A flying visit

My Auntie Pat (or Trish as she now likes to be called) flew over from Australia just over a week ago. For everyone's benefit, she is my cousin Matt's mum and Matt and his girlfriend Suzie were over here in May/June. The reason she's visiting England is quite a long story but I'll try to summarise. She had a very traumatic childhood, and when she was just two, her mother deserted her and also her siblings, the youngest of which I believe was just two weeks old. She kept returning but continued to desert eight times (I'm unsure what happened with the father). She was taken into care and separated from her siblings and until just recently, never knew she had brothers and also half brothers. Not too long ago Trish looked in the Australian White Pages (phone book) and discovered four family names the same as hers and decided to find out if they were related. Almost immediately she was in contact with a brother, discovered another brother had died 2o years ago and the living brother had been trying to search for her all that time. This sibling only lives just over an hour from her house, and when you consider she was brought up in the Yorkshire area, the coincidence is quite amazing! She has now traced her mother who sounds like an evil bitch. Trish just wanted to find out some answers but it turns out the mother is a nasty piece of work when confronted with questions about the past and ordered her to get out of her house. Tragic as it is, Trish finally has closure and she's coping with it really well. The mother is 86 so hopefully won't live much longer. She has so many other people to visit while she's in England and only has three weeks to do it. Relatives are also in Manchester and Blackpool so that's where she's heading next, and the plan is to find out more about her father.

So that kind of explains why auntie is only here in Southend for the day. My cousin Sarah, who lives in Luton, picked up Trish in Milton Keynes, having taken the coach down from Yorkshire.
John and I arrived at my parent's house after 1pm to greet them. Unfortunately, my brother Dave was working so just Tina and the kids joined us later in the day. Also Sarah's new husband Gary couldn't make it either so it was a case of 'bits n' pieces' for a mini family reunion! My Uncle Rodge rang during the after to speak to Trish - he's missing her loads and it's a shame they couldn't afford for him to fly over as well. Mum would have been thrilled of course. Anyway, most of us had a chat with him and it was lovely to hear his voice from the other side of the world.

Dad made some of his famous curry dishes for tea which always goes down well. Sarah said she tells everyone about how good they are! Gary was so disappointed that he was missing out so we arranged to leave some over and a doggy bag was prepared for him. I'm sure he will be over the moon! Afterwards we took some photos in the back garden as a memento of the day which went oh so fast, and before we knew it, we were all bidding her farewell. :-(