Best for a while

I can't post a lengthy missive this morning.  I have done my back in so badly that I just can't sit in my desk chair very comfortably for a long time!

However, I did just want to comment on Frank Gardner's Who Do You Think You Are? last night.  I have enjoyed all of the programmes in the last couple of series but it was really great to see an episode which really pushed the genealogy line rather than just concentrating on one or two ancestors' stories.

Who would have thought anyone who is not currently royal or "landed gentry" could trace their ancestry to William the Conqueror himself?  There is hope for us all!  It was just a shame that the programme was not long enough to show the paperwork route to the Tudor ancestor.  I personally have stalled with my own tree in the late 1600s.  I am proud of having got that far but it spurs you on to want more!  Human nature.

I was terribly envious of Frank Gardner's visit to the heraldic college too.  Even if it was not my tree, to have the chance to visit such a place and handle those documents would be amazing.  Weird genealogy crush, anyone??!

To Be A Writer

 

 

Back in the land of the living!  Well, in school hours anyway.  Eldest has started at secondary and it has been quite a learning curve this September.

So what to write about?  I must admit that genealogy work has completely taken a back seat.  I have, though, been maintaining an interest in my creative writing.  And I have decided to try to write up some of the stories gleaned from my family tree and integrate them into fiction.

I do make it sound so easy don't I?  Well it isn't, I can tell you.  There are possibilities whirring in my head but making myself just start writing and stop overthinking is another matter.

This morning I was reading a writers' blog about entering writing competitions.  It was talking about how long to continue trying to make it as a writer before accepting that maybe fiction is not where your talents lie.  I do agree that, at some point, I will have to admit defeat if this is the route I decide to follow and I am unsuccessful.

However, this summer I have been reading all sorts of books that I would never normally read.  A tutor had mentioned the merits of reading books that we considered "bad" in an effort to pick out what we thought was "wring" with them.  And very entertaining, it has been!  A couple of awful romances, a dreadful thriller and currently a best seller that I just can't get into.  But all of these people have reached the holy grail and been published.  So it is a bit chicken and egg.  You can  break all the "rules" given out by the creative writing tutors and still get published.  So are you writing for a genre and do not care what the quality is like?  Or are you writing and believing that you are writing great books?  If you get published, you must believe in your work or at least, your work is believable for a certain audience.

I mentioned this debate that I have been having with myself at our last book club meeting and the point was made that actually, we all do, or have done, jobs that we don't believe in - because they pay the bills.   An age old problem.

 

To round off with a genealogy point, I think there are probably two or three people on my entire family tree as it stands who found vocations rather than ways to pay the bills.  And they were all connected to religion.  So maybe I had better train to write some lucrative genre of fiction that will make some cash rather than holding out for critical acclaim.  52 Shades of Grey, anyone?

Wedding Etiquette

Last weekend my family and I attended the wedding of a very dear friend.  It was a very modern affair in some ways.  They had been together for eighteen years and produced two gorgeous children before they decided to tie the knot.  Yet in so many other ways, it was terribly traditional.  Far more than I had expected.

 

This was brought home to me whilst sitting waiting for the bridal party to appear.  My nine year old was asking question after question and it became clear to me that every step of a wedding is very much ingrained into most of us by adulthood.  You just know what is happening, no queries needed.  I guess that would be the same whatever religion or tradition you have been brought up within.

 

At this wedding, things about the day, the ceremony, the meal afterwards - all of which seemed perfectly normal and expected to us adults - were a source of much mystery to my child.  It was the first wedding she could remember attending.

 

So why was the groom waiting at the front without the bride?  And why did we stand up and sit down so much even though it wasn't a church?  Who is being given away and why?  Who told me what to read out at the ceremony?  Do all these people have to talk after dinner and what are they going on about?  What are we "toasting"?  More importantly, why can't we go over there and just cut ourselves some wedding cake?!  The child's eye view was fascinating.  It really made me think about what a wedding means. 

 

And to add a touch of genealogical musing (which was how this blog started - and please note, I have resisted the temptation to comment on Who Do You Think You Are? yet this series!), I did think this week about how times have changed in terms of late marriages.

 

Currently, when you are searching nineteenth and early twentieth century records, you tend to be surprised by illegitimacy, by people living together according to the census, by couples marrying later after having children.  Such genealogical discoveries lead to mysteries, to brickwalls, to family secrets.

