Monday 1 October 2012

Blood knot.

My brother Boyce has been visiting with me for the last week. Yesterday I was showing him how to join a tippet onto a leader using a blood knot. While I was showing him, and him supposedly taking note he took the following photo of me.


Me giving the knot tying demonstration. Sissie is trying to hurry things along by lying on my lap so we can go fishing.

Apart from the knot in the line there is obviously a blood knot between my brother and I. Growing up as little boys together we were quite close, as we got older and went to work, him at 15 and me at 17 in the same year, 1965, our lives slowly drifted apart.

Marriage and children for him, marriage and no children for me, (later separation)  and a change of priorities and interest in both of us. Now in our old age we have become quite close again and visit and phone each other often.

Boyce is not his real name, but that is what every one who knows him calls him. His "official" christened names are, Andries Stephanus, after our father and our great grand father.(English version Andrew Stephen). The day he was born, (we were all born at home) my mother showed him to me and said, "It's a little boy," (I was 18 months old) so that's what I called him, Boy. Which later became Boyce, and that's what he has been known by ever since.


2 comments:

Jo said...

Ah Phil, so good that Boyce spent the week with you! Yes, I always remember the story passed on to us of how you "named" him and it suits him well. Did you take any photos of you two together? BTW I love the way you blend the name of the knot to the the "tie" between siblings! Love and blessings, Jo

Kay L. Davies said...

Wonderful story, Phillip. I have a brother 22 months younger than I am, so right now he is 64 and I am 65. It's wonderful to have grown up with a sibling so close in age.
I love the story of Boyce's name, too. My mother's father was to have been "Gramps" but I couldn't pronounce the "Gr" part when I was tiny, so I called him "Bamps" and my siblings followed suit, as did all the children in our neighborhood.
I love the photo Boyce took of you and Sissie, too.
K