The Departure Lounge

As we were just two we had an early breakfast in Hart's café, good food there, really lovely staff and although the acoustics mean two tiny tots sound like ten, we were pre-tot time. Then I was down in Bantry for the funeral of my Auntie Noreen who was 90. In a speech she was described as someone with panache and that was part of my memory of her. She lived in a small rural spot, but her head didn't. I have fond memories of summers in the 60s staying at their place in their caravans. An outside loo (corrugated with a bucket) , an outside fridge (box in the hedge with wire mesh) and warm days or wet ones with the cousins. She and Jerry had 9 children so there was no shortage. Mucky paths to shingle beaches where ten thousand jellyfish awaited. And today at a meal after the funeral, for dessert they served rice pudding with jam in it. I haven't had that since my mother made it for me, the taste took me right back.
Noreen was the final link in my family to that generation, parents, uncles and aunts. As one of my sisters wryly observed, that's the last of them, we're in the departure lounge now.