During our 30 years together, Mike has at times mentioned his friend Colin they worked together when Mike was in his first job after leaving school, making Meteorological Instrument, they remained friends after Mike left the job and joined the Royal Navy. Mike was Colin's Best Man when he married Christine and Christine was Godmother to Mike's daughter. This was all back in the 1960s.
Due to both Mike and Colin moving to different parts of the country and other events, they lost touch with each other.
Because of my BIG hobby of Family History research, I have both the knowledge and resources to find people. I'd decided earlier in the year to do my best to find Colin and Christine, bearing in mind they would be aged around 70 now, there was always the possibility I'd turn up bad news. But I did know this was important to Mike, who doesn't usually make a fuss about things but he had talked about this all year.
I thought I had found them, well, no, I was sure I had found them, living near Ipswich but they hadn't appeared in the Electoral Roll for around 8 years. I checked and checked again, no deaths, so that was encouraging but I did only have a partial address for them. A house name, a road and Ipswich.
Which is why the next three nights of our travels were going to be spent on a farm, outside Ipswich.
Having arrived in the area, I started to get 'cold feet' about the address and the road I had found via Google Street Maps. The more I looked into it, the more roads of that name came under the Ipswich Post Code. So, I decided to bite the bullet and pay for a more detailed search.
That was when I discovered they didn't live over near Harwich, as I'd thought. They were living just a short distance across the fields behind where I was sitting. Not only that, now I had the full address, I could see the house hadn't been sold in the last 15 years, which meant they were most likely still living in the house but in recent years had opted to not appear of the searchable listing for the Electoral Roll.
So off we trundled, it was too far to walk up narrow lanes and being in the MotorHome, we took the longer main road route.
This proved to be far less easy than we'd thought! The house is about a mile out of the village, on a busy main road and at that point the road, which is narrow and full of large lorries, is built up like a causeway, with nowhere for me to pull up.
First day no one was home in daylight hours. The second day they weren't there in the morning but when we did another drive by, just as dusk was falling, also 'Rush Hour' a car was on the drive and I pulled into the entrance of a farmhouse opposite and sent Mike on his way. I managed to execute a turn in the driveway and headed back to the village, where I could turn round and come back to pick him up. If necessary.
As I returned, I could see Mike and a man in the smallish drive, the car had been moved through gates to the back of the house. The man was waving me into the drive, which gave me a fairly good indication we had found Colin and Christine.
We were invited into their lovely cottage, had a cuppa and sat and chatted for about an hour. Turned out they also have a MotorHome, which was also parked out back and that they have been to several of the Sites we've stayed at recently.
I was so pleased to have been able to give Mike this gift of his old friends and I don't think there is anything I could buy him this Christmas, that would please him as much.
Leaving the house was a logistical nightmare and involved the two men going out into the road and with the aid of a torch, stopped the traffic and the onus was then on me, to make a clean reverse out, in the shortest possible time. It was by now totally dark. I did it! No trouble, although I think the manoeuvre possibly took a few weeks off my life!
Sometimes the best gifts don't involve too much money at all.
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