Lost ancestors and rabbit holes

You will be pleased to note that l am feeling fully recovered from my slight incapacity of last week, Mrs De La Pole recommended her niece, Kylie who is a mobile beautician, to come and give me a thorough overhaul. I must say that l can thoroughly recommend her for not only did she massage all my aching limbs back into some sort of readiness, she also gave me a pedicure and manicure to boot, all in the price. So now l have matching finger & toe nails in the shade of purple grape. Please don't think that this is something of a regular occurrence as l believe my last 'do' would have been coming back from Brazil on the Queen Mary after a few months spent exploring the Amazon Basin with Sir David.

The village fortunately has suffered no more deaths though we have had a birth, the Blewwits have now a third grandchild, a boy who is to be christened Freddy. No news as yet as to when the christening will take place, but l am sure we will all be having a jolly good party afterwards. It is always the case an old one dies then in pops a new one!

My dear old brother turned up just as l was about to have lunch yesterday, an annoying habit he has always had l might add, clutching some rather tatty looking documents that looked as though they had been the staple diet of a family of rodents. Spreading the papers wildly across my already groaning pine kitchen table, and first pulling one forward and then another, Monks started to babble something about lost treasure and heirlooms. Now my brother can be a bit of a card to put it mildly, but this was something else. For years, well ever since we were children, the family legend on my father's side, was of an ancestor who had to leave the village at very short notice bequeathing the family, on his death, land that he had acquired in South America during his life time. As is so often the case with stories of wealth there was just no documentation to bear this out. Previous generations had scoured bank vaults, searched behind the wainscot, dug up floor boards, all to absolutely no avail. So how come my dear brother had come to think, rightly or wrongly that he had found the key to untold wealth?

After what must have been his fourth cup of earl Grey, apparently he had been out with Jack his lakeland terrier, who had shot off down a rabbit hole at the far end of the garden near to his rhododendron collection, only to bring back not a bunny but a leather packet, the contents of which where now spread before me. Slowly and carefully with both of us wearing a pair of mother's old ball gloves which l brought down from the gown trunk in the attic, we began to inspect the tattered papers. Bills, shopping lists passed through our be gloved fingers, hunt ball programes, knitting patterns and recipes, but no will. the pile grew every larger, black edged death notices, obituaries and a baby shoe. But nothing that even resembled a last will and testament!

So that was that then, my table covered in dirty, vermin smelling papers that contained not even a hint of cash. Such is life but it was fun at the time searching and to see poor old Monk's face as the light slowly dawned that this most certainly was not the BIG ONE!