We arrived on Manchester, United Kingdom on June 12th at 10:20 am. After flying all night from Newark, New Jersey, we were pretty bleary eyed. Huw's cousin, Tim, was there to meet us at the airport. Huw's father, Vernon Griffiths, and Tim's mother Joan Gordon, are siblings. Vernon came to the United States when he was about 20 to study at MIT in Boston. There he met Huw's mother, they married, and after they both finished their degrees moved to Butte where Vernon taught at Montana Tech for a very long time. He taught metallurgy. So it is his relatives that we were visiting on this trip.
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| Huw's cousin Tim working the grill |
After travelling from the airport we got settled at Tim's house, ate some lunch and spent time hanging out. That evening all the family gathered at Joan and Gordon's house. Joan is Huw's aunt. We gathered for a barbeque, even thought it was raining pretty hard. Joan and Gordon live in Waverton, which is outside the city of Chester. We received a warm welcome. Many of the relatives had taken this opportunity to travel into Chester to get together. Some travelled from Portsmouth, in southern England and others from southern Wales. We ate lots and lots of meat of all kinds - burgers, lamb chops and sausages.
After dinner Huw's uncle Gordon, brought out his ukelele and a pair of spoons. He taught me in the art of "spoon bashing," as he called it. And we played a few songs together. Before we left, he gave me a pair of spoons that he had used many times "bashing" because they are quite dented in the middle. He made me promise that I would practice so that the next time we got together, we could play some more music. He also advised me that it was probably not a good idea to "bash spoons" from the pulpit in church. Gordon is quite the comic and seems to enjoy all the attention from his antics, but I got the distinct impression that his children and grandchildren had all been listening to his spoon bashing for many years and while they didn't seem to enjoy it, they did tolerate it. The evening came to a close around 8:30 pm and we promptly went to bed - quite tired from all our travels.
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| Spoon bashing with Uncle Gordon |
Amy
ReplyDeleteI have several pairs of spoons made especially for bashing. We had a cousins band of spoons at our last family reunion. I think we should try it for a musical offering at church, if you don't want to try it from the pulpit. :-)