Pieter

My dad turned 70 today. We ate barbequed food in his garden and shook all the blossom out of his cherry tree.

There was laughter. Much laughter.

Dad was one of six. He came to England when he was five with his family when my grandfather - Opa - got work on a market garden outside Hull. Post-war Holland had not been easy for them.

Dad and his siblings were grafters - they all did pretty well for themselves in the new country. They also got busy populating it - I have shitloads of cousins. They're all coming to a bit of a do tomorrow... there's been a decision not to just get together for funerals as has become the recent pattern. It promises to be quite a lark.