My father retired in his early fifties after a career in Africa. My parents, Douglas and Rachel Hall, although sad to have left their life in Africa, were excited to be coming home, as far as my brother John and sister Ruth were concerned, we had left home and all our friends…
Be that as it may, Continue reading Barnford: our family home for forty years.
Yes, we are back and we can now personally vouch that cricket is indeed played in Croatia, and also, and more to the point, on the island of Vis… Continue reading Anyone for Cricket in Croatia?
Our impending holiday in Croatia…
John and I went to what was then Yugoslavia for our honeymoon, staying on the island of Krk in the Adriatic. In those days we were blissfully ignorant of any family or sporting connections with the area… Continue reading Cricket in Croatia
Today would have been the 108th birthday of my mother, Rachel Marion Hall nee Gartside-Tippinge. She was born on 19th November 1909 and died on December 3rd 1990 at just 81. I remember her with great love and affection, as do my brother John and sister Ruth, and as do all her nine grandchildren and the numerous nephews and nieces who were all so precious to her. Continue reading Remembering My Mother, Rachel Hall
108 years ago today, on February 1st 1909, at exactly 2pm, a baby boy was born in a small village near Leicester.
His father, Lionel, records the event very briefly in his diary: Continue reading Remembering Douglas
Nearly 100 years ago, aged just 19, my father’s eldest brother, Lionel Reid Hall – Bobby to his family and friends, Uncle Bobby to my sister, brother and me, Grandpa/Grandpop to the Jacksons, Whitlocks and Constantines – was posted to France on 25th February 1917.
Cold, wet, and at first often bored, and missing his family and many friends, he wrote regularly and reassuringly from the trenches to his loving and obviously anxious family living in Lichfield. Continue reading Letters from the Front
Last year, or maybe even the year before, our niece Ann Latham and her husband Chris, suggested that all ‘the cousins’ and their families should meet up at their home in Wales over this August Bank Holiday weekend. Continue reading A Family Gathering
Aylmer Cove, a welcome sight for those of us who have been away too long!
John and I have just returned from a really lovely weekend staying with my brother, John, in South Devon. John lives in a beautiful old mill house with biggish garden and with a tributary of the Dart, called the Mardle, running along the edge. Continue reading A Spot of Devon Nostalgia
Our immediate family is smallish and very close emotionally although quite far-spaced physically, with my sister and her husband and one nephew and his family in Cape Town, and our second daughter, Sara, and her husband Derek and son Tom in New South Wales and the rest of us spread out mostly in England but also Wales and Scotland. Continue reading Are We Cousins…?
