Some Thoughts and Memories

  My pater's mater in the small garden of their Brixton home in London which had among other things a conservatory and an air raid shelter. The photo was taken in the late 1940s.   ............................................................... George Charles Searle KPM / My pater's pater. He was a Londoner and knowledgeable on many things    My pater's pater carrying me as a child  in a park in the early 1960s. At first I had some doubts about this and then recalled seeing old family cine films in which I had a top with two braces over my small shoulders                                                               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.           ...

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 inter...