Henry and Joan

Family stories.

Henry is my uncle; my father (William Peter, known as Peter)'s younger brother. They both grew up in Jamaica, with visits to England, in the days of Empire. My father I think was never intellectual: his books were Hans Hass and the like. And one childhood memory is me asking my parents something about graphs and axes, and them both saying "wait until Henry visits". Henry worked for Tate and Lyle for years as a sugar engineer or somesuch, and after he early-retired from them worked as a consultant for years. He married a woman called Mickey who had children (by a previous marriage I assume). When I knew them (Knew. Ha. I mean, on the few occasions when we visited with our parents) they lived somewhere in London - Bromley I think. I don't remember her at all; but then I don't really remember him either. After she died, and he more-retired, he moved into a flat in a retirement complex in Princes Risborough and was forgotten. And maybe 5 years ago Mother said he had given up driving. And very rarely we would meet, but he got to be terribly boring - he talked only of the trips he had made to South America, or New Zealand, but somehow managed to do so in a deeply tedious way: despite having been there, he somehow only knew things you would find in reference books: the Amazon is very wide; the flow rate is X; and so on. And he would tell you about the car he had driven round in, and the food in the motels; and so on. And of course, as a self-centered little brat, I had no interest.

Joan, by contrast, is far more interesting. She still is. She is also utterly unsentimental, for which I greatly admire her. She grew up in a big house on the end of the Stoke Road at the edge of Leighton Buzzard, and lived there all her life, apart from a few brief absences, as far as I know. She worked in hut 6 in Bletchley Park during WWII. She kept a collection of Procter family tree stuff until she moved recently. When her sister Jesse died, she determined to sell up the big house in which they had lived alone, and move into a small flat. And so she did. I was a bit distressed not to acquire any of her Stuff - an elephant-headed footstool I'd known since childhood for example. I didn't realise I could have had it just for the asking, and she never knew I wanted it. Alas; the perils of non-communication. We're both too shy really.

[This I once intended to be continued]

Refs

* Francis Henry Connolley

* Time considered as a helix of semi precious stoats (for the pic)