Representatives of the enormous Hebditch clan gathered on Sunday at the Shrubbery Hotel in Ilminster for Uncle John’s birthday. Chas and I took Alex along who coped admirably with the assembled cousins, aunts and uncles who hadn’t seen him for years, my brother William and his wife Liz had their eldest son in tow, David, who was spotted immediately as a Hebditch lookalike. The two surviving brothers were there, not my father unfortunately as he died years ago, and the cousins I grew up with Sally, Mary and Kate not forgetting my sister Elaine. All in all there were around 60 of us, very few farmers left in the family now, most of the children and grandchildren are in the professions and university educated. In fact our grandmother, Uncle John’s mother, was one of the very first women to get a degree at Bristol University. It was fun catching up,amazing to hear that one of the cousins Valerie is 75, honestly she looks stunning and nowhere near that age – the same goes for Chris Willey who is 85, you would never know it. Sally, Uncle John’s daughter gave a speech, we sang happy birthday, the key was a bit on the high side, the grandchildren had their own chocolate birthday cake and the candles were lit twice so they all had a go at blowing them out. Uncle John replied – he still marches around William’s farm, reads two newspapers a day and plays the organ in Chapel – and said he had had a very happy life. Lots of clapping. There were some books of old photographs for everyone to look at, Uncle John with quadruplet lambs, me, Sally, Mary and Kate, little girls on our tricycles, god my haircut was awful, real pudding basin stuff. There was a great picture of our father in his Fleet Airarm uniform next to Uncle John in his Home Guard uniform, old pictures of New Cross Fuit Farm where we were all brought up and so on. It was great.
