Some Thoughts and Memories

  My pater's mater..probably photographed in the 1940s. It is believed that this image above and  the one below was taken at their home in Brixton, London. It also had an air raid shelter and a conservatory of sorts if I recall correctly.  George Charles Searle KPM / My pater's pater. He was a Londoner and knowledgeable on many things                            My pater's pater carrying the former as a child  in a park in the first half of                                                                                         the 1930s                          Ferdinand Herman Ritter von Rittershausen (1831-1899) an ancestor of  my late pater's                                        mater. He was knighted by Emperor Franz Josef in Vienna 1874.                                                A somewhat blurred coloured image of the blogger's mater who passed on in 2005. This photo was probably taken back in the early 1970s.                              

Just after 1am on the morning of January 30th 2023 I heard a bell ring and then a little later two knocks on my door at the council flat in Chalvey, Slough. Two policemen had come to inform me that my pater had died in his council flat and forced entry had been necessary to recover the body. I was not really surprised by all this as it was expected as he would die "soon" as he was  91, and moreover on the last occasion when I saw him in December last his actions seemed a bit odd . He seemed to be suffering from a degree of dementia and was  "unable" to come out of his flat to have dinner with myself  in Turham Green. Instead he asked me simply to buy 4 bottles (or rather tins)  of Guinness for him. I undertook this strange request as a dutiful son, and later returned to Slough. His previous abode was a large private house known as Croft House in East Street,  Selsey where he lived with my step mother a Russian lady called Irina. It had a large abundance of interesti