Meet my grandfather Oscar’s rowing team; these young men won the rower’s cup in 1924, Manor House, Tonbridge School, Kent. We called my grandfather ‘Tatita Oscar.’ He went on to join Grace & Co., thus ending up in Bolivia and Chile, where destiny would bring his son Martin, my father, to meet my mother Paula.

Oscar loved to paint in his later years, small landscapes in the Winston Churchill style. He was such a sweet grandfather. Lunches at his house were the epitome of English decorum, with silver-lidded serving dishes, lots of brussel sprouts, and, at Christmas, the best pudding with holly leaves that his second wife Norma had learned to cook to perfection, lighting it up and all!

Oscar’s sister, my favorite great aunt, Auntie Kitty, stayed in England and lived in a quintessential English cottage in Tadworth, Surrey where I visited and was seduced into betting on the horse races over the phone with a bookie. I won big thanks to Uncle John Sketchley’s tip! He was an antiquarian dressed in a handsome tweed jacket and a country squire cap. Of course, we went for daily fresh air walks, in wellies, rain or shine. That side of the family is all scattered around the globe now, some in South Africa, some in Australia, others in Germany. I so often miss the warmth of my English ancestors. ~shared by @peregrineblues