 

Now, though, we are well used to such arrangements.  I can name many happy families who have no parental marriage certificate.  So, just as in the future genealogists will find divorce to be common place, they will also have to deal with far more fluid family arrangements.  They might find my friend on a census with her family, they will find her children.  Hopefully, they will look way past there and see the marriage as well...!

 

It was a fabulous day.  Even the weather was kind.  But it was particularly a day for love.  My beautiful friend was never more beautiful.

 

Auntie

This week I took my children on a BBC Tour at Broadcasting House in London.  Despite the absence of CBBC - now based in Manchester - they absolutely loved it.  Photos with a "real" tardis and darlek.  Reading the weather on a newsroom green screen.  Sitting on the One Show sofa.

 

And interwoven with the up to date stuff, there were wonderful bits of history about the BBC.  From the Art Deco building to the stories of the war.  From the lists of famous people who have been through the doors to the invention of television in the basement.

 

So using the tenuous connection of "Auntie", I am using this genealogy blog today to make a simple plea for people to defend the BBC in its coming battle with the government.

 

You would think that politicians who are conservative would value all of the history and Britishness that we saw and felt on our tour.  Apparently not.  The current government is hellbent on bringing down the BBC in its current form.  If we allow it to succeed, we are allowing it to bring down nearly a century of our history.

 

The BBC has figured in all of our lives and the lives of many generations before us.  It has encompassed all the arts, sports and entertainment we could want and it has been a source of comfort, pride, joy and many other emotions.

 

I don't want to rant on about the economics or politics of the BBC's funding.  And I don't doubt there have been huge mess-up's over the years.  But where have there not been scandals in recent years?  Child abuse, going to war without a vote, MPs' expenses, bribes and corruption in the City, the banking collapse, the list goes on.

 

I just felt the need to say "Stand up for Auntie".  We must not let the saying "you don't know what you've got until it's gone" apply to the BBC.  We do know and we should be proud.  See below!
 

 

The Return of WDYTYA

Far too many weeks since I last posted, sorry.  I had promised myself to get better at setting the timer thing to post more regularly.  Instead I have found myself on Yorkshire beaches, driving children to gym practice and walking the dog with ideas buzzing and no time to get them out.

 

However, I have managed to read Not My Father's Son, an excellent memoir by the actor Alan Cumming.  I heard him reading it on BBC Radio 4 soon after it was published last year but I have only just managed to discover the conclusion.

 

The gist is that at the same time Alan Cumming was doing Who Do You Think You Are? in 2010 - which turned up a completely fascinating family tale - he received a call from his estranged father, saying Alan should know, in the light of the programme being made, that he, Alan, was not his biological son.

 

The memoir is written in a number of  movingly interwoven strands - the WDYTYA shoot;  the time following its completion; childhood in Scotland; and early years as an actor.  The book is a great read and I really admire Alan Cumming for doing it but I won't discuss it further as I highly recommend reading it!

 

I watched Cumming's WDYTYA quite shocking episode when it was broadcast.  It has been fascinating, though, to read about what the poor guy was going through while he was on screen and talking about his ancestors.  And the childhood side of the memoir is awful but moving.  Human resilience in action.

 

However, as someone looking forward to the start of the new WDYTYA series (next week!), I was particularly interested in the machinations of the programme makers.  All the celebrities say, when asked, that they are told nothing before the shoot starts.  Read in the context of someone trying to deal with a personal crisis at the same time (albeit unbeknownst to the TV company), their methods seem almost cruel.  Of course, that is what makes good television.  Those special or disturbing moments, captured close-up.  I mean, they even squeezed a tear out of Jeremy Paxton so they must be good at what they do!  Television gold usually involves a "journey" these days and genealogy gives that in spades.

 

I don't imagine any of us, if confronted with the sort of information given to Alan Cumming, would keep a poker face.  The episode link is above.  Do watch it if you have not seen it already.  But read the book too.  The two make a good pairing.

 

And when WDYTYA returns, I think we should spare a thought for the celebrities who have agreed to take part.  Yes, they get top of the range (!) family trees given to them at the end but in return, they are expected to trip out their emotional reactions to whatever the producers have decided is most television-worthy.  Incidentally, for an example, in my humble opinion, of when the celebrity does not provide this entertainment, please see Sarah Jessica Parker's US episode of the show.  She literally had nothing to say....

