Happy Families

About a year I blogged here about my cousin Angela Marshall who had sadly just died. I may have mentioned that she was a pretty amazing person. She was certainly incredibly generous and one of my favourite relatives growing up. This was quite an achievement, as I have A LOT of relatives...

The measure of just how special Angela was, is that I am not the only one in the family to feel this way. I am not even the only member of my immediate family (there are eight of us), to feel this way... There are 35 of us in my generation (yes, that's right I have 28 cousins on my mother's side, and according to latest records about 57 second cousins)and Angela meant something to us all. She had no children of her all, but she was like our own special fairy godmother as children, and she didn't leave us without showing her extraordinary generosity once again. In her will, as well as leaving something to her first cousins (my mother and her siblings), and her nieces and nephews, she also left something to each and everyone of us cousins. All that she asked was that we had a party in her honour.

So on Saturday we did. And what a party. As I mentioned in my previous blog about her, Angela worked for Elstree Studios for many years providing sound effects for films as varied as Star Wars, The Omen, and Mel Gibson's Hamlet (I can still remember the gasp round the table from a dozen women at a family wedding when she casually announced that she'd met Mel - this in the days before he turned into a religious fanatic). On the same occasion she also regaled us with tales of the "Shout" (an exercise when she got a group of people together to make a particular set of sound effects) she organised which involved lots of deep breathing and panting noises for a scene in the second Hell Raiser film (if you've seen it, it's a scene involving writhing bodies under sheets returning from hell). Some time afterwards she and a friend were in a bookshop in LA when they spotted Clive Barker, and proceeded to stand behind him making similar noises...

So thanks to the Elstree connection, we were able to have the party in the function room at Elstree studios, complete with cardboard cutouts of Angela in her youth standing next to such luminaries as Patrick McGee (her first job was working on The Prisoner) as well as the inevitable Storm Trooper. Angela, was, we were reminded by one of her colleagues extremely dismissive of SF when they worked on the original Star Wars... (It didn't stop her taking us to see the film at Leicester Square though, which has left me with a lifelong love of SF, so I have to be grateful to her for that too).

There were several speeches from both family and friends, but one of my cousins had managed to put together a video of Angela's life with a Star Wars theme which was both memorable and moving. The same cousin had also found some Pathe reel footage of my Great Grandmother Jemima Clark (nee Clary) being kissed by the Mayor of Ramsgate at some shindig on Ramsgate beach. The story goes that my aunt was at the cinema one day, when the Pathe news came on, and one of her friends, said, Sheila, isn't that your grandma? And it was. As I've spent the last few months researching Jemima (among others)for the family tree, and her story has informed quite a lot of what is happening in the latest wip (about which more in a later blog) it was really brilliant to see her in the flesh as it were. Particularly as it brought forth a rash of stories from my mother and aunts about what a raver she was. Who'd have thunk...

The children were only slightly overwhelmed by the vastness of their family (last family party took place when they were all very young and time & geography means they've not met many members of the extended family before), Spouse has got used to it over the years, but elected to stay put with his fellow Outlaws for company,which is probably a wise move. As even one of my cousins said, It's quite overwhelming for US, let alone any other poor sap we bring into the family...

However overwhelming or not, it was fantastic to see so many of the family (only 3 in my generation didn't make it and they're all abroad), there was (inevitably) not enough time to get to meet everyone, but a really fun time was had by all.

Angela wanted us to party, and we did.

Shame she couldn't have been there too...