Saturday September 3rd 2022

The day dawns - the day of the so-called "southern cousins' get-together" in the house of my cousin Liz in Headington Oxford. Lois and I set off about 11 am, but run into horrendous traffic backups as we get nearer to Oxford. We always feel like real country hicks when we drive anywhere near Oxford - the traffic in the Cheltenham area just isn't in the same league - oh dear! This is particularly true now, because we're still in the tourist season, and we see lots of Oriental and other tourists as we motor through the Cotswolds also, and especially when trying to get into Oxford itself.

We get to Liz's house in Cheltenham, and we're the last to arrive - oh dear (again) ! 

Liz has told everybody that there's room for 3 cars to park in her driveway, but we're such a polite family that everybody who's arrived already has parked in the street, leaving the driveway clear for Lois and me, which is nice, to put it mildly!

Liz greets us at the door and for the next 15 minutes we're chatting in her hallway with her and her husband Roger. 

Yes, it's yackety-yack-yack from the word 'go'! And I get the same feeling of slight panic that I get when we visit our daughter Alison's family, and first arrive - it's so nice, but can people just stop talking for a moment, while Lois and I get used to the sound of other people's voices, and having to answer a lot of questions!  HELP!!!!

Luckily we get used to the chit-chat after about 15 minutes and we filter through the house into the garden, where everybody else is already assembled and the chat is in full flow - yikes!!! But now we can start enjoying it, which is nice.

Of the cousins, and representing respectively the descendants of Mary, Bob, Ruth, Nan, Babs and Ken, gathered here today are Jeannette (1937) and Liz (1939), John (1950), John (1941), me Colin (1946) and Gill (1958), Kate (1947) and our so-called "new cousin" David (1959), who was identified as a cousin after a DNA test. Some of our siblings are sadly no longer with us, and others live too far away.

Confused? No? Well, you will be!

These are the 8 cousins, tastefully arranged here in Liz's back garden:

back row: me (1946), John (1941), John (1950) and David (1959)

front row: Kate (1947), Liz (1939), Gill (1958) and Jeannette (1937)

And here is the whole of today's crowd, apart from Lois, who is taking the picture.

seated in front row Kate, Liz, Gill and Jeannette (as before)

back row: Gwen (wife of John 1941), Chris (wife of John (1950), John, John, 

Roger (husband of Liz), David, George and Thomas (David's twin sons), 

Lucy (Gill's daughter), and Zanne (David's wife)

What a distinguished-looking group, eh? And especially me haha !!!! 

And yes, lots of chat and eating for the next few hours. It's nice to see at least 3 youngsters from the next generation with us, too. My niece Lucy is incredibly bubbly today, and she gets on well with David's twin sons George and Thomas, which must make a pleasant change from all the old-fogey talk that's going on around them - my goodness!

Nice also to hear more about "new cousin" David's incredibly story - it's barely a year since my sister Gill contacted him after a DNA test showed David up as a close match. He's now in his 60's and newly retired as a BBC journalist, but he has lived most of his life in complete ignorance of his "real family". 

And it's interesting to hear from Kate how the subject of David's mother - our Aunty Joan - and her two illegitimate births, were for years hushed up inside the family. David has a brother, or half-brother, Jonathan living in Spain. Kate's mother Babs was Joan's twin sister, so Kate feels particularly close to David.

flashback to the 1920's: my grandparents with the 4 youngest

of their 9 children: (left to right) Ruth, Joan, Nan (my mother) and Babs,

on the beach at Southerndown in South Wales

my Aunty Joan, David and Jonathan's mother

Nobody knew about David being a cousin until last year's DNA test, but the existence of Jonathan, Joan's other son, who lives in Spain, was known to my late mother, and I guess also to most of her siblings, because Jonathan was adopted by a couple the whole family knew in their home town of Bridgend, South Wales.

However, there was an atmosphere of family shame and silence surrounding Aunty Joan's affairs, and my mother only raised the subject with Lois and me in her final years. My mother famously always had a burning curiosity of the "I wonder how so-and-so's getting on these days?" variety, and in her final years she began saying how much she'd like to get in touch with Jonathan, and find out what sort of life he was having. Sadly my mother died before Lois and I got to know anything more about Jonathan, and this was mostly via social media. 

Aunty Joan's other illegitimate son, Jonathan, seen here

in sunny Spain with his wife and family

Are David and Jonathan full brothers or half-brothers? We know who David's father was, but we will only know about Jonathan's father if Jonathan agrees to take a DNA test. The two don't look particularly alike to me, so my money is on them having different fathers. However, I'm notoriously bad at judging these things, so the jury's still out on that one. Best of luck with that one, jurors haha !!!

Here are a couple of other random pictures from the day:

me (right) with David's wife Zanne and  son Thomas, 

loading up with food in the kitchen

everybody sitting eating, chatting and passing round

old photos and mementoes from our parents' and grandparents' lives

People start leaving around 4 pm - Kate has to get all the way back to Devon, and none of us oldies likes to drive in the dark any more. Yikes !!!!

What a great day, and what a lot of chat. Lois and I just aren't used to it - it's normally just each other that we hobnob with, rattling around like 2 peas in the Albert Hall.

We spend the evening slumped in front of the TV, but to be honest, we sleep through a lot of it - oh dear!

Back to reality tomorrow, downsizing and decluttering. Damn !!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!