Valid History

 

 

Last night, on Simon Mayo's Drivetime, it was Book Club night and the book being discussed sounded really fascinating.  The Truth According To Us by Annie Barrows is set in small town America in the Depression era.  I cannot comment on the book as I have not yet read it.  [Although I have now added it to the ever growing list of "must read" along with many Sunday supplement clippings, the Woman & Home Reading Room recommendations, my own local book club and the research for my fledgling creative writing.  No pressure...]

 

One discussion concerned "what is history".  Apparently, the book deals with the writing of a small town's history and the struggle to make sense of past events in the light of age-old grudges and warped memories.  Annie Barrows agreed very much with a comment that history is "about who writes it".  Very dependent on how someone or some organisation or some nation wants to be remembered.  Ms Barrows said that history is just a construct, not factual at all, "just a bunch of stories".

 

And I feel this resonates with many of my blog subjects in the last year.  Family history is what we make of it in the present generation.  My blog about The Demon Drink is an example.  Posts on how disease actually affected a family would be another.

 

John Hurt spent the whole of his Who Do You Think You Are? episode firmly convinced that he somehow came from Irish aristocracy.  He had been told so many tales over his life time that he had even convinced himself of a natural affinity with the country.  It was not true.  But it had coloured his family's view of themselves for generations.

 

Last weekend, I was reading a BBC History magazine (I know - my life is just so exciting...).  One of the articles was a revisionist view of the War of the Roses.  The author believes, along with many others, that Tudor propaganda aimed at cementing that family's position was responsible for substantially altering views of the pre-Tudor period.  He said, though, that it was not just down to primitive propaganda.  It was due to Shakespeare wanting to excite audiences, it was down to thrilling tales passed down and exaggerated between generations, and so on.

 

Look at Wolf Hall.  Tudor history rewritten in the twenty first century.  Thomas Cromwell has been a well known historical villain, of sorts, for centuries.  Now, after Hilary Mantel has finished with him, we are all feeling rather sorry for him and desperate for him not to die in the (please finish it soon, Hilary!) last of the trilogy.  Even though the fact of his death is one of the few certainties of his story.

 

Winston Churchill said "History is written by the victors".  Did you ever hear of a world famous book or film about German POWs escaping?  And what about Hiroshima's sufferings? 

 

It is not just victors though.  It is perception.  It is feelings.  In this blog, I have tried to look at how certain facts may have made participants feel and/or influenced their decisions.  I agree with Annie Barrows' assessment of history to a degree.  But history is no less valid for taking account of prevailing feelings, fashions, fortunes and families.

Pet Trees?

Yesterday our Labrador was one.  I remember blogging about her arrival last year.  Doesn't time fly when you are picking up poo and constantly hovering?!!

I do find it very interesting that she is so much part of the family though.  It has almost been like when you are waiting for a baby to arrive.  You can't imagine what it will be like when they arrive.  Then they do arrive and you can't imagine how you had a life without them, how you didn't know what they looked like.

When I blogged last year about the puppy, I was thinking about pedigree dog family trees.  It is so controlled, you know so much about the generations.

Today I was wondering about a human family tree which also named pets.  Can you imagine how many extra branches?  Well, twigs!  You could have dogs and cats with their dates and then extra twigs for hamsters, rabbits and so on.

This would provide quite an insight into some members of the family.  An unmarried sister might prove to be that cat lady cliché but you could at least recognise the beings that had enhanced her life experience.

Our dog has certainly enhanced our family's experience.  But it is funny to think that generations to come will more than likely not know of her existence let alone her importance to us.

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On a completely different matter, if you are interested in Irish family history, a number of new resources have become available in the last couple of weeks.  Land records, Catholic baptisms and various others.  I have not had chance to explore them properly yet but by all accounts, they are an exciting addition.  As I have blogged before, Ireland has presented me and numerous others with very particular research difficulties so far.  Not so much brickwalls as brick buildings, three feet thick!

