Family visitors

Angie had managed to persuade her father to come out to us for a visit with her step brother Peter, his wife Sandra and two lovely young girls.

Angie cooked a great roast pork lunch with wonderful light crispy crackling. Shame the others liked the crackling too but I managed to get probably more than my fair share and as a bonus and thanks to it being so light, didn't break a single tooth.

The young girls managed a ride on the horses on the sand school and were thrilled. If the weather had been warmer and we had had more time, no doubt Sandra would have liked to have taken a ride out with Angie. She was until the children arrived a keen rider.

Angie's father Josef, or as people with this name are known as in Bavaria, Sepp, was as always interested in latest building works. He did an apprenticeship as a bricklayer in Austria where the family had fled during WWII from the former Austro-Hungarian lands around the Danube in nowadays Serbia. A folk known as Danube-Swabians, southern Germans who had been recruited to develop the former empires very wet but fruitful land along the Danube in the 18th and 19th centuries. All with German names and German language and thus similar to the British colonials but I can't think of a similar "mass" community of ex-Pats.

After the dust had settled down, the family moved to Germany and the then village of Olching near Munich where he still lives in the house they built in gthe 1950s. He went on to do his master qualification and start his own house building firm. Over the years he has followed Angie and I from house to house with his hammer, trowel and pencil behind the ear, building all sorts of bits for us, from fireplaces to horse stables, bathrooms to terraces, He is also an animal lover and a welcome visitor to several of our team. Nowadays mobility means his visits are sadly rare as we could use his technical knowledge for a number of outstanding projects.

His son Peter could step in his shoes as a very practical craftsman. He did an apprenticeship as an heating oven craftsman and earlier this year took over the business from his trainer and employer. So he is now very busy having to juggle family and business. Sandra is a qualified tax office assistant so can help him with the office side, not his favourite part of daily business life.

Today is the first working day after Christmas but as with many small businesses, he has closed up shop until after the Three Kings holiday on 6th December. So today he could relax with the family.