So your 16 year old son announces in the middle of this week that he’s a bit bored. Yup. My reaction would be the same as yours I suspect. Get a life Bob. There’s a fantastic Test Match on the telly. This didn’t wash with him however. Pleading boredom was simply a tactic to improve the odds of getting our approval for a hairbrained plan he had hatched. That cunning ploy aside it was clearly hastily conceived and you might even say a touch reckless. He wanted to head off to the coast on the train, with his dog of course, to indulge his favourite passion, an extended bout of fishing followed by a night out in the open. His first choice of destination had been Woodbridge, but on closer investigation he found that he would need a boat to access any decent water there. After more research he selected Sheringham, just up the coat from Cromer, as his destination. Google Maps revealed Oak Wood on the western outskirts of the town where he imagined he would spend the night having built a fire and dined on roasted sea-bass freshly pulled out of the sea from his vantage point on the stony beach below the cliffs of the North Norfolk Coastal Walk.
I’m not a totally irresponsible parent. Let me assure you, I thought it was crazy too. I tried to talk him out of it altogether; or to go just for the day; and then finally, pitifully, at least leave the dog at home. He was not for compromising however and so, even without the comfort of the Life 360 App which, coincidentally, had caught my eye in a Bloomberg article earlier that day and copy below, I gave him the grudging thumbs up.
IPhone-Ready Apps Mean Teens Tracked Without Calling Home: Tech
2014-07-30 04:01:00.6 GMT
By Olga Kharif
July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Becca Ludlum knows better than to
expect her teen son, Michael, to call home as he skateboards
from the mall to the park to friends’ homes on long summer days.
Ludlum instead relies on a downloadable smartphone
application called Life360 that uses satellite signals to follow
the kid’s comings and goings.
“If he’s late to dinner, I can check where he is,” said
Ludlum, a 36-year-old blogger from Tucson, Arizona. “He is not
going to call me every time he gets somewhere -- he gets
embarrassed.”
As teens in growing numbers adopt smartphones with global
positioning system technology, they’re easier to keep tabs on
using mobile apps like Life360.
I must sneak one of these little beauties onto Bob’s phone sharpish. Mind you give him his due, he answered his phone half an hour later when I rang him again – in the faint hope that he might have had cold feet and called the whole thing off. He was slightly out of breath and told me he was running the two miles to the station trying to catch a train to his first stop Norwich. I took a deep breath of my own and re-crossed my fingers.
Happy to say, all’s well that ends well. We heard from him a couple of times that evening. Once when he had discovered a sandy cliff face swarming with nesting birds and he wanted us to help him identify them. For the twitchers amongst you they were sand-martins. Later to tell us that he and Weasel had been for a swim in the North Sea and had decided to sleep out in the open on the beach. He was a very happy lad with seemingly not a care in the world. And yesterday morning as I made my way down to Wentworth - just wanted to drop that one in and I can tell you about my stupendous 7 iron over the water to secure victory on the famous 18thhole of the West Course if you care – I spoke to him again. He was on his way home after another swim and a breakfast of Heinz baked beans. Somewhat bizarrely he whatsapped me a photo of them being heated up. “What about all the sea-bass you were going to catch Bob” I asked? “That’s a sad story Dad” he said. “I didn’t actually do any fishing. I left my rod on the carriage rushing between trains in Norwich”.
No comments:
Post a Comment