Cousins

Cousins figured largely in my life as I grew up in the 40s and 50s. They seemed to be everywhere.

There was Dad, the eldest of 7 siblings, Mum who had a sister and brother and these families seemed to produce progeny at a prodigious rate.

I was the last of these first cousins as World War II intervened between the birth of my sister and that of me.

Notwithstanding the War, Dad managed to make my sister and me twins, albeit 8 years apart. How we shared a birth date is something of a mystery but Dad was a precision engineer so, there’s that.

Family occasions like Christmas needed serious planning in those days of rationing but to watch 20 assorted relatives playing Tipit along conjoined tables with much jollity was and is a long term memory.

One of my older cousins was a merchant seaman who was injured during his endeavours on the Russian convoys during the War. A hero.

From age 7 I was shuffled off to Southend on Sea during the summer holidays, the home of my youngest and favourite aunt and her 3 children. My parents had just bought a run-down music shop and were heavily engaged in restoring it to a record store so my presence was superfluous.

Jackie, Joan and Terry were great fun for the six week adventure and The Kursaal funfair, Southend Pier, Westcliff, the lights, and exploring the sands was a joy.

My Mum’s sister, Ivy, had 3 sons and the youngest, Peter, was the nearest to my age, only 2 years my senior. As we grew Coz Pete and I became more like brothers and shared many an adventure. Cycling everywhere, fairs, holiday camps with the parents, learning to smoke and even learning to ballroom dance.

The extended cousinry was not exempt from tragedy. Both my aunt Connie’s eldest daughter and my Uncle Arthur’s eldest daughter died young at 19 and 18 respectively. Much missed.

The 60s came and the good times rolled. For a while.

My parents followed my Dad’s dream and emigrated to New Zealand taking my sister, her daughters, cousin Brian and his family and leaving my a 14 roomed chalet bungalow, fun tenants and a 5 year Articled Clerkship at his solicitors.

Over the next few years Brian’s brothers and Dad’s brother followed and I was left rather short of cousins.

I had lost touch with several over the years and work was demanding. As was fun at my abode which for 3 years became the party capital of Hounslow.

But all comes to an end and qualification, marriage, moving and life all stepped in and cousins became a memory. A happy memory but a memory. New Zealand is a vey long way away.

They are all gone now save Coz Pete in New Zealand or they are beyond my ken but as it says in the song, the memories linger on.

“That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again”.