Cussedness
The natural cussedness of things in general.
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Four Generations of Ryans
It turns out that Wilfred is the first Ryan great-grandson with the Ryan surname, meaning that he’s the first-born son of the first-born son of my granddad’s first-born son. If my granddad was king of somewhere that practised agnatic primogeniture, this picture would show the direct line of inheritance. Wilf isn’t the first great-grandchild for my grandparents, though, not by a decade at least, so they were politely interested in him, no more. My dad’s family is rather large, so I imagine that the novelty wore off ages ago; he’s probably about the ninetieth descendent, I don’t know exactly.
One thing I have noticed from this photo is that all the Ryan men have wonky eyes, but whilst Wilf, me and my dad have our right eyes slightly higher than our left, my granddad seems to be the other way round. I really didn’t expect eye-alignment to be genetic, and assumed that my eyes were off-plumb because I got dropped on my head as a baby or something (a theory that also explains several other things), but apparently it’s a heritable characteristic. Gosh.
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Wilfred Hugh Ryan
This is Wilfred Hugh Ryan. He was born at 12.09 on 22 June 2008 by emergency Caesarean section after 18 hours of mayhem, during which we tried everything the NHS has to offer for getting a baby out into the world. We started off at home before heading to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary to try the new Birth Centre, where things progressed nicely for a bit before grinding to a halt. From there we were transferred to the delivery suite where my wife was given an epidural and hours of syntocinon and examinations and did some serious pushing before heading off to theatre for the grand finale, which was terrifying but successful. For an encore he decided to develop some breathing problems and got himself taken off to special care where he spent the afternoon in an incubator, but he’s now back with mum and both are doing very well. All of the various twenty-plus NHS nurses, midwives, doctors, anaesthetists and surgeons who looked after us were brilliant, professional and reassuring and lovely throughout, and I am in awe of them all. I’m even more in awe of the little chap in that picture though. I’m quite absurdly pleased with him, and with his mother. They’re both incredible.
