playful punch on the upper arm “cheer up, kid” (she'd broken her upper arm); and opening the hospital corridor doors with her foot (she'd broken her toe).

Those apparently endless, hot sunny days in that swimming pool in the Dordogne.

Realising that she hadn't just gone into halls and completed her first year at university, but that she'd become a properly independent woman. She was making contact, catching up, because she wanted to, not because she needed to.

Welling up with emotion when she got her degree, a First; then even more when she landed her first post-graduation job.

There's those clichés about cotton wool for the first and the knife-juggling third child. Without any doubt the first is a game-changer, and it's been the most wonderful game I've ever had the privilege of taking (a small) part in.

I think the easiest way to summarise things is like this: inevitably, the first child goes a long way to setting the tone, providing the roadmap for what's to come, and I'm happiest when we're all together, as a family.