Branches of the family

Some years ago, I was staying with my parents in Swanage Youth Hostel during a half-term weekend away from our home in Hertfordshire. We were self-catering, so had a box of food labelled with our - rather unusual - surname (Heydecker).. While my mother was making dinner, two couples who knew each other came into the kitchen, and - seeing the label - one commented that they knew some Heydeckers and the others replied that so did they. It transpired that both couples were teachers in different parts of southern England; one had known my aunt and uncle when they were teachers in Hampshire, and the other had taught my cousin from another branch of the family in Kent. As far as we know, we are the one family of nine people in the UK with this surname; meeting someone who knows one branch of the family would be surprising but encountering two who independently knew different branches and were discussing them in my mother’s presence left her quite stunned - it would be rather surprising to find people knowing two different branches of the family, and it was even more so with my mother there to witness it! Daniel Heydecker - 1B Mathematician at Queens' College