Reconnecting

 I spent much of the weekend in transit, travelling down to Guildford, in my old home county, and back again the next day. We were there for the post-wedding celebration of an old friend who has remarried – and a fine celebration and joyous occasion it was. What matters here is the back story, for this friend is the widower of the old friend whose funeral I wrote about on the blog five years ago – and, as if that wasn't enough tragedy for one life, he was also the father of the lovely young woman whose memorial I wrote about here the following year. She, her twin brother and the two younger daughters were like grandchildren to us (before we had any of our own), and it was wonderful, heart-lifting to reconnect with them all. I think at least some of the family will be visiting Lichfield soon...
  In Guildford we stayed overnight in an old hotel, a former posting house, with many stairs and creaking corridors. Our room was the James Boswell room, next to the Samuel Johnson room. A very fine room it was too, but, alas, there is no Johnsonian connection with Guildford. Or only an irrelevant one: the other 18th-century Samuel Johnson, an American theologian-philosopher, was born in Guildford, Connecticut. Ah well – unlike Dickens, Johnson didn't stay in practically every hotel in England.