My daughter came in running earlier today – “MUM, there’s been a bomb in Cyprus – OMG!!!” and of course like every parent of a child on holiday in a country that has had some sort of accident or disaster when they are away from home or on their Gap Yah, your heart leaps and then sinks.
As it happens, she wasn’t quite correct, there was a massive blast at a munitions dump in southern Cyprus that has tragically killed 12 people, including the commander of the country’s navy, officials say. A fire reportedly ignited about 100 containers holding confiscated Iranian explosives at the naval base at Zygi (CONFISTCATED IRANIAN EXPLOSIVES!! That sounds deeply worrying doesn’t it???). The fire has now spread to the island’s largest power station which has caused widespread power cuts and forest fires.
This is when, as a mother you berate yourself for not quite knowing exactly where your child, who is now an adult is. Having tried to be cool (ish) (apart from trying to terrify the life out of him with that scary list of what not to do on holiday) I understood I had to let him go and get on with it so didn’t get much in the way of precise details.
Now we’ve got such access to them, it’s very tempting to text every day for updates on their well being. My parents didn’t have that option (thank god) although I doubt very much they’d have bothered – it would have been me asking about how they were getting on I suspect.
Anyway, my daughter duly texted my son to check he was OK and got an immediate reply (which is rare) saying “sorry, who is this?”.
Bloody hell. That didn’t take him long. He’s forgotten all about us.