The Demon Drink

 

 

In my last post, I referred to family issues affecting my writing.  One of the issues is alcoholism.  One of my husband's adopted brothers is sinking ever further into addiction and is simply unable to see that he needs help.  He believes he controls the alcohol, not the other way around.  His life, nearly fifty years of it, has not gone at all as he would have hoped and he has battled other addictions in the past.  However, the death of my father-in-law this year has tipped the balance and this is the worst that we have seen him - from any substance or liquid.

 

One of the issues which I wonder about, in my pondering, genealogy-obsessed way, is what has driven him to this point.  The circumstances of his adoption were not handled well by my parents-in-law.  A very old fashioned approach was taken to how the two brothers were told of their adoptions (they are not related to each other) and how the family then integrated when my husband, the only natural child, arrived.  My brother-in-law has always maintained no interest in seeking out his birth parents.  However, on Long Lost Family last week, one of the stories concerned a man who had sunk into addiction because of the rejection he felt from a combination of being adopted and of his adoptive parents then divorcing.  He described very eloquently how he had reacted and I believe my brother in law may have very similar issues.

 

Alcoholism can run in families.  I do not think a trace of the birth parents in this case would necessarily reveal alcohol related problems though.  I believe it is self esteem and family issues which have driven the constant need for a crutch in his life.

 

Now, though, we appear to have passed a point where counselling alone would help him to abandon his crutch.  Drying out is the only option but to do that, you have to recognise the existence of the problem and we are at a loss with how to make this happen.

 

I know, sadly, from having also witnessed a couple of acquaintances slip into alcoholism over the past ten years, that at a certain point, even organ failure and imminent death do not persuade someone that drink is not the answer.  They will lie, yellowing, on a hospital bed and ask you to slip them a drink.

 

Many of us like a drink, don't get me wrong.  This is drinking on a whole different scale.  Wake up, drink whiskey; once you are no longer capable of holding down a job you then drink on and off all day.  You lapse into sleep, wake up hungover at whatever time then start drinking again.  Continue ad infinitum...  Paula Hawkins' thriller The Girl On The Train describes the cycle very well.

 

We are lucky to have more knowledge than our ancestors on how to deal with these issues.  Despite government cuts, there are many services trying to help, to cope.  The Georgians, the Victorians or whoever did not have these insights.  However, at the end of the day in whatever age of history you are looking at, the key remains the same.  Admitting the problem and wanting to do something about it.  I hope my brother-in-law can find that key soon.

 

Our Common Humanity

 I have not been posting on this blog for a few weeks because of PC problems and, ironically, family issues.  However, this morning, reading yet more social media and newspaper comment about "The Migrants", I felt I had to start writing again.

Back in February, after listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme, I wrote a piece on this blog called Do We Know Who We Are? relating to immigration and the lack of thought given to people's personal circumstances in the reporting of the situation in the Mediterranean.
 
Today, when I looked at Twitter, there is now a hashtag in use called #MigrantsCrisis.  The headlines on certain tabloids and social media seem determined to make it appear that we are living under threat of faceless zombie hordes.  Apparently they are "swarming", travelling in "packs".  Surely this is the stuff of science fiction?  Should we now be arming our borders with ray guns?
 
On the BBC Radio 2 Jeremy Vine Programme yesterday, he finished a discussion about the Calais troubles with a line from a listener which referred to "our common humanity".  And I believe this is what is missing from our attitudes towards "the migrants".
 
The terminology being used by commentators, social media and broadcasters is dehumanising.  Purposely so.  They are conjuring up nightmarish pictures of these dangerous hordes at the gates of civilisation.
 
But how civilised are we, if we cannot see the common humanity before us?  How would this situation be reported if it was "hard working families" who were being "denied their rights", who were leaving European shores for sanctuary in the Middle East and being turned back or even dying at sea?  Would those families be faceless migrants, zombies threatening another country's way of life?
 
I believe that one of the reasons slavery lasted so long was the dehumanisation of the "cargoes".  Black Africans were lesser beings, therefore could be treated accordingly.  Attitudes still plaguing race relations the world over today.
 
As I noted in my February piece, those in glass houses and all that.  Very few of us can be sure that we are not descended from immigrants to the UK.  Whether that be from Vikings, Normans, European refugees, people from the ex-colonies, Ireland, wherever.  The British are a tapestry not an immaculate piece of finest linen.  The thread of that tapestry is humanity.

