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A tragic event caused the Atherton family to find a new way of keeping in touch...

Bill and Wynne Atherton live near Ashton Under Lyme in Cheshire. Their daughter Kay, lives in Virginia, in America. Last February, the Atherton's son Peter, aged only 33, died very suddenly. The inquest was held in September, and Kay, in America tried the internet to pick up the results in the local paper at Ashton. Instead of finding the report on the website, she found herself staring via a webcam at Ashton Under Lyme market! Still curious as to why Ashton should have a camera in the market place, Kay telephoned her parents and told them to go and find it, stand under it and wave to her! There were some initial hitches in getting the novel form of communication running smoothly. Bill blushes to recall the first time they tried to contact Kay, "We were waving and blowing kisses to a police surveillance camera ..."

With the help of two council workers at Ashton Under Lyme, Kay managed sort out under which camera her parents should stand. The system works well now - Bill says "We take two little Union Jacks with us, they’ve got a bit tatty now, and we wave those. We could write something on our back and turn round ... we’re open to ads." The images carry well across thousands of miles, especially Wynne's red hair. She finds that if she tells people exactly what they're doing they love the idea. Bill’s unworried that people may think him silly, "I’m getting old now, and I may never see my daughter again. She’s seeing me, so I forget about the rest of the people and whether they think I’m crackers!"

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