My Irish relatives

Publication of the latest census reminded me that I have a half finished family tree on line that perhaps I could carry on with and my thoughts ran on to the many family members I have already discovered who were totally unknown to me. My mother was of Irish decent and the fact that many gaps were created by my not being able to trace Irish records made me lose patience with the whole thing. It raised a lot of memories for me which made me both laugh and almost cry.
When I was a child my mother's family would arrive from Sligo and Antrim in a great gang.
It was no easy journey in those days, long before RyanAir, and took them at least 24 hours.
Writing a warning letter of their impending visit never occured to them but perhaps this was because of their warm Irish culture which gave them the belief that they would be welcome any time just as they would be amongst their friends and family at home.     You would have thought they would have taken the hint that the English are not very warm and inviting but the penny never seemed to drop.  For a start granny and grandad took to their beds as soon as they arrived with 'serious' illness; so not to be put off they would arrive at our house.  My father, a pleasant, quiet man did not like them at all, mainly I suspect because they were not born in the Oxfordshire village where he and his family hailed from, so they were met with what can only be termed hostile glances.  Mother, who was struggling to raise 5 children on little money and the megre post war rations would go into silent mode and pray that our uncle would arrive with some rabbits for a stew.

For us kids it was just like having family arrive from Russia as we could not understand a word they said so we would just sit on the floor and stare at them as they laughed, shouted and jostled each other, taking up every seat and even sitting up the staircase clutching their cups of tea and never ceasing their constant chatter. Bed time was fun for us kids as everyone slept on the floor or in a chair.

When I was 10 years old we moved house and I'm ashamed to say it was quite a few years later when my older siblings had moved off that I remembered we had not seen them for a long time so asked my mother why did they not come to see us any more, after a short silence she said...'It could be because we never told them we had moved house'

Now all these years later I don't know whether to laugh or cry.