HvS BIRTHDAY | Feb. 9 - Celebrating in Berkhamsted, UK

Four of HvS's Six Children (L to R): Sheila, Brigid, Lis, John. Photo by
Chris Oakley.

We celebrated our Mom's 107th birthday at Brigid's house in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, UK  over the weekend of the birthday.

Jo, Alice, Chris. Photo by JT Marlin.

Great-uncle John with Jo's kids.

Lis and John.

Alice Tepper Marlin and I are staying with Chris Oakley in his new house on Shotover Hill in Headington, just outside the Ring Road in Oxford. Chris drove the three of us to Berko.

We were 12 at the lunch - four of HvS's six children, plus Alice, Brigid's sons Chris and Desmond Oakley with Des's wife Anna, and Lis's daughter Jo with her husband and two kids.

Lis kindly primed me with two magic tricks involving coins and ropes, and this got the attention of the boys. But then, she is an expert grandmother. She and Sheila just wrote together the Grandmother's Survival Guide. The link takes you to Amazon where you can get your copy, grandmother or not.

Chris and his Mom Brigid enjoy a joke.

Alice and Lis. Photo by JT Marlin.

Des's birthday is coming up this week, on February 14. The birthday cake was therefore jointly dedicated to Des and his grandmother HvS.

Lis and her grandkids.

Besides the book she wrote with Lis, Sheila has recently written a book for children about two seals born in Blakeney in Norfolk, England, Flip to the Rescue. She painted 32 realistic water-color pictures for the book and accompanied each picture with a poem. The moral of the book is that siblings need to look after one another, a fitting theme for the day.

Sheila reads from her new book to Anna and Des. Photo
by JT Marlin.

Alice is heading off to Mumbai to meet with some executives of Tata Steel and give a couple of speeches, followed by some vacation in Kerala.

Postscript

My next stops were in Amsterdam to study the Dutch Resistance, Bilbao to look at the Guggenheim Museum and then Pamplona to visit my fourth sister, Olga.