Chingford: A Family Affair
Mid-May we went up to Chingford, half an hour from the city on the national rail north-east of London. Being travellers we have opened up a can of worms, but a lovely one at that.
For me it began when I discovered not only do our grandparents and dad’s brother live on Jersey, but also some distant cousins on Gran’s side of the family. I met them when Dad came over to Jersey last February.
Then of course we went and met some of Papa’s side of the family in Poland, in January of this year. Well today we went to meet family from Vecmamma’s side of the family. During the war my grandmother’s cousins fled Latvia for new lives elsewhere. Uncle John settled in Canada, Aunty Rita in Australia and Aunty Velta in England.
What we didn’t realise is that one of Velta’s daughters, Giselle, lives very close to us – in Chingford. So we went up to meet her, her husband David, and their three littlies Sebastian, in his first year of school, Caspian, 3, and Clementine, 7 months. David also had his older son Tim there, he’d been playing cricket in the morning. Velta and her husband Lyn also came over.
If I was going to settle in England it would be the perfect place – they have a lovely big house and a big backyard, it felt just like home, but David is still close enough to get to London in under an hour for work. Not only that, but they are right opposite the national park.
The kids are gorgeous – Clem just got her first tooth through, which as a retired dentist Lyn was very excited about. Sebastion was doing homework on Mary Seaview and Florence Nightingale, and Caspian attempted to garden. It was more like drowning the flowerbed with water but he did a good job helping David spread some mulch. The boys are all keen on their sport, and I played a bit of football with Sebastian but I’m not much of a goalie over him!
What I should say is that Giselle sought me out and it’s taken a while for us to organise this day. I opened up my email one day to find a subject line of “Hello Cousin”, which was a nice surprise and I wrote back straight away. But Lija’s been over in Oz for a bit, and I went down to Cornwall and wherever so we just hadn’t had a free weekend until now.
It was such a lovely day as well, one of the nicer ones London has had. We sat outside and had lunch with the sun on our backs, which is where I got my first bit of colour for the summer. We left on the 8pm train after being well-fed, well-wined (Giselle, Lija, Lyn and I only got through three bottles!) and well-entertained. It was so cute because Giselle got the boys to wave to us from the windows as we were walking back to the station!
Velta and Lyn live close to Reading, and they find their current location is fairly equal distances to their four children’s families – great for babysitting duties! But they also have a campervan for those times of just getting away! We said we’d like to go up there one day and see where they live…but that will be another tale.
Tags: Travel
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