In August 1972 my youngest maternal cousin, David John Shakespeare, paid his first - and so far only - visit to these shores from Canada. He was accompanied by his parents, brother and sister-in-law. During the first weekend he was here he met 58 relatives. His father was one of a family of nine and his mother one of eight. For someone who had no relatives outside his immediate family back in Canada this was overwhelming to say the least.

Seeing this, it occurred to me to try and help David put some order into the chaos into which he had been plunged. So we sat down with a scrap of paper and I devised an ad hoc method of identifying those members of his father's family, the Shakespeares, whom he had met. I suggested that he ask a member of his mother's family, the Holyoaks, to do something similar when he met them the following day.

This was the result:

To each of his father's siblings we gave a letter. The eldest - Maud - was called A1, the next sibling, my mother Gladys, was identified as B1 ... and so on to the youngest, John, who was I1. In this system David's father, my uncle Jim, was F1. Then each of their spouses was given the numbers A2, B2 etc., even though by this time A2 had passed away.

We moved on to the children of these couples, our generation. As the eldest child of my parents I became B3 and my brother Tim B4. The same system was applied to the other eight branches of the family, so that David himself became F5.

By the time of this visit several members of my generation were married so their spouses were assigned numbers in chronological order of their marrying into their particular 'branch' of the family. By the time some of my other cousins married children had already been born to their siblings, so that some little ones had lower identification numbers than their much older aunts or uncles! For example, D8 is the uncle of D7.

This simple system served its purpose and David headed off the following day to meet his mother's family where, apparently, someone wrote out for him the relationship to him of all the people he met there. From the day the system was invented I started to receive Christmas and birthday cards bearing the salutation 'From A1 to B3' from my eldest aunt and godmother! But everyone else forgot about the numbering system ... until my mother's 80th birthday party fifteen years later.

On that occasion my cousin Roy William Shakespeare, the family's historian, turned up wearing a lapel badge bearing the number E3. His wife and daughters wore badges with their numbers on too. Even more spectacular his nephew, who had flown in from Germany specially for the occasion, was wearing his Eintracht Frankfurt football shirt bearing a huge black E7 on the back!

Now, of course everyone wanted to know what it was all about, especially those who were not around in 1972. So, at short notice, I had to find a large sheet of paper, draw out the family tree and put in the numbers of all those present. And thus the long forgotten system of identification was resuscitated!

Thereafter everyone seemed to remember their own number and, as new members joined the family through either birth or marriage, numbers were consciously assigned to them. As the younger members grew up their sense of humour developed and they started to envisage hypothetical situations with which they would confront me in the clear hope that I would be bereft of an answer. To date they have been unsuccessful!

At my mother's 90th birthday party an ad hoc sub-committee was formed to deal with a new problem which had arisen: what do in the mercifully few cases where a marriage had failed. The committee members, H5 and H7 (mother and son!), decided that numbers should not be re-used. So H6, C9 and F11 retain their numbers forever, and we wish them well!

In anticipation of a forthcoming wedding in July 2001 we next hit on the idea of issuing certificates to new members! Another ad hoc committee was formed, this time comprising B3 and B4. The policy to emerge from their deliberations was: no certificate is necessary for babies born into the family, only for those making the conscious decision to join. And no retrospective certificates!

In a later development the certificate was 'watermarked' with my grandparents' wedding photograph, because it is from them that the numbering system derives.

So far three certificates have been issued (to D11, D12 and E10), each signed by the genealogical head of the family, cousin Roy. Two appear to have been greatly appreciated, the other less so.

In years to come these documents will, no doubt, command high prices on the antiques market!!

Sooner or later it was bound to happen. For the first time in over a century the family had a new arrival: 'out of wedlock' as they say! There had been one 'close shave', but that was before the numbering system had been introduced. This time there was no ad hoc committee - I had been sworn to secrecy! But I had six months to think about it. So I decided that the new arrival would receive a number immediately, because he or she is a direct descendant of my grandparents. Its unmarried parent will get one after marriage. And so at some point in the future the parents will have to explain why the child has a lower number than one of them. By then I probably won't be around, so they will be able to blame their embarrassment on me!

No wonder David has never been back - just look at what he started!