Introducing Uncle Peter

I see that Grandad has already introduced himself, and Uncle Steve too (he’s my big big brother), so perhaps I should take a turn at a quick introduction. I’ll prepare something longer when I can find some photographs.

I am Uncle Peter and I am the youngest of your new daddy’s brothers and sisters, although this may surprise you if you a see a photograph of me because I don’t have much hair on my head. In Africa, people don’t loose their hair until they are old and wise. This isn’t always true with English people, but you can pretend I am old and wise if you like.

I am married to Auntie Jan and we have three daughters - Jessica who is sixteen, Bethany who is fourteen (although she is taller than Jessica and her mummy) and lastly, Amy Jo who is six.

Many years ago Auntie Jan and I left England and travelled to Africa. Jessica was three, and Bethany was just one and a half years old at the time, and of course Amy Jo hadn’t been born yet. The four of us went to live in Botswana, where Auntie Jan and I both worked as teachers. I am a science teacher, and at that time Auntie Jan was teaching music. She had a marimba and steel drum band at her school and sometimes we would go to listen to the band playing. We all loved the marimbas so much that we bought a set of four instruments for ourselves and have all learned to play them as a family! We like to play African tunes on them.

Africa was a wonderful place for Jessica and Bethany to grow up. In Botswana you can spend so much time outside because it is so warm for much of the year. There is a big black sky full of wonderful stars at night time, and in the morning they say you can see next week’s weather coming because the blue sky is so big. We loved to go out into the bush to look for African animals in our Land Rover and during the seven and a half years we spent in Botswana we saw lions, buffalo, rhino, elephants, wharthogs, zebras, giraffes, springbok, impala, cheetah, leopards and many, many more animals. We had porcupines living behind out garden wall and kudu used to jump into our garden to eat our vegetables and grass. This made us a little angry sometimes but you cannot be angry with kudu for long because they are so beautiful.

If you are good at sums you may have worked out that Amy Jo was born in Africa - but it wasn’t long after that we moved back to Europe. We lived for a year and a half in Portugal which we enjoyed very much, before we moved to Spain. We have lived for more than three years in Spain and have a small house there. Living in Spain gave us many chances to see your mummy and Daddy as it is easier to get to Avignon from there than from England. Once your mummy came to Valencia to play her cello there and we all met up and had a big paella near the sea front. Your mummy likes the sea and paella. Perhaps we can do this again sometime.

At the moment, although we live in Spain some of the year we have all recently returned to England so the girls can study for their exams. We may stay here a year or two, or perhaps even longer. We live in a little rented cottage near Chinnor, where I was born and where your Daddy Julian and I lived with our brothers and sister and Granddad and Nana for many years. It is quite close to Oxford, so we are not far from Uncle Steve and his family now. Perhaps you could come to England to see us all soon. We would like that very much. You would be a most honoured and welcome guest.

I will write something more at a later date, and perhaps Jessica, Bethany, Amy Jo and Auntie Jan will write too. We would love to show you some photographs of our time in Africa one day. It will be great fun getting to know each other. Perhaps one day you can learn to play the marimbas with us too!

So, welcome to your knew family - we are all delighted that you are going to live with your new mummy and daddy because my brother Julian and my sister-in-law Ruth have so much love to give and I think you will all make each other so wonderfully happy. I truly hope so. God bless.

Uncle Peter.