Family Connections

I was having a chat with Brian, a colleague who comes from the west coast,while watching the canes go down to the red and blacks. He is a friend of John's whom I have written about in an earlier post. He indicated that there was someone he knew in Doha who shared the same surname as mine and also came from the coast as my father's family had. A couple of emails home as well as a further conversation between Brian and Pip confirmed this connection. Pip's father was my dad's first cousin. This is all very exciting as I don't think dad has ever met Pip so I'm hopefully going to head out sometime this week armed with my camera to catch up with her and grab a photo. It feels incredibly strange finding a relative living in Qatar, it really does. The world is such a small place. It was interesting that as I was reading dad's emails as he was describing the family tree and the connections I saw my nana's name appear. She passed away when I was 15 but all these memories came flooding back. I have this image of her leaning on the kitchen bench of her little flat having a cigarette, the blue cheese and crackers, the glass of sherry. The dark furniture, her fox tail fur wrap. Always beautifully presented. She always used to sit in the same place when we went to church as kids. I think it was about the sixth or seventh row from the front, always on the right hand side. As young kids we would walk down to her place on Saturday mornings (before sport took over) to have a piece of cake or slice and wash her windows. She would tell us that my dad was her little baby boy. My grandfather was a lawyer on the coast and died rather tragically when my father was in his teens. His brother died in his teens also. I hadn't ever thought of the family having to live with the loss of both a child / brother and husband / father at a young age. The things you think of. Will follow up with a future post of the family reunion. Not sure what you call my relationship with Pip. Will have to find out