Cousins

Aileen might technically be my cousin but she has been more like a sister to me over the years. She was born on 5th July, 1928 so we are very close in age. Her mother, my Aunt Aileen, was my father's sister and her father, was my 'Uncle Bill Cooke'.

Aileen has a brother called Charles and a cousin on her father's side called Sadie Auld who was also born in 1928. On her father's side there were also cousins in Canada called the Drivers.

Aileen was very pretty as a child, with curly blond hair and blue eyes, just like our cousin Maureen, the eldest daughter of Uncle Eddy. I used to always be a little jealous of her curls. Compared to her, I felt like the ugly duckling.

Aileen was born in Fethard-on-Sea but when she was nine or ten, her family moved to Dublin and lived in Fairview. She didn't like the concept of moving to 'dirty Dublin' at that time and kicked up a big fuss - obviously to no avail.

When they were children they would visit us in Durrow or Abbeyleix and stay in Fordville whereas we never had the money to go to visit them in Fairview. Charlie and Fred were the last to live in Fordville before Fred moved to live with Aunty Fanny in London and Charlie, to live with Ted and Elsie in Lincoln. Fred was very funny and Charlie, very kind.

When I moved to Dublin, Aileen and I became very close, enjoying dances and theatre and even sharing some boyfriends. She will be one of the last people in the family that I will speak with before death since we have spoken nearly every day for many years. We always enjoy reminiscing about the good days we had together in the 50s, in our 'coming of age' years.

Aileen married Vic Sanders and moved to Northamptonshire in the UK but our lives became intervowen once again when Mike and I moved to Staffordshire.

Aileen met Vic at the Isle of Man at the motorbike races since her mother's brothers all had motorbikes when young. She was visiting there with her mother since her mother said she was never going on holiday together but rather with friends and so she took her for a week to there and came back with a husband to be. Vic was a support crew for an Irish friend who was taking part in the races and a lot of them were staying in the same hotel as Aileen and her mom.

curate in the parish - a strange little man and when she went out with him, her mother was very happy. But then he started to ask me out and Aileen and I used to exchange stories...she nearly ended up as a mummy in the basement of the church in Dublin.

Went to many evening dances at the Metropole hotel and always had our beau with us. Aileen borrowed a dress of her's, once, to not have to wear her own yet again. Lemon yellow.

She was also fond of the clergyman in Northern Ireland but Aileen only met his brother. Aileen quite liked his brother but he went to America and went away.

They kept her mother away from a man that she eventually married. There was a chap in Abbeyleix who was fond of both of them - Kenneth Fife...he had proposed to Aileen before she went to the ailse of man and when she returned he travelled to Dublin from Abbeyleix for the answer. Aileen said no and he guessed that she had met someone in the aisle of man.

Dad made a table for old Queen Mary at some point in copy of a table in the DeVesci house.

Aileen and Vic had two girls; Serena and Joanna, and then finally, a son, Victor, who is just 9 days younger than Anna.

Friendly from the point at which I was in the teaching college and since I was so friendly with Aileen's mom, I often went there for tea. Her mother was the ony person to ever make her a birthday cake. Aileen was also very fond of Helen. Douglas Power was in the same class as Aileen's brother in school in Dublin in Mount Joyce School, in Mount Joyce Square in Dublin. Became a book keeper in an insurance company by answering an add in Dublin in a list of jobs available for Protestants. Vic went to Dublin the week after the Isle of Man and Aileen's mom used to confiscate her letters since she didn't want her to move away from Ireland. But Vic just kept coming over and they were married within a year. It was a quite complicated time and her mother wouldn't help her with the wedding for months since she was so sad she was leaving.

Serena and Joanna had a joint wedding in June 1981 and, despite not knowing Anna so well, they offered her a chance to be one of the bridesmaids; the smallest flower-girl. She was totally over the moon. (Actually, looking back, I am not sure if she was really an official bridesmaid or not but I do know that she thought of herself as one and remembers them asking her and she took her duty - and her pretty dress - very seriously).

As our children grew up we would meet occassionally either in Cannock or Braunston and there were times, too, when we met in Ireland - although Aileen's family was very focused on Feathered upon Sea when in Ireland, and we were more focused on family in Dublin / meeting with friends of Mike's from CIE in Kerry. As the children got older there was even an occassion when Anna bumped into Victor and Aileen on the boat when travelling to or from Ireland, probably during her Beach Mission days, when she would often travel across unaccompanied.

Another very happy day we shared was when Maureen invited some of us cousins to lunch in her lovely big house in Bishops Stortford. Muriel, Elizabeth and her husband John, Catherine with Michael, Aileen and I were there. Vic had driven us there and I stayed the night with Aileen afterwards.

In 2013 Catherine and Elizabeth stayed the night with me and Catherine drove Elizabeth, Mike and I the next day to visit Aileen who took us out to lunch in a lovely canalside pub. That is a very happy memory of a day that Mike enjoyed, too.

Aileen meant the world to me. She was more like a sister than a cousin and I would often wonder how it would be for me if she died before me...I didn't think I would be able to bear a life without her in it.

Catherine Hartford was another of my cousins. She married Brian Butterworth who during all of his married life was known as Michael Cummings (we don't know why!) and they lived in Putney in London where Michael was working as a physiotherapist. We got back in touch a little more when Anna was in London and needed some physio and then all five of us girl cousins would try to get together from time to time. Michael was cruely struck down with MS and Catherine nursed him through many years only to be struck down with it herself, shortly after his death.

I didn't know so much about Angela or Maureen or Elizabeth's side of the family.