In April 2017 we visited Girvan to see Nathan and Ben. It was about time you got full confirmation that they are your brothers. They’ve always known obviously, but you had been denied that knowledge. Since your mum and I split up I’d gradually mentioned it a few times so it wasn’t a big thing, and even this visit was played low key so that there didn’t need to be a drama. You guys got on great. Ruaraidh was especially pally with Nathan, to the extent that his usual wee pal (Angus) got a bit less attention when Nathan was around.

On the first day we met Granny Sconaid and cousins at Culzean country park for a play at the adventure playground and a walk round the swan pond.

Ellie wanted to hang about with Katie most of the day, and they had a smashing time.

Nath and Ruaraidh playing a memory game after dinner with Angus looking on (don’t worry, Ruaraidh and him were back up to their usual antics later).

Time for some Dave Clark 5 (+Dougie) featuring in order of age – Nathan, Ben, Ruaraidh, and Ellie (with DC himself completing the line up).  We opted for football instead of a Hippy Hippy Shake.

I may be extrapolating, and it may simply be coincidence that soon after your mum (who had previously stated that they should NEVER be a part of your lives) suddenly found you were both too ill to come for your next visit. She claimed the doctor had said you were medically unable to attend. These are things that are easily checked however.

So you guys had gone from having a great fun time with dad, to suddenly being so upset about having to visit me that mum took you out of school and to the doctors, then lied about you being medically too unwell to come to see me. The main concern I had was that since I’d last saw you guys, and you’d only spent time with your mum, you had gone from wanting to visit and having a great time to being upset in a doctor’s surgery and telling him you didn’t want to come. I’ll probably never know how the time with your mum went in between and hopefully when you read this you’ll be old enough to see how strange this transformation is, but still young enough to remember clearly why things changed so much between visits without another visit taking place. In fact because of this doctors visit your mum broke the court order that said I was to see you that weekend, and it was another month before I saw you again and indeed you hadn’t seen me for a month when you repeated to a solicitor that you didn’t enjoy visiting dad. She felt that the main issue was that you wanted to only spend time with me (have a look back at those photos/video and see if that’s what you think) and so I was told that I’d only see you on a Saturday for 8 hours, and for it to be only us. What a shame that was for your family and the friends who wanted to see you and don’t get a chance unless you are with me.