My wife hasn't seen her father since she was two years old. Her brothers and sister haven't seen him since they were small children too. They know literally nothing of him since their mother took them all away from Chiswick and back up north many (many many) years ago. They were all brought up from then in a single parent family and that single parent sort of kind of 'indocrtrinated' them against knowledge of their father and they never expressed too much interest in seeing him again. They all got on successfully with their lives and would certainly each have made their father a proud man.
They all made some efforts to contact him in later years by (in my wife's case) going to a major post office and looking through phone books for areas of England. Their name is fairly rare (in England - very common in Cyprus) around here but in certain parts of Britain, it's not rare at all. So, apart from a few speculative but fruitless calls, none of them tracked him down. Last night, she got a phone call from her brother and she burst into tears with emotion when she was told her father had been found in what is one of the most normal, run-of-the-mill ways there is nowadays. People of our age tend not to bother too much with this but what do teenagers do an awful lot? Facebook! My wife's niece idly looked up people with their Cypriot second name and hit the jackpot. Unbeknown to her father (my B-I-L), she'd been communicating with her own half brother for long enough to ensure he was the right guy and then informed her dad. Their father lives in Grimsby (I know!) and is coming here to my house tomorrow night. All his kids from his first marriage (one, two, four and six since they last set eyes on him) live scattered around the north and they will all be here with their partners on Saturday night too!
We're getting as many of our own kids (grandchildren in one case) here as well so it's probably going to be a right Cilla Black-hankies-out affair here! I can't wait, really.
They all made some efforts to contact him in later years by (in my wife's case) going to a major post office and looking through phone books for areas of England. Their name is fairly rare (in England - very common in Cyprus) around here but in certain parts of Britain, it's not rare at all. So, apart from a few speculative but fruitless calls, none of them tracked him down. Last night, she got a phone call from her brother and she burst into tears with emotion when she was told her father had been found in what is one of the most normal, run-of-the-mill ways there is nowadays. People of our age tend not to bother too much with this but what do teenagers do an awful lot? Facebook! My wife's niece idly looked up people with their Cypriot second name and hit the jackpot. Unbeknown to her father (my B-I-L), she'd been communicating with her own half brother for long enough to ensure he was the right guy and then informed her dad. Their father lives in Grimsby (I know!) and is coming here to my house tomorrow night. All his kids from his first marriage (one, two, four and six since they last set eyes on him) live scattered around the north and they will all be here with their partners on Saturday night too!
We're getting as many of our own kids (grandchildren in one case) here as well so it's probably going to be a right Cilla Black-hankies-out affair here! I can't wait, really.
