Time for a Party

Once in a while a touch of joy or sadness steps into every homestead: a wedding or a funeral.

Both events can bring a family together, if only for an hour or two. Whenever it happens the familiar cry rings out: ‘Why can’t we sometimes get together just for the sake of it?’ The thing is, family get-togethers are delightful, and ought to need no excuse. It used to happen every Christmas when I was a kid. I remember the whole clan gathering at Grandma and Granddad’s house: seven sons and a daughter with wives, girlfriends, children, sundry cousins and honorary aunts and uncles all squeezed into one house. Thirty in three rooms, yet there was a comfy seat for everyone, food and treats aplenty, and good company at every turn.

It didn’t last of course. Llittle by little uncles and aunts found other calls on their attention, and numbers depleted. Grandma and Granddad found themselves invited to several much smaller gatherings over the festive period which for them, I am sure, had its compensations. But the big gatherings became reserved for weddings and funerals. Sadly, in our family, the latter have outnumbered the former in recent times, so get-togethers have inevitably been tinged with sadness.

We did have a couple of grand reunions around the millennium. Twice we hired a village hall and made a big party of it. We mustered numbers of over eighty on both occasions.

There are fewer of us now but, by consensus, it is time for another.

So here we go. Next May. In Ashton-under-Lyne.

Anyone descended from or related to the late Frederick Thomas Langridge and Alice Jane (née Over) is included. DM me for details.