Richard III - Cumberbitch

 

Well still no commas or question marks and the cursor is funny now too!  But I will persevere and post again.

Recently I was reading The Guardian app and at the end of articles they put links to other related articles.  Some are current but mostly they are historical by months or even years.  I have completely forgotten which article I started reading but it led to a piece about the fact that genealogists had proved a distant link between Al Murray The Pub Landlord (who was standing for parliament) and David Cameron.  It was a very funny piece.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2014/jan/29/please-dont-say-im-related-to-david-cameron

.

This got me pondering about who I would and would not want to be linked to.  Of course in most scientific or religious theories we are all linked at some point anyway.  But how serendipitous was it for the finders of Richard III's remains when  Benedict Cumberbatch turned out to be related to the ex-king!  And links like that are gold dust for the producers of Who Do You Think You Are obviously.

So I have decided to keep pushing my tree in all directions until I come to a famous person.  I am already in the 1600s on one paternal line so that looks like slim pickings.  However I feel I must find some medieval king or personage on one of the lines.  Surely there must someone!  The journalist in the piece above mentions the idea that we are all related within 100 generations.  Plenty of scope for my ambitions.

 

If I want to guarantee a famous orator at my funeral though I will firstly have to become 1) so famous myself that they will want to be associated with me at all costs or  2)ensure my descendants are famous enough to get someone even more famous to officiate.  Link or no link.  Or possibly 3) lead some sort of battle get buried in a strange place and be dug up centuries later hopefully allowing enough time for really famous descendants to have made their names.

 

Maybe Richard was just waiting for Benedict.

Just keep swimming

It has been far too long since I posted.  I apologise to my reader!  A combination of coursework PC issues and family issues has caused me to have even less time to think and write.  I am now writing on a borrowed laptop and some of the keys do not work so commas are impossible!

 

Anyway the last couple of weeks have been very difficult. As written about at the beginning of the year we recently lost my father in law.  Well the fall out is now starting to take its toll.  While dog walking in recent weeks a number of blog posts have rushed around my head.  Mostly they have related to coping with elderly relatives circle of life etc

 

My mother in law lives in Ireland still.  She is increasingly frail and confused but utterly refuses to consider any solution other than living in her own home.  Historically in Ireland the elders of a family did stay in their own homes.  Large families just accepted that in general their parents died at home looked after one of the siblings.  That sibling then took over the home and the land as theirs.  until relatively recently that has been the way.  Thus now that we are looking for solutions we are realising that very little is available other than full nursing care.  In the |UK my grandparents' generation were able to consider sheltered accommodation type places.  Their own flats but with help available and hot meals and social activities if they wanted them.  There is a distinct lack of such places in the part of Ireland where we need them.

 

But frankly hats off to the families who have dealt with their elders for generation after generation.  It is hard hard work.  And it must have been considerably harder in the days before any state help a health service and the general change in knowledge of dementia and other illnesses.  We are a fortnight into a stay and I am exhausted.

 

I am going to post this short piece so that anyone who actually reads my stuff regularly (thank you!) knows I haven't given up.  PC and commas back next week I hope....

Wake up and smell the....

 

Today, whilst traipsing around the supermarket with youngest, her eye fell upon salad cream.  She asked what it was and I was tempted to buy it just for nostalgic reasons, just for the smell.  I never really liked it but it was such a childhood memory jolt.  Egg mayonnaise was just "mashed egg".  Hardboiled eggs with salad cream.

 

Sense of smell.  Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to bottle our history in smells?  Not the nappies or anything like that, of course...  But not just the nice ones.  Things that genuinely jog your memory like school dinners, beaches, the fur of a pet or toasting marshmallows.

 

Another reason for thinking about this was finding myself in a secondary school changing room yesterday (waiting for youngest to finish gym).  Oh good grief, that smell!  Dettol, sweat, cheap perfume, it gave me quite a start when I went through the door.  I did not have a good time at secondary school and PE was a particular point of torture....

 

So here is the challenge for the future.  To add smells to my children's family history trove.  Not sure how to achieve this yet but anyway...

 

I would love to be able to experience some of the smells from my family history.  The India side would be fascinating, of course.  But what about a first smell of the ocean from someone who has been land locked for their whole life?  A whiff of gunpowder from a Napoleonic battlefield.  A dusty old country chapel with that distinctive hymn book smell.  Silver polish from a country house.

