Family wedding

June 6 was a gloriously happy day being nephew's wedding in a garden, in Geneva, Switzerland. Hordes of us invaded to meet his wife's family and celebrate their marriage.
The invitation to us all meant we four siblings, met for the first time since our mother died, nine years ago. We flew or trained in from the US, Scotland and England. Who knows when or if we’ll meet again? Nephew, T, has three cousins who married quietly during the years of Covid and lock down, my daughter on another continent, giving us only 23 hours’ notice! 

The build up days of the week before the wedding included an evening get-together. Our side met Friday evening at an Auberge where half the family were staying. Prosecco and nibbles followed by pizza or pasta if you wanted to avoid gluten.  I got to meet my nephew, C's new wife, and nephew, G's girl friend. I left after we'd got through a couple of bottles of wine or more, but the twenty and thirty year olds went to a whiskey bar found a wonderfully smooth one, made locally, so local that it was the bartender who made. It's great that these cousins too have got see each other and meet their partners after so many years - the last meet up being their grandparents 60th wedding anniversary in 2010.

My grateful thanks to T & I for inviting us all, and to I's parents for hosting us in their garden.

More working relatives

While I'm blogging about relatives to be pleased to know, I've realised at least two more whose activities may make a difference in the world. My various cousins have several children, two of whom are involved in a petition save the Mansour family from deportation. Here's what a Facebook page says:

Description:
At 7am on Wednesday 1st July neighbours in a Moss Side street watched in horror as the Mansour family were forcibly removed from their home by a large group of police and immigration officials.
Five years earlier, the family led a prosperous and successful life in Egypt. After months of harassment and serious threats to the family, Mr Mansour sought help from the police. Shortly after this he was arrested on false accusations of insulting Islam. He was detained in solitary confinement for seventeen days and tortured.

Having fled Egypt leaving all his possessions behind, he was then helped by the Bishop of the Christian Church he attended who gave him refuge and arranged and paid for his flight out of Egypt. After a short period in Dover, they came to Manchester where they have settled. The children have thrived at school and the family have formed good relationships in school, at church and the wider community.

How then, have we arrived at a situation where the family is in detention awaiting deportation?

After having twice been let down by law firms who despite being paid up front failed to represent the family at vital hearings, their status was downgraded from asylum seeker to illegal immigrant. This has put them in line for immediate deportation. The family fear for their lives if deported and Mr Mansour would almost certainly be arrested and tortured on his return.

What can you do to help?

• Sign the petition at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/29140.html
• Email Phil Woolas, Secretary of State for Immigration and Alan Johnson, Home Secretary at: Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
• Pass this message on to as many people as possible to do the same

The Mansour children go to a school not far from where my family used to live, a school that my mother probably visited as part of her work, so they're in my kind of community. See this link to the Catholic Independent News on the campaign.

My cousins' children either work at the Mansour children's school in Whalley Range, or are providing legal representation for them.

Business woman

Looking for dancing costumes, I found my relative in the Times Online here under
How I made it: Anne Walker Founder of International Dance Supplies
My night at the ballet led to £7m dancewear empire

This year's she's won a business woman of the year award here

I'm glad to know we're related - wish I had business skills like hers. What's interesting to note is that she says her success is due to laziness - she has to find the easiest ways of doing things:

"That has been my strength.”

I can lay a claim to laziness too!

Aunty's teeth

Through GenesReunited, I've recently got in touch with a cousin whom I never met but we share a common pair of great-grandparents. We've been comparing notes on what oral history we know so I checked a story with my mother about cousin's grandmother and my mother's aunty. It is so funny that I should share it.

She was teaching her class poetry, 'The charge of the Light Brigade' and they were reciting it in a very lackadaisical manner. 'Put some life into it' she said. 'FORWARD the Light Brigade!!' and her teeth  shot out and landed on the floor between the desks!  'Leave those' she  barked, and marched up, picked them up, turned her back to put them in, fixed the class with a beady eye and continued with the lesson! She had excellent discipline and there wasn't a titter but I bet they didn't half laugh when they got out. As she did. She told the tale with great aplomb many times. 

I wonder if the children there still remember the incident.

Funeral

Yesterday I went to my cousin's funeral.

The burial service was before the memorial service, and only immediate family were at that. At the memorial however, there were more than 70 people. They included family: cousins (my brother, me & my son), his ex-brother-in-law who had worked in his business with him for years, his wife's family, school friends from the 60s, parents of children that their children had gone to school with, skiing friends, including the president or head or chief of the British skiing institution. I thought that showed how much they cared.

People talk about celebrating someone's life, but this service really did start as a celebration. It started with the hymn that they'd started their married life with in 1976, Praise my soul, the king of heaven. It makes me smile to think of it. Lucky them - they had thirty years together. His brother described him faffing about with his first car, then read a poem of Gerald Manley Hopkins, The Windhover. Hopkin's poetry is so difficult to read; He'd tried to learn it by heart.

There was a slide show of pictures of him from baby to child to man, husband and father and ended rather splendidly with films of him skiing, stopping to face the camera, then skiing down the hill away from us. His brother-in-law talked about him and a friend played a guitar piece - I recognised it from the sixties or seventies but would someone who was there please tell me what it is called.

The readings were two of my favourites: Ecclesiastes 3: 1-9 and the prayer of St Francis read by his elder daughter.

The sit-down meal was with a full menu including red or white wine. Someone must have been very busy and organised to have arranged all that. Thank you to them because it was good to see my relatives.

The grave is in the non-conformist, not the Catholic section, of the graveyard. This means that the magnificent view is out over the hill sides, towards the sea, which you can just see between the hills.

Later I'll put a couple of other photos in our family web site.