Things they never told me

[Phoenix]

I knew Dad was hand-in-glove with his cousins as a boy. There were two in particular, and I have some lovely photos from when they were all young men. Sadly, the cousins died when they were about fifty, Dad had his first heart attack about the same age, so I never got to meet them, though I knew very well the little two-up, two-down which Grandma had seen built while she was a girl and where she lived from about 1920 until it was demolished in the 1960s. She and her neighbours were all shunted off to flats on the other side of Portsmouth.

What I really hadn't taken in was that in 1921 her sister was living next door, so Dad's cousins must in truth have seemed like brothers, while in 1939 another sister's daughter was living in the same house.

So, did Dad tell me this, and I wasn't interested? Was it so banal a truth that he didn't bother? My aunt never mentioned this and now it's too late to ask.

What are you discovering from the census that you feel you should have known already?