I’LL BE MISSING YOU…

My little buddy will be zooming off on her next adventure to Dubai in a day or so and the photo blogging will heat up then “for real” – as she might say. It’s strange how the world has shrunk over the past twenty years or so. When I was her age the notion of spending a summer in Dubai would have been the stuff of high adventure, but today it’s like dropping in on friends in Galway for a few weeks. You hear more and more people saying they have a cousin, sister, aunt in Dubai or Abu Dhabi and they’re on their way out or on their back from visiting them.

Social media of course closes the gap a little too and I suppose I’m going to have to succumb to using Skype if I want to see her – even though I can never use it without thinking it was designed for kidnappers to keep in touch (if she calls me with a copy of the Dubai Daily in her hand I’ll probably drop dead of shock!). Twitter, Facebook and even www.paparali.com will give the impression she’s just in the next room but once the phone goes back in the pocket we know that’s not the case.

I console myself with the thought it’s only for the summer and after all I survived a whole year when her brother went to Oz and then took the long way home through China and Russia, but I have to admit this is a bit different. Steve was always his own man, even at three years old when he liked to swing from the light fittings, but Ali has always been my shadow. When she was born I didn’t put her down for 10 weeks! This brief – I say brief but I know it won’t feel that way – parting only makes me think of all those grown up children that have been forced to pick up their lives and move to the four corners of the world because of the recession here in Ireland. My wait will be measured in weeks while their parents will wait years or even a lifetime.

And so here’s to the next adventure of Paparali! Just remember I’ll be missing you…