On 21 February, my family took part in an extraordinary celebratory meal.
My cousin Joe and his wife flew in from Saudi Arabia to attend. They brought with them their daughter Joanne and her two twin daughters, Orla and Neve.
Linda, Ian and Mary drove up from Epsom to attend.
Robert travelled up from London with Anna to stay with Ross and I so that they both could attend.
We were all paying our due respects to the fact that my mom and dad, Albert and Grace, got married on 18 February. And they did it in 1950. That's 60 years ago.
Apparently the story starts in December 1944. Albert would have been 20 years old; Grace would have been 17. By this stage, Albert had been out to Canada and the USA for his basic RAF training and was waiting to be posted out to India where he would spend the remaining months of the war. Grace had spent her teenage years surviving the Blitz and then starting work in a shoe shop to earn her keep.
On the first night that the two met, Grace went into town with one of her fellow shop workers. It was the first time that they had been out in town together. They went to the Empire Theatre because there was a variety show playing there. Albert and one of his friends were in the row behind. The four young people got talking and things went on from there.
Albert and Grace kept in touch by letter whilst Albert was posted abroad. For her, there must have been a certain caché in having a young man in the forces writing her letters. For him, it must have done him some good in the squadron to have a girl back home. Albert's letters addressed Grace as "My darling sweatheart" but she must have had the patience to see beyond the spelling error.
Albert returned to this country in the spring of 1946 after a bitterly cold winter. There was still snow piled either side of the road.
The couple re-kindled their relationship. They even went of on an unchaperoned holiday together which raised a few eyebrows with both sets of parents. But they were young and they had lived through a war and they felt that there were new beginnings for their generation.
They both got jobs. They saved. They lived frugally. There would not have been much to spend money on but young people often find ways. Their aim was to buy a house. Finally, a date for the wedding was set for February 1950. Again the two mothers were scandalised when Grace chose not to be married in white but chose rather to buy a sensible dress suit which she could wear on other occasions.
Coupons were saved. Rationing was still in force. The cake consisted of one layer of sponge topped with two layers of cardboard replica cake for the photographs.
The day was bright but very windy. There are group photographs which show the assembled company with their clothes flapping around them. One photograph shows Grace's hat blowing off. The photographs are not very good. Family legend has it that the photographer turned up to the event in a state of some inebriation.
And that was it. There was a short honeymoon in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Done Leery) outside of Dublin (ie easily available from Liverpool by Ferry and, of course, because the country's supposedly neutral stance in the war, completely free of rationing). The pair went to see a play at the old Abbey Theatre.
Back in Liverpool, they stayed with Albert's parents until the chance of buying a new house near Walton Vale came up. Again, this was against the wishes of the older generation but they prevailed. In May 1954, I came along. Three years later, Albert and Grace sold their first house and bought a second, this time in the small Cheshire village of Irby on the Wirral over the water from Liverpool (ie the great barrier of the River Mersey separated them from their families). In August 1958, the family was completed when Linda arrived.
No story is without its twists and turns and so it was with Albert and Grace. But they provided a safe and harmonious home for Linda and I. They took advantage of the educational opportunities which were open to us and, because their own educations had been disrupted, they were keen to support us both.
It could so easily have been different. During the Blitz, Grace would sit on the front doorstep of the family's terraced house in Kensington with her mother and watch the dogfights. A bomb could have fallen on her house. It happened to many. One of the many convoy ships which Albert sailed on could have been torpedoed. It happened to many. Grace could have decided not to go to the Liverpool Empire that night. Albert might have got talking to the other girl. They may have decided not to write.
But they didn't. They met each other and they have endured loyally with each other into their later years. I'm very proud of them.
They got a telegram from the Queen too. Apparently, that's a standard thing though fewer are likely to achieve the milestone in the next generations.
The photographs of the wedding day are mostly populated by ghosts now. Albert and Grace's parents are long gone. The last, Albert's mother, my nan, died in 1976. Grace's two brothers, Alf and Ted, both died some time ago. Her sister, my Aunt Ellen died in the autumn of 1999. Albert's brother, Les, died of liver cancer quite some time back. Stella, his wife, lives on Vancouver Island and hasn't been on these shores since my nan died.
Only one other person from the photographs survives and he was present for the meal - my cousin Joe. At aged three, he was a happy-faced page boy seen holding a lucky cardboard horseshoe in one photograph. Albert and Grace still have this icon among their possessions.
By a lovely coincidence, his two granddaughters, Orla and Neve, are now three.
And so the wheel of life turns on.