 

As referred to a little while back, there has been a BBC2 series called Back In Time For Dinner recently, charting the history of family food since the war.  How much better would that have been with Smellevision??!

Face it

Last night I was listening to an episode of Lemn Sissay's Homecoming on Radio 4.  Sissay is a Mancunian of Ethiopian origin, a poet and broadcaster.  In yesterday's and the previous episode, he has been looking at the nature of home.  You will find them on the BBC Radio iPlayer.

The programmes are extremely funny but also touching.  Very heartfelt.  He was the only black person for miles around for much of his childhood in Lancashire.  This was what he was discussing last night - the first episode was recorded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he is descended from.

The idea which struck me in relation to this blog was his assertion that Ethiopians can recognise each other physically, by face shape and cheekbones and so on.  He wondered if this was true for other ethnicities.  And I got to thinking about my own roots (as usual! - it is obviously all about me!).

Sissay mentioned never seeing another Ethiopian in Manchester then getting to London and instantly recognising 'his people'.

So how did this work for Anglo-Indian people during British rule?  I have a strong memory of my father being very uncomfortable around Pakistani and Indian origin people in England when I was a child.  He was brought up to consider himself unlike them.  But in truth, he looked very similar of course.

For the early Anglo-Indians - Eurasians as they were called then - it must have been quite easy to recognise each other.  'Blacky White' (to quote Indian Summers) in colour.  Dressed in European style clothing.  Worshipping as Christians.

I just wonder if full blooded Indians would be able to tell if there was an Anglo Indian in their midst should those people be dressed as Indians.  Is there a face shape unique to the blend of Indian and European?

Looking at the photos I have amassed so far, I think that probably the European blood was already so diluted - by Normans, Vikings, Celts, Slavs, etc - it is not possible to identify an Anglo Indian "look" other than in colour.

Bet there were a few eventually who were blacky white with red hair or blue eyes or whatever.  What a give away, as the Monty Python boys would say.

Genetic Voting

 

 

So once again it is a while since I posted.  In the intervening period since my last missive, though, I have spent a lot of time answering questions from my children.  They are completely fascinated by the general election!  The only ones in the country who are not completely sick of the whole thing.  The idea that no one knows what will happen tomorrow or who will be in charge has totally caught their imagination.  I have answered questions on the 'first past the post' voting system, the unfairness of said system, the difference for proportional representation.  At the weekend it was questions about coalitions and who decides.  This morning we spent breakfast talking about who would be prime minister and why one should vote at all (a whole new subject!).  And what is the Queen's role (!)?  And 'does David Cameron even want to be prime minister again' [direct quote!]?

As mentioned in previous posts, I started my career in politics.  With a politics degree and a research post with a Labour MP.  I was, throughout my teens, a proper Millie Tant.  On some issues, I have definitely mellowed; on others, I have never faltered.

However, since my own children started with the questions, I have become very curious about the origins of political sensibilities.  My own parents were diametrically opposed.  My mother has never wavered in her relatively left wing principles.  My father becomes more of a walking Daily Mail the older he gets.

This morning, we had to explain to the children that we too - my husband and I - are on opposite sides of the fence.  [In fact, as we live in a Tory constituency, I was cursing the children for starting this off again.  I was hoping that my husband would forget to vote tomorrow - or my vote just won't count!]

Did my mother, as my father always claim, indoctrinate me for the Left?  Or was it simply that my father did not offer suitable arguments?  Was I genetically predisposed to sympathise with the Left?  My mother's family history of Left wing activity is very strong.  But then my memories of the Anglo Indian grandparents are all of Daily Telegraph reading, standing up for the national anthem, silence for the Queen's Speech at Christmas, disdain for socialist ideals.  They did not waver either.

 

Yet to me, some thing felt wrong about their views.  For one thing, I could not reconcile their innate racism with their skin colour.  The kind of ideas which I was brought up with for my mother's side just seemed so much fairer and more reasonable when I was a child.

 

I wonder how it was in the famous Miliband household?  Or the Kinnocks - their son is running for elections in Wales tomorrow?  If both parents believe the same thing, you must get an extra push!

