Looking for family, looking for tribe

In the early days of the twentieth century, a gentleman named Charlie (unusually, for the time, he really was christened Charlie, not Charles) got married. He married Emily and they lived normally ever after. They had five children and, though Charlie died relatively young, Emily lived to her mid-nineties.

Which is how come I can just remember her, as a very old lady, sitting in her rocking chair in her house in Huntingdon. She was my great-grandmother, and her son Ernest (whom she outlived) was my grandfather. Over the last ten years, the other four children, my great aunts and uncles, have all passed away. At each of the funerals, those present have come to a conclusion: firstly, that they all get on really quite well and secondly, that they only really see each other at funerals.

My mother, her brother, and their eight cousins played together as children but these days are geographically disparate. Their offspring - and, now, their offspring's offspring - have in many cases not met. Ilona took drastic action, and organised a Nobody's Dead party in the rather lovely Barton Seagrave, near Kettering, last weekend.

( Nobody's Dead! )