Journal: Nostalgia.

As I continue rewriting my cousin David's Journal for him this afternoon, I started to have the pangs of nostalgia. I was going over the period when John and I went to stay with Katy, my mothers younger sister and David's mother.

We all went up to our Uncle Tommy Brough's nearby farm at Crookdake and helped him to deliver his milk supply to customers in Aspatria. This was 1947 and I would be 13, with John and David each about 10. We spent such an enjoyable time on the farm and next day too, I think.

Tommy was my mother's youngest brother and a real harum scarum during his youth. David wrote about him in "David's Story". He was always fun to be with during our growing up years. Although Tommy was married they never had any children. Although I never thought about it at the time Tommy would have made a wonderful father especially if they had been sons. Our cousin Norman Brough looked very much like our Uncle Tommy, except Tommy was smaller and very wiry.

Tommy's farm had originally been our grandfather Brough's farm and I have some very pleasant memories of our many visits there. My mind goes back to a rusty old sword Tommy had found down one of the lower fields and he kept it lying on a stone slab next to the barn. I used to day dream as a boy whose it was and what had happened to it.

In days long ago the Scottish marauders used to come down over the Border raiding the farms and villages. Was it discarded in a fight, did it belong to a Scot, or did it belong to one of ours. The nearby Church at Bromfield has many buried bones of slain Scots in unmarked graves and of course marked graves of our slain ancestors too. Yours and mine for we go back to before the 1500s in this small area.

Such is nostalgia.