We hurtle down the M2 to Whitstable on the North Kent coast. Two women falling asleep in the sun, Mr Hg behind the wheel. Will we make it in time for the table at noon?

17 degrees according to the sign on the rent-a-boat building, but it feels warmer. Upstairs in the restaurant’s a cinema — but the seats are stacked with boxes and the first floor is under construction. More seats for hungry customers.

A waiter cleans lobster at the bar. Outside on the beach kids play with the waves while daddies strap their bellies in a wet suit. Their grown up toys are catamarans, jet skis and motorboats. The need for speed. Where are their wives?

Steaming mussels, baked cod, Sancerre. Mr Hg laughs when I take a first bite of my pudding and light up like a four-year-old.

We buy sweets and books.

Some photos of Whitstable

My uncle R. passed away on Saturday.
I hope he found peace.

I wrote ‘cousin’ when I first published this post, but I guess it’s ‘uncle’. He was my grandfather’s sister’s son. I always thought of him as a cousin because he was only 10 years older than I am.

I only ever saw R. a couple of times growing up — some kind of family fued, I think — but he was there at a decisive point in my life when I was 12 years old. That’s a story for another day to tell.

R. got in touch with me through e-mail not long after I moved to Amsterdam. I don’t know if he found me or I found him. He needed some web advice, which I gave him.

In return I got stories about my family. My mother, my grandparents. And a lot of that bragging and boasting my family’s so good at. It’s as annoying as it is, well, ‘familiar’.

I did a bit of work for him online but at some point the project faltered and the contact stopped. I never bothered to ask what went wrong and I never got in touch again, because… well, because I never think about such things. It’s not exactly laziness — it’s something else.

The last time I saw him was in May 2000:

“Today around half past 3 my uncles R. and C. came and rescued me from behind the computer. It’s 26 to 27 degrees, so they were very welcome. Work can wait. So we had a few drinks at a café on Oosterpark and then drove down to IJmuiden harbour to have dinner at ‘Henk Schoorl’, fish exporters and restaurant owners… had sushi, oysters, sea wolf and a nice bottle of Sancerre. That’s what family’s for.”

Tomorrow we’ll bury him. That too, is what family is for.