Home Thoughts From Abloke

As Sunnymountain Street's resident thinker I have been musing on the topic of family. Living an expat life one of course misses aspects of home. But it is family that I miss the most. I miss coming down to breakfast and seeing my dear old mum, dry sherry in one hand, Capston Full Strength Cork Tip in the other, lovingly removing the stray cigarette ash from last nights reheated chicken tikka masala. She always insisted that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.

And my father. How we kids used to squeal with delight when he hung us upside down from the chandelier and used us to knock in his new cricket bat before the season started. Happy days.

Maybe I am becoming a sentimental old fool but even my brothers have brought a tear to my eye. I am very proud of my two younger brothers. Despite swimming in the shallow end of our family's gene pool they have both overcome being dimmer than eco friendly light bulbs and manage to live rewarding lives in the community with only a little help from their respective wives, or carers as social services designate them.

One brother works as a full time garden ornamnet and the other has held the Shropshire All Comers Village Idiot title since 1983, which is odd as he has never been to Shropshire.

Family legend has it that this family curse,which only afflicts the second and third born of the male line each successive generation, originates from 1599 when Sir Eustace Ponsonby D'Welle-Skitt was struck by a catapulted cow while besieging Jersusalem. It knocked him senseless. Given that the siege of Jerusalem had ended some 500 years earlier, and that the residents of Jerusalem only fired that cow to get rid of their one and only besieger, I suspect that there may have been a pre existing condition in the family. He later married the cow and settled down in Stow on the Wold.

Why am I telling you all this?. Well, I just get lonely sometimes is all.