The Uncle Cecil story? Ah yes, I remember it well . . .

WHEN people die, their children always say: 'Oh, if only we had talked more to them before they went] All that family history gone] All those memories] Too late, too late]'

I said this, too. And yet, you know, I sometimes wonder how sincerely I meant it. Or how honest I was being. I mean, if either of my parents had miraculously recovered and lived another 10 years, would I have used much of that 10 years talking to them about all those things I wanted to talk about in retrospect? I wonder . . .

In any case, if you or I were suddenly given the chance to talk to parents again, would we use the moment wisely? Would we ask the right questions? More to the point, would parents give the right answers?

For instance, in our house we have in our umbrella stand a slim, old-fashioned cane-stick with a round top and a gold band just underneath. I have never used it. It just sits there, looking elegant. It used to sit in my father's umbrella stand and I don't remember him using it much either. He had it before I was born. On the gold band is inscribed the name 'H S West'. But who is or was H S West? I can remember my father telling me who it was. I wasn't listening very closely but I think he said it belonged to someone called Harriet West who either married into the family or, of course, didn't marry into the family. Perhaps she was a very close friend of the family. Perhaps she was a distant relative who always left her walking sticks behind. Which is why she had her name put on it like a dog's name on a collar. But why would a woman called Harriet simply have her initials put on, and not her name? Were women afraid to use their names on walking sticks then, just as nowadays they prefer to conceal their sex in phone book entries by using initials and thus avoiding unwelcome calls . . . ?

All this maddening and timewasting reverie could be avoided if only my father were here and I could ask him. The trouble is that then he would say something like, 'Well, this goes back to the time before the war when I was out

in Kenya working on the coffee farm, you remember, I told you I went out there to work for Uncle Cecil . . .' and you think to yourself 'Blimey, here he goes again with the old Kenya nostalgia bit . . .' and mentally switch off before he even gets to the nub of the story, and when you switch on he is saying: 'and that is how the walking stick inscribed H S West came to be in our umbrella stand . . .' and you think to yourself, 'Oh no] I've missed the important bit]' and you can't make him go through it one more time just yet, so you make a mental note to try later, but you never do . . .

The trouble is that you did talk to your parents about lots of those things but you just weren't listening at the time. Not by the 100th time, anyway. You switched off when you should have been paying attention, because you didn't think of it as your parents tell-

ing you interesting things, you thought of it as your parents going on and on and on. It wasn't your fault. You had heard it too often.

And do you know what the real trouble is? The real trouble is that children are the wrong people to talk to their parents. They are the very last people who should talk to their parents. Children can't tell what is interesting or colourful any more. If Terry Wogan interviewed the same person a thousand times, night after night, would you switch on for the 1,000th time? Or for any time? And yet that is the position you are in with your parents, interviewing them for the 1,000th time. No wonder a little of the sparkle may have gone out of your interviewing technique. And no wonder you wipe the tapes, mentally, afterwards.

No, surprising as it may seem, the best person to get the best out of a parent is not a child or even a relative. It is a complete stranger. To a sympathetic, sensitive stranger all parents are interesting and their stories are fresh and fascinating. Yes, even your parents] And that's why we have set up a brand new firm called Parent Probe - to take over the delicate task of talking to your parents and getting the best of their historical memories out of them before they pass on. We come round. We talk, we ask the right questions. And years later, when they have finally passed away, we will present you with a leather-bound volume or a presentation video containing all the answers to the questions you wished you'd asked them while there was still time.

Parent Probe takes the guilt and the guessing out of yesterday's memories, so why not get in touch with us? You never want to say, 'If only I'd got in touch with Parent Probe in time]' do you?

This feature was paid for by Parent Probe, the family history people. We get rid of that 'mourning after' feeling]