Gathering of the Clan

Sunday dawned and my sister, her kids and I boarded the train at Marylebone station and set off towards Solihull for a gathering of the clan.

The reason for the event… my father’s first cousin’s second son’s wife was meeting the extended family for the first time. Confused? 

Cousins reunited…

We arrived in Solihull and the mingling began. Aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, cousins once removed, several generations and in some cases, people I hadn’t seen for twenty years or more. People had aged but they still looked exactly as I remembered them.

We gathered in a marquee in the garden for lunch and as luck would have it, it rained. I laughed and chatted with my first and second cousins as we exchanged early memories about the older generation and there’s something about a gathering of family, that sense of familiarity which can’t be replaced.

More cousins reunited…

It was good to reconnect after many years and now, as we will inevitably become the older generation, I exchanged contact details with my first and second cousins and hope we can keep in touch.  

It turns out our surname can be traced back to 1379 in the tax records of Yorkshire and the family motto is Leve et reluis which translates underwhelmingly to “Rise and shine”.
We prefer “Get up and get out!”

Even more cousins reunited!

We had to dash off to catch our train back to London as we’d typically got the time wrong. As we parted, I jokingly said that we’d meet up in another twenty years but suspect that it will be much sooner than that!