To my boyhood village of Hythe on the western shore of Southampton Water yesterday to pay my respects to my late mother`s resting place and reconnect with the place and days of my happy youth and childhood.   There were a couple of things to lift the spirit on what might otherwise have been a solitary melancholy journey as well as a sentimental one.   

One was the pleasure of having my recently retired eldest son for company - we are now able to do things that elderly retired gentlefolk do; another was the enjoyment of a good lunch at the excellent Boathouse restaurant at Hythe Marina; then there was the excitement of seeing not only Saints captain Adam Lallana being interviewed by a media crew on the Boathouse balcony, but also seeing his car - a very smart white Porsche with a distinctive registration number (I won`t disclose it here for security reasons) and inside a Saints shirt with LALLANA written on the back which gave us a bit of a clue as to the car`s owner.  Nice one ADZ!

We then continued our journey home to Kent via the Hampshire/Berkshire border country, to the peace, solitude and Norman splendour of Padworth`s thousand year old church where, in the churchyard, is the grave of my paternal grandparents, along with my father`s ashes and those of two maiden aunts.   It needed a little attention, which we were happy to provide and again we paid our respects to our forebears.  

Of course, visits like this can bring all kinds of emotions to the fore but perhaps my feelings yesterday are best summed up by Felice Mancini`s poem, which is here with a little minor poetic adjustment:-

"Sometimes, not often enough, we reflect upon the good things
And those thoughts always centre around those we love
And I think about those people who meant so much to me
And for so many years had made me so very happy
And I count the times I had forgotten to say "thank you"
And just how much I loved them."

Somehow it seems it`s never too late to say `sorry,` but it can be too late to say `thank you?`