WE were playing a game of pitch and putt when the 15-year-old swung his putter, inadvertently whacking his 18-year-old brother, who was standing close by, right between the eyes.

Patrick fell to the ground, clutching his face, and all I could think of was how a former classmate of mine had blinded his sister in one eye in a similar incident many years ago. Luckily, Patrick’s sunglasses, which didn’t shatter and seemed to take the brunt of the impact, appeared to protect his eyes, but his nose was swollen and grazed.

“Are you all right? Are you okay?

I’m sorry, Patrick. It was an accident, honestly,” said the trembling 15-year-old, cowering behind his dad and ready to run for his life.

What happened next took us all by surprise. Patrick didn’t cry out or yell, even though we could see he was in incredible pain. He didn’t shout at his brother. He might, perhaps, have winced, just a little.

We were expecting big brother, as is tradition, to give chase before grabbing little brother’s putter and threatening to wrap it around his head. But this didn’t happen. We held our breath. Patrick remained unusually calm, even gracious.

“I’m all right Roscoe. Don’t worry, it’s okay,” he pronounced stoically.

I couldn’t help wondering if this remarkable turn of events had anything to do with the fact that we had a girl with us, Patrick’s new girlfriend to be precise, who had come out with us for the day.

Roscoe had earlier remarked: “It’s so strange, Mum. Patrick’s acting really nice. And he hasn’t even thumped me once.” Roscoe is used to his older brother ‘playfully’ thumping him on the arm every time he walks past. Because that’s what older brothers do.

But there was none of this today.

I am not counting on it lasting though. We used to notice how all the boys would appear more polite, reserved and extremely well behaved when their 22-year-old brother William’s girlfriend, Amy, first appeared on the scene.

There was rarely any fighting, shouting or thumping then.

“They did always used to be on their best behaviour when I first started coming round,” said Amy to me recently, as I admonished one of them for letting out a loud burp at the dinner table.

“But it didn’t last long,” she added, jumping out of the way as one of them attempted to pummel another for hiding the remote control. Boys, it seems, tend to revert to type.

Thankfully, Patrick suffered no lasting damage. Roscoe got lucky, in more ways than one.

THE two older boys are graduating from university this summer.

The hunt for jobs begins.

It’s a worry, especially since they have studied for degrees in history and philosophy, which don’t qualify them for anything particular. Interviewing the BBC’s former war correspondent Kate Adie a few weeks ago, I asked her why she had done a degree in Scandinavian Studies at Newcastle University.

She flunked her A-levels, she explained, so it was the only course she could get on. And she fell into journalism by accident. When I told the celebrated reporter, well-known for dodging bullets and flying debris to cover some of the defining events of modern times, about my boys she offered some advice.

“Tell them to get off their butts and do something, anything. Tell them to work as a postie or in a factory, it doesn’t matter, as long as they’re doing something,” she said in her famously calm and crisply authoritative voice.

Since this is what I have, more or less, been telling them too, I couldn’t wait to report back. “Guess what?” I texted them when I got home: “Kate Adie says you’re to get off your butts and do something, anything.” After a while, I got a text back: “Who’s Kate Adie?”

THREE-YEAR-OLD Eliza had a hospital appointment last week.

As she was being examined by the doctor, her mother Sally was taken aback when her daughter suddenly announced she was going to be a butcher when she grew up. “A butcher?” said the doctor, surprised. “Yes, in a hospital,” added Eliza.

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