Uncle Bert

There is one thing about living in the area in which you were brought up in, and that is you have the potential to have more contact with extended family members. Now, my siblings and I have never lived in the pockets of aunts and uncles, cousins and those pseudo-relatives we all seemed to have in the 1960s (Uncle Fred and Auntie Greta- friends of my parents); but I think as I get older, contact with them ( albeit brief and sporadic) seems a little more important. Some of the reason , I suspect, lies in the fact that my parents are no longer here, and their contemporaries are now in their late seventies, and are looking more frail, or at least a lot older and strangely "smaller" than they ever used to be.

A few days ago I saw my Uncle Bert in town. He is my father's Brother and the only one alive out of three boys. He is also suffering from the early stages of dementia, which seemed suddenly evident when I greeted him as for a brief moment I am sure he didn't really remember just who I was. As children we were always closer to my mother's family, and my father's side had contact with us only at the odd family party and on Christmas lunchtime. But the important thing was that they seemed to be always there ! Fairly distant, in the main but definitely constants in our lives. Coming to the conclusion that they may not always be around, even in the periphery of your life, is a little sad.

Now I am not going to change my contact with them in any drastic way, I do pop in with some eggs and the odd spare vegetable from the allotment, and their obvious joy and gratitude for a small kindness perhaps brushes away residual guilt for not always being therefore my parents before their deaths. My second cousin Carol has blustered back on the horizon with entries in the flower show, and Cousin Stuart is a stones throw away in Gwynedd, so in some ways it is a case of -what goes around, comes around.......

In a different vein my Aunt Judy is coming for tea tonight (I am actually baking an apple pie! can you believe it?) Being in Trelawnyd has rekindled a family connection there , which had always been present from when I was a youngster. Her husband Tom, (my Father's youngest and most affable brother) was always my favourite Uncle as he had a natural warmth and sociability ; visiting their house was always a pleasurable experience.Which is revisited when Judy comes to tea. (pic Judy, Chris and Maddie)

Funny but thoughts of the above were triggered by some off the cuff but nevertheless pithy memories recounted by Jenny Eclair on LBC this morning......I guess all of us have families that are less like the Minivers but more like the fractured and brittle one seen in something like Hannah and Her Sisters.....