An Uncle Harry in every Jewish family - even when there isn’t!

As we drove along the damp lush twilit roads from Stansted Airport to the Cock Inn in the ancient English village of Sheering, the Snapper and I anticipated our hectic mini-break of kinship and craic.

The next day we were attending her sister-in-law’s 50th birthday bash. The morning after that we’d head off to the golf club, where her father was celebrating his 80th birthday. Everything went wonderfully and with smiles firmly planted on our faces, we headed south on the third day, to visit my mother.

I’d booked us in at the Grim’s Dyke Hotel, because it’s where I married the Snapper; where my parents had their Golden Wedding party on the night of 9/11; where although something will always go inexplicably wrong, you can sit outside a beautiful historical house in gorgeous grounds.

Originally we’d invited my brother and his wife to dinner to celebrate his 60th, thus doing three major family birthdays in consecutive nights, but sadly they were in Yorkshire. My sister’s birthday was near too, but she was away on holiday.

So it looked like just the three of us, which was wonderful, because at 87 my mother is as lucid and spirited as ever.

With the Snapper grabbing a shower, I walked off to spend an hour alone, sitting at a table in the hotel gardens, drinking in whiskey and my surroundings: the old wooden beams, aged bricks and towering Victorian chimneys; the roses, the lawns, the spectacular Rhododendron.

The summer sunshine opened a heart full of memories of my dad and our wedding here, which he missed by two weeks. It’s the nature of families to simultaneously shrink and grow, as organic matter. Sadly I lost an aunt and uncle in the last couple of years, but I’ve gained a new lovely nephew through my niece’s marriage.

Then I anticipated the evening to come, now evolved to include my younger niece and her husband, along with my cousin, in from America, alongside my amazing mum.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.