so many years ago...

This was taken about 38 years ago~this small person is 41 years old today and far too old to remember the photo being taken.

i was born in the naval port of Portsmouth to a housewife and a policeman, both who were born in the same city, a city where many of my Hawkins ancestors, fisherman and mariners came from and who i have traced back as far as 1774.

i was born at home and my mum tells me that on that day, when she was resting and i was asleep in my little cot, she felt someone appear in the room, felt pressure on the bed as they walked around the bed to my cot.

when she looked up, expecting it to be my dad, she saw a man looking into my cot, then he looked up , smiled at her and was gone. my mum has always been strong in her conviction that what she saw was real.

and to this day she tells that it was her uncle Jack~also known as Sam~John Francis Gaul, son of Johney Gaul; who had died a few months before her wedding and on whose grave she put her wedding flowers.