 

Today, all we could do was to smile when the children asked how we will vote and why.  I had a rant prepared but my husband cut me off by saying that reasons are quite private!  I wait with interest to see which side my children will eventually fall on but I have a sneaky hope that my Left genes have done their work.

 

 

 

 

 

Playing Out

 

Today, while being walked by the dog (!), I passed through one of those pieces of rough ground that you sometimes come across in towns and villages.  At the end of a road or on a piece of land in between the houses of an estate.  Just waiting for someone to squash in more homes.

I suddenly remembered that as a child, I spent a whole summer basically living on such a site.  That's to say, my parents knew where I was and I did return for meals/sleep but the rest of the time was spent working on the den I built with friends.  We made a hollow inside a group of tall bushes in one corner of this waste ground, dragging all manner of rubbish from around the site with which to "furnish" and "arm" the camp.  For it was a working military base - we were on a permanent war footing with a neighbouring den.  We had look-out rotas, a fleet of bikes and a couple of siblings employed as spies.  We started as early as we were allowed out, stayed all day and on nice evenings, went back after tea too.

It was surrounded by the back fences of gardens (not mine) but developers had not filled in this particular blank space yet.  Like the land I saw today, it had become a bit of dumping ground but with a bit of tlc, could have been a real asset to the community.  However. within a year or so of that summer, builders had found a way to get vehicle access through and building began.  One of my fellow fighters even found herself living there after her parents upgraded to one of the new houses.

I did think as I looked around today that I had really quite a lot of freedom while at middle school.  Far more than my children.  I don't recall any of our parents ever coming down to see where we were.  We said we were going to that place, we were trusted to stay there.  And no one seemed to think we would come to any harm.  Just went home when we had had enough, filthy but happy.

The endless debate goes on, doesn't it?  Are there more child snatchers these days?  Were we too slack with children's whereabouts in the past?  Have mobile phones made a difference?  Do children just not want to leave their screens and play such games these days?  I really do not have any answers and this is not a parenting blog.  However, as regular readers will know, I do like to ponder on how things were different for the generations before me.

My mother grew up in a tiny village.  She has memories of wandering all over and often being brought back to the house by neighbours.  In one famous family anecdote, she and her younger siblings decided to paddle in the fresh cowpats they found.  All very amusing but looking back now, she says my grandmother clearly was not coping with four children, the younger three all being under four at the same time.  Grandma simply did not know where they were.

My father spent toddlerdom in India and there are photos of him with his ayah (nanny), on bikes and on the beach.  Quite a privileged upbringing in some ways.  But when they fled from India, his sun filled memories of India were exchanged for dull and endless factory terraces in Coventry.  His first coat and boots.  Playing football in the street and against the yard wall.  Watching the horse drawn milk cart arrive.  I think he did have quite a bit of freedom though.  My grandmother was occupied with a new baby once my father turned six and I do know that by fourteen or so, he was off on European train trips with the Scouts.  Unsupervised.  Given clues to meet their leader somewhere!

Their parents had different upbringings again of course.  Some rural - playing out all the time, some restricted and sent early on to boarding school.  One in very poor city circumstances, leaving school at thirteen or fourteen.  How much freedom did they have while living at home?  Maybe they had more freedom but at the same time had less choices.  My Anglo Indian ancestors' choices were all limited by their mixed race status.  Many of my English ancestors must have been limited by poverty.  Freedom to play out is harder to use if you are a drudge at home or in a mill or factory.

Playing out is the new staying in.  My motto for the summer.  But call me when you get there, darling.  I don't want to be a 1970s parent!

 

Sporting Life

Life getting in the way of my pleasures again. Child sporting activities for one thing.

These days, things seem to be taken so seriously for children’s sport.  Endless activities for children to take part in, too.  My kids are not unusual in having cricket, swimming, riding, gymnastics, Brownies, Scouts, tennis, cheerleading and musical instruments on the go t various points.  I myself honestly do not remember doing anything but Brownies and music until I was well into secondary school.  After that, I had a hectic time but with youth groups rather than sport – my father was probably a little disappointed at my lack of interest, I think.  Slightly weirdly, I did go through a “born again Christian” phase.  That wore off. 

I do firmly believe in the idea of being the best you can – the “go to” phrase from Olympic year for schools.  Whatever my children have a go at, all that we have asked is for them to try their best.  If they want to give up on an activity, as long as money has not been wasted, we have not pushed them into continuing with things they no longer enjoy.

