You may remember that I visited my not-cousins in Atlanta a couple of years ago. Just to recap on how they are and aren’t cousins, here’s their bit of the family story.

Carol and Doris were cousins and close friends and Carol had an elder sister, who fancied moving to the United States. She got herself a job as a nanny to a family on the West Coast, got all the necessary permission and was all ready to go, but then got cold feet. Carol was only 18 but she was up for an adventure and volunteered to go instead. It took some explanation to the authorities when she arrived, but there was a job to go to and she stayed. This would have been sometime in the early 1920s.

Eventually, she married and moved East – or it may have been the other way round. Anyway, she had a daughter, Sheila, who loved her stories about England. Sheila married Dan and they had a son, also Daniel. Dan was able to travel a fair bit on business and he and Sheila always managed to fit in visits to England, so they came to stay here with us several times. The last time, on their way back from living in the Far East for a year, would have been about 35 years ago. We had a standing invitation to visit them in Atlanta and, for our 30th wedding anniversary, in 2003, I said to the Sage that I didn’t want parties or presents, I just wanted to visit Dan and Sheila, who we realised would never travel out of the US again and then go to New Orleans. It was agreed and I started to get travel brochures and so on – this would have been in summer 2002. But in September, my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer and it was clear that travelling wasn’t on the cards. She died the next March, just about the time we’d have planned to go.

Oh. This is going to turn into a saga.