Grads and Dads. Egads.

One time, when I was very young, my father experienced a simultaneous trifecta of personal achievements: he graduated from the University of Miami with a Master's Degree, celebrated his birthday AND got honoured for Fathers' Day. It was a happy day: not only did I get three times the gift-giving value out of my hard-earned allowance, but it burned in my brain the fact that all three of these really important days all happen sometime in the early part of June.

That's not to say that I always remember them - my dad and I have been exchanging last-minute Amazon gifts or vouchers almost every holiday for some time now. We tell ourselves (and each other) that it's WAY more practical than shipping over a real gift, what with all the EFFORT it takes to buy, wrap, label and post the stuff - but the truth is that it's just WAY easier to shop online and have some nameless person in a warehouse overseas do all that DOING on my behalf. Shame on me, I know. I can hear 'Cat's in the Cradle' whispering its guilt-laden lyrics with every click of my mouse. Holy crap... that's the perfect gift: a Harry Chapin complication album. I must get that for Dad. Would it be ironic or just plain lazy to buy it from Amazon?

At 66, Dad said this year that he's past the whole 'party and present' thing - which is great for two reasons. First of all, I'm not sure there's much left on Amazon that we haven't already bought for each other over the past 15 years since I moved abroad. We've done clothes, books, salad spinners, mini-choppers, popcorn poppers (air and oil) - what we haven't exchanged in household items probably isn't worth owning. It's also great because unless the Post Office now uses some kind of transporter-style particle transmission for its overseas letters, there's no way he got his card from us on time. I did sign my daughter's name with my left hand, though, so what it lacks in timeliness it makes up in predictable cuteness, right...? Right. So that's 'Dad' sorted. Ish.

Ozzy Osbourne: One of Birmingham's
most successful and coherent
exports.

As for Grads: with Aber's streets considerably less crowded, it's remarkable to note how different the place is without its students. Please understand - I love Aber as a student town. I loved it as a student, and I really enjoy it as a resident. However, it is nice to have a break. The streets - especially during the week - are so much cleaner, so much more manageable. The only real supermarket in town actually has food on its shelves. I can walk across campus and, for the most part, only encounter people who bathe regularly. The gym is empty and I can actually do a superset workout without getting interrupted by the narcissistic greased up valleys roid-monkey in his sweat-stained XXS wife-beater who spends a few minutes lifting between swigs on his protein shake and calls on his mobile (to his 'supplement' dealer, I guess). My eyes, ears and nose are grateful for the annual reprieve that hallmarks the summer holidays. I'll be just as glad to have them back in September, mind... especially as their seasonal replacements consist of either tattooed hordes of beach-hungry Brummies or van-fulls of socially-awkward Hasidic Jews.

So to the Dads, I say 'thank you'. We sons are notoriously ungrateful for your efforts and perhaps unsurprisingly silent in our expressions of whatever gratitude we are able to muster up. But, if that woeful song tells us anything, it tells us that we learned all that macho stoicism from you, so there! Of course, it also tells us that unless we recognise the tragedy in that cycle, we’re likely to repeat it – something I’m keen to avoid for the simple and selfish reason that I would like things to be different with my kid(s). So let’s work on that, shall we?

Grads: I say 'good luck', with only a tiny degree of 'good riddance'. The truth is that Aber would not be Aber without its students, and it's hard to hate those who ultimately add so much to the ethnic, social and economic well-being of this otherwise sleepy community. Aber needs its students and its students need the town. They're the perfect double-act and a great example of socio-economic symbiosis. Students are the Laurel to Aber’s Hardy. They’re the Tango to our Cash, the peanut butter to our jelly. They're also one of many reasons why I'm glad I live 12-miles out of town. And, to be clear: 12-miles from a tiny seaside resort town in the middle of nowhere is, technically, still the middle of nowhere.