Sammy on his 16th Birthday

This is my son Sam on his last day as a 15-year-old. It's hard to believe he's now 16. He's a very decent, nice, likeable kid, doing well at school, a good set of friends. I'm not sure how he turned out so well, all things considered. Perhaps my best memory of him as a kid was when he was about one year old, just starting to walk, always perched on my back in those carry things, pointing excitedly at everything, oohing. He was a very cute kid. One of his primary school teachers once said: he's so beautiful, I just find myself staring at him. If it had been a bloke saying it you would have stepped back and said, steady on a minute. Even on this last trip, the Thais would take me aside and say very earnestly: Your son, he is very handsome. Don't tell him that, I would joke, but they didn't get the joke and would repeat, your son, he is very handsome. They liked the white skin.

That was one of the strange things about Thailand. While all the westerners were sun baking, the Thais themselves were covered up and many of them had paler than expected faces after having piled on the whitening cream. For to be dark was to be a peasant.

With Sam, it was those times in Europe, in the freezing cold, with Suzy pregnant for the second time, that were perhaps the best; the young family, on the move, before the drama of Henrietta's birth; when everything seemed most at right with the world. There are pictures somewhere, of us, in Paris, by the Seine, if not snow gusting then a time of hope and promise that might never return. Cute as a button in a little red devil's outfit at the Frankfurt spring festival; times when we weren['t so old, when things hadn't gone so badly wrong; when the future seemed infinite and love was unconditional. Or him, on his first birthday, on the balcony of a Tangiers hotel. Now, I look at families, young children, and miss the time when mine were young. ; They're teenagers now, it seemed to happen overnight; no more on the way; and we are more outside of things now. I want a dog, I keep saying, as if this would solve all my emotional needs.

These were private moments; never quite defined; times adrift and; that phrase again; outside of things. My life took a wild right hand turn when kids came along. They weren't exactly on the cards before that. And I felt, for once, right with things; a family to look after; and I was so enormously proud. Now: I just want a dog.

THE BIGGEST STORY

A suicide bomber on foot killed and wounded some two dozen people outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target.
The blast happened near the first of several security gates outside the base at Bagram, north of the capital Kabul. Cheney's spokeswoman said he was fine, and the U.S. Embassy said the vice president later met with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.