Huw and his beautiful smile in the summer holidays

This picture is Huw with some of his cousins in Brecon in August 2007.  Read on to find out what this was all about at the end of this post about lovely memeories of Huw and his beautiful smile in the summer holidays.

A year ago in the school summer holidays Huw had some lovely times, and as usual spent a lot of time smiling 🙂

He had a great holiday with Jenny, Carys and Jenny’s parents in the Lake District – in the slideshow below you can see him smiling with Carys on that trip.

He was also smiling on the trip to Brecon with the other side of the family – the picture of him in his orange hoodie was taken on that trip.

Huw had some great times last summer – as well as the holidays and times with his family, he loved the night at Little Wembley the day school broke up, he enjoyed some lovely summer days with his friends in Holmfirth, played some tennis, played a lot of cricket (including his first open age game – which included a fantastic tea ha ha), and even started his summer hols last July by going on a course and getting a certificate to be a junior football coach.

Huw always had a smile.  He even smiled when he was knocked over by one of the (larger) Dads playing five a side late on a Wednesday night last year.  He liked being knocked over because it meant he was treated as one of the other adults playing – to be honest he gave us a tough time physically and when he get knocked over (just the once) he just got up and smiled at his opponent – ready for some more action!

He also smiled when he was 11 and capsized his canoe in Brecon 4 years ago, as Uncle Rob recalls…….”in August 2007 the extended Thatcher family hired a bunkhouse near Brecon for a ‘Cousins Weekend’.  As the children were getting older, instead of the usual paddle in a mountain stream we visited Langorse Lake to hire boats for the morning. We went for a walk around the lake and the flooded stream (see picture) and then went to hire boats. We got a mixture of canoes, pedalos and rowing boats. It was a very windy day, and as the Lads in their canoes paddled away those of us left on the bank speculated about who would push their canoe and their skills to the edge. It was only 5 minutes before the bookies favourite duly capsized his canoe! Huwie swam and waded to the side with his canoe and paddle. At this point he could have abandoned ship and asked for a dry jumper, hot chocolate and symphathy, all of which he would have got, but he would also have become the clown who tipped his boat. Instead, he thanked me for helping empty the water from the canoe and flashed me the million dollar grin we all love. He ignored the windchill in his soaking clothes and paddled off again with a more measured, but still brisk technique. Instead of earning the label clown, 11 year old Huwie earned our respect!”

We have just had the Thatcher ‘cousins weekend’ this August at Centreparcs.  It wasn’t the same without Huw and we all missed the smile that so many people adored.  The funny smile when he was messing about with his cousins from both sides of his family; the cheeky smile when he made a dodgy comment to his Auntie; the modest smile when he beat his Uncle at tennis; the delighted smile with his Dad when Chirs Burke scored a last minute winner for Cardiff at Derby last August; the adoring smile when he looked after his sister; the loving smile for his Mum and Grandparents; the cheeky smile for a girl he liked…………….

Huw we will love you and your beautiful ‘one in a million’ smile forever 🙂 x x

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