Whether it's luck, or a lot of planning, my Summer trips have always gone completely according to plan. Flights have arrived in the correct place, and hotel and car reservations have not been lost. Until now. I pulled out my map of Massachusetts today to plan a brief excursion from Boston when I get there. While trying to figure out how many days to allow for driving a scenic route along the bottom of Massachusetts and back, I thought I'd check my air ticket to see what time my flight back to San Francisco was. It was then I noticed that my ticket said nothing about Boston. When I made the reservation, I'd asked to fly back via Boston, with a stay over. But my ticket had me going back to New York. Somebody had made a mistake. Probably me.

Anyway, correcting that problem took me a good part of the day. In the end, I had to buy an extra round-trip ticket between New York and Boston to make it all work. The rest of the day was mostly spent in either playing badminton with my sister, or recouperating. I haven't played badminton in years. Yeah, I know, Americans think it's a sissy garden sport. But over here where I grew up, it's a serious competitive sport, and it's always been my favorite. Kirstie and I last played each other when she was only fifteen or so. Now that she's all grown up, and plays regularly, I thought she'd whip my ass. She did, indeed, have me running all over the court. So much so that afterwards I was quite wiped out. But we ended with an honorable draw; two games a piece.

St Albans High Street late afternoon.

Later, Kirstie and I played chess. And I noticed what beautiful eyes my sister has.

Trying to wipe the floor with her.

My other sister Sally is a nanny, and she's worked for years for the same family. After our game of chess, Kirstie twisted my arm into going over to visit her at the house where she works. Ugh. I'm not really a kid person; but I couldn't think of a good enough reason not to go, so Kirstie and I drove wearily over. They have three kids, ranging from five to ten, but only the two youngest were there. They found it extremely amusing that I couldn't walk through the doorways into their bedrooms without ducking.

But it was actually kind of fun to kid around with them. They challenged me for a race in the big garden, only I had to hop while they ran. I hopped like a crazy person, but not enough to beat them. They were really nice, well-balanced kids. Sitting in a garden chair, while one of them stood by my side, we were face to face, and I found myself staring into this perfect, guileless face, just glowing with pink health and blue eyes, challenging me without any reserve, to another race. I got a feeling of how it would be to be an Uncle, I guess. Not likely to happen, since neither of my sisters have shown much interest in having children, much to my Dad's dissappointment. Four children over thirty, my Dad has, and there's not been a single wedding amongst them, nor is there likely to be any grandchildren.

It's the sort of feeling, though, that it would be nice to have more often in my life. Sometimes, in a fanciful moment, I toy with the idea of moving back to England. I could play chess and badminton with Kirstie, see the kids Sally looks after and maybe be as much an Uncle to them as Sally is a second Mom, go on day trips with my Dad, go to parties with my brother. All the things that go with family. Including, of course, visiting my dying mother in hospital. It would likely be a much richer life than the one I have in San Francisco. Yet I can't see myself really doing it. It would be the easy way out. I need to find how to build a family of my own in the place I've chosen as home.