We have never quite worked it out but Stephen and I are cousins to Imogen, once, twice or thrice removed possibly. The link is through our dad and Michael's side of the family and I think there is a generation shift somewhere to make it even more complicated. The Dale family lived near Bolton School and Imogen's family were in Breightmet (?). It's the middle 60s, landlines were scarce and of course there were no such things as a mobiles, hard to imagine i know. 

We learnt that the Welch family were living in Breightmet from my dad's mother, Rose Mclean, who lived in Herne Bay, Kent. Arrangements were made by letter for us to meet at the Welch's house one weekday morning. My mother, wanting to look her best, went to the hairdressers before it was time for us to drive up to Breightmet. We had a bright red Hillman Minx car and I thought I'd be helpful and get the car out of the garage for my mother while she was at the hairdressers, I would have been 11 or 12 at the time. To be fair, mum and dad often let me start the car but of course I'd never driven it. Barely able to see over the steering wheel I put it into gear, took my foot off the clutch and the car lurched forward and smashed into the side wall completely ripping the right front wing off.

I did the only sensible thing and ran away. 

I went out of the front of the house and into Queen's Park. I stayed there most of the day until the neighbour's search party found me. It was better to be told off for running away rather than for smashing the car up.

My mother couldn't let Leonie know that we weren't able to see them with no phones available. My mother, Stephen and I caught two buses to Breightmet the next day to go and see the Welch family but it didn't go well and Leonie left her house with Jonathan in the pram. We caught the bus back home.

We all went to Bolton School. Michael taught Stephen chemistry to O level. Several years later Virginia knocked on our front door after school one Wednesday afternoon and asked if she could stay with us till her piano lesson in Bolton later that afternoon. This started the weekly trips of me driving Virginia to her piano lesson and all of us meeting up again. Virginia and Imogen quite often came to parties we held in the cellar of house, two large white washed rooms with a table tennis table and music. Such wild times!!! Timothy and Jonathan were younger and didn't come. Our childhood in Bolton seems such a long while ago.

Steph and I last saw Imogen and Ken when they came to visit us in January 2018.

Graham