Pleasantly surprising..

When some months ago my young nephew told me he was preparing for his driving test, I had no idea what plans he had. We grew up in the same household, his mum was my oldest sister and he is almost like the younger brother I never had. We both now live in London and he is the most unassuming person you can ever imagine, although I think perhaps humility is a characteristic that runs in the family. Anyway, I thought nothing of it when he would ask me for tips about driving in London, since he'd said that he was thinking about buying a car.

Unlike the rest of us in the family who had learnt how to drive in our teens, in the process tearing around town in our parents' cars when we should have been studying, he chose to focus on his academic work such that he ended up with a First Class degree from a top UK university and obtained a Masters degree soon afterwards. Now, he has a pick of jobs and my jaw dropped nearly to the floor when he told me that he had just turned down what seemed to me like a fantastic job in Singapore. He now works in investment banking in the Square Mile, (The City), so you get the picture..

Anyway, last week he rang me to announce that his car had been delivered, although he refused to tell me what kind of car it was, as he had always refused to do before then. It was agreed that on Sunday I would drive over to his place to have a look at it. All along I had wanted to know what kind of car he was getting and he would ask me to guess. But all of my guesses were wrong, because not only is this his first car, he's a new driver too and my thinking was that he would go for something modest to start with.

So not in my wildest imagination could I have thought that my young nephew, who in my eyes will always remain the baby that I carried, the one whose soiled diapers I changed, would go for the kind of car that I saw parked in his parking bay. Even as I pulled up beside it, I still thought that this must be his neighbour's car, until he came out dangling the keys, ushered me into the passenger seat and took me for a spin in the affluent Surrey village where he lives. As we drove around in the Porsche Cayman, I trawled through my memory trying to remember if I'd ever ridden in a Porsche before. It seemed that I hadn't, this is not something that I would likely forget.

I'm so really pleased for him. His mum, my sis, who passed away last month would have been so very proud..