Family

I got this great photo from Ian, my cousin in Australia the other day.  These are all relations of mine!  Hard to take in when you were brought up with no aunts and uncles, immediate cousins or even grandparents!  These are actually my third cousins, and a lot of the once and twice removeds,  but they are the  closest rellies I have on my dad’s side of the family, apart from my sister.

I have met  all the adults and know most of them quite well , but those littlies along the front I’ve never met, and I can scarcely believe they are the children of my young cousins, and that we are now the oldies!!!  When I first met them all over there in 1979, we were the youngsters, and the great great grandmother of those wee ones was still alive.  Gran - she was Gran to all the ones our ages so we called her that too -  was a leap year baby so had only celebrated 21 official birthdays before she died.  I have a photo of the get-together in ‘79, when Clare – with the corsage – was only a baby.  Alycia, somewhere at the back was only a tiny baby then too.  Scott wasn’t even born, and nor were Rachel and Emma or Holly and Jesse.  My sister and I helped Trudy to celebrate her 11th birthday – I remember there was much flour being thrown about and I have a photo of Trudy and her pals covered in white!  I should get all those photos scanned onto the computer, as I know one or two are already fading in the album.  Shame I can’t share some of those photo memories with you now but my scanner isn’t working at the moment and I have to go to the library which is a bit of a hassle!

I first met some of the Aussie cousins when I was just a wee tot!  Win, in the centre, in white, was travelling with her girl-friend, and came to stay.  I have photos going back to that time too – tea at the Old Mill, Win.  Do you remember?  When I was 7, her brother Allan, with the white beard, aged about 20 something, visited.  I thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, my big handsome cousin all the way from Australia – by boat – and I gained quite a bit of street cred  at school too!  After all it wasn’t everyone who had a cousin from Australia  in those days!!   Gran and Pop, my dad’s second cuz, came over around the same time I think, and brought me a cute little china plate with Aussie  birds on it.  I loved that plate!  Wonder whatever happened to it?  Much later on, the next generation started to visit, and it was Bruce who put the idea into my head to travel over there!   I’ve been there three times now!  Maybe I’ll have a fourth trip before too long.  We’ll see!

In the meantime the next generation are now doing the travelling, and I have had visits from some of them!  In fact Sally and her husband are in Scotland right now!  They are almost at the end of a two year stay in Glasgow where Sally has been working and researching into heart disease.  Ian – that’s him in the Panama hat -  and Berny – with the red hat – are coming over again this summer.  Usually they make the trip in their summer break which of course is winter over here.  I bet you’re glad you weren’t over here this Christmas and New Year, guys!!!   I am really looking forward to seeing them again. 

I wonder if I’ll still be around when those little folk are old enough to make the journey over to their ancestral homeland?  I’ll be such an  old old lady then that I daresay they won’t want to come and see me!  I’ll have to go and see them first, I think!!!

Talk again soon.