Jah’s hair is cut at last. Robert, the children’s cousin comes to stay.

 After several months we realised that it would be a very long time indeed before an adoption order would be granted.  We asked our social worker Pat to contact Jah’s birth father.  He was interested to hear how Jah was settling in with us. Pat then mentioned the matter of his hair and the unavoidable delay in the formal adoption, due to the apparent disappearance of his birth mother.

Permission was easily given for Jah’s hair to be cut.  This was a relief.

It was D. who took Jah to the barber.  I asked him to describe the event, as I was not there.

“I took Jah to the barber in Highfields to have his very straggly dreadlocks cut off.  I think I had prepared the barber for the event.  I was a bit unsure of Jah’s reaction although he had said it was OK.

The barber was matter-of-fact, but pleasant.  He was Afro-Caribbean and the barber shop was right in the middle of the large Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood.

It seemed to me that when the dreadlocks came off, they fell to the ground with an audible little thud, so matted were they.

But the best part was that Jah was obviously if quietly pleased.  Almost literally, a load off his mind”.

Jah looking suitably “important” with his new hair cut.

Robert comes to stay

Our ten-year-old nephew Robert who lived in Sweden, was due to arrive just before Easter.  As I have mentioned before, he was coming to stay with us for the summer term.  He was signed up to attend the same Junior school that Sam attended.  In those days children did not attend school until after their 5^th birthday, so Jah would attend a few introductory days in the summer term, but would not start officially until September.

Since Robert was two years older than Sam, he would be in the top juniors.  When the school photographer came to photograph children, they took photos of brothers and sisters together and in this instance, they took an excellent photo of cousins Sam and Robert together.  They made a handsome pair, with their very different colouring.

We all loved having Robert to stay.  We heard quite a bit of “In Sweden we do/ we don’t do….”.  Robert did not appreciate the stilted ‘mock’ Swedish accent of the Swedish cook on the Muppets, and he said this a few times. Fair enough! Things he did like as far as I remember were wine gums, pancakes and playing football. In all, he was a great temporary addition to the household.

One thing that offended Robert was that in England the children had to change for P.E. in their classroom.  I think that “In Sweden” they had a proper changing room with showers, but such facilities did not exist here.  He was in top Juniors, where the children are ten or eleven years old, so I suppose Robert had a point.

The boys had great fun supporting Sam’s favourite football team – Spurs.  In fact they all got on very well, but the grass on our lawn was beaten into the ground with the endless games of football. We had some great trips out.  The top favourites were to The Tower of London and London Zoo.

On one of those visits we had some time to spare before catching the train back to Leicester.  We asked Robert if he knew of anything special he would like to do.  We loved the reply of this highly intelligent boy.

“I’d like to go to the Biggest Toy Shop in the world”. So we set off to Hamleys and a good time was had by all.

Jah found that he was no longer the newcomer into the household. We observed him enjoying that feeling and for a while he stopped asking about the progress or otherwise of the longed-for adoption.