However, I do wonder where this all ends.  If a child is good at something, it is right to encourage them if you can.  But if they say their ambition is to be at the Olympics, how far can you encourage them and how much should you try to set their expectations?  Gymnastics is a good example.  It does not matter how many hours my daughter puts in, I know that she will not make the Olympics!  She is primary school but still appears to have started the sport too young.  How mad is that!  And the level of commitment required these days for a child who shows any kind of promise is staggering.  Weekends, evenings, often called at the drop of a hat.  To say nothing of the financial and family life consequences.

The photo above shows my grandmother at school in India.  She is the girl closest to the photographer.  Despite being a Christian Anglo Indian, it seems that her school embraced traditional activities for all pupils and as you can see, the girls are racing with water pots on their heads.  I love the picture.  My Nana was sporty for most of her life.  Her sport of choice in the UK was tennis and she was very good.  My Grandad too was a tennis player and in India, he was an excellent hockey player.  My father still plays tennis a number of times a week at nearly 70.  A fabulous example (which I am unlikely to follow!).

The post-war London Olympics included many athletes who would now be considered quite old and certainly many people who were late starters in their chosen sport.  One of my favourite London 2012 stories was of the female rowers who had only taken up the sport ion the last five years.  This seems to be me to be a far healthier attitude.

Sport for all, be the best you can (whether that be sporting, academic or whatever – although preferably not at underage drinking, ASBO acquisition etc…!) and enjoy it all.  My maternal grandfather always said Do your best and leave the rest.  I will be repeating this mantra to my kids (and to myself as a parent) as I whizz from activity to activity.  And if all fails, they can learn water pot carrying – a bit of heritage never hurt anyone.

How very on trend

Last night I was watching BBC2's Back In Time For Dinner.  I have not managed to see all episodes but the basic premise is one of those "send a family time travelling" programmes.  How will they get on living in the Second World War/as Edwardians/etc...

Anyway, this series has been looking at the changes to food fashions/availability and family eating habits.  So the family concerned have "lived in" every decade from the Fifties to the Nineties.  It has been an interesting experiment and quite eye opening to see how things have changed in many ways.

But last night, I watched the Nineties episode in despair.  Not at the quality of the programme or anything.  Just at what a predictable life I seem to have had.  Each show, they have re-done the house's kitchen appropriately for the decade.  Well, last night they could have been standing in the first kitchen which I ever properly owned.  It looked identical, even the door handles!  And as for the music, their clothes, the dinner party food fashions, let's just say someone had been watching my life in the Nineties and decided to recreate it for television.

Yes, it is funny but it is also disturbing in some ways.  Most of us like to think of ourselves as distinctive in our choices.  You think you have maybe given the nod to a trend in home décor or in cooking but you don't like to think that you are wholly immersed in/influenced by your times.  You want to feel creative and unique.  [Strangely, for the Seventies, I had just laughed and reminisced - I guess because the ghastly choices were not made by me - they just seemed nostalgic!  Maybe my mother would cringe though.]

Yet once you look back at a period of time, you can see how sheep-like we all really are!  Obviously those programme makers did not use just my life.  My life in the Nineties was just, unbeknownst to me, completely mired in the trends of the times.  I had wholeheartedly embraced the Nineties apparently.

Sadly this means that my current almost brand new kitchen living room will one day probably be looked at by someone as "typical early twenty first century open plan living".  They will question how we ever thought we could live like this, who would have a cooker like that, etc etc.  By then, who knows, they may all be living on Willy Wonka style meal chewing gum or something!

It would be curious to know if our nineteenth century and earlier ancestors would have similar feelings if we were able to show them footage relating to their own early days.  That is to say, Victorians did not call themselves "Victorians" or Georgians use the term "Georgians".  Is this defining of a period's trends new or would someone in 1890 be despairing at the cliché of an 1870 kitchen or living room décor?!  There were huge innovations during the nineteenth century.  I am not sure that an average person would be able to pinpoint a particular decade from its style though.  Maybe an aristocratic person could but I think the rising consumerism of post war combined with wealthy middle classes, mass media and so on has caused our lives to be much more trend-led.  More so even than we realise, clearly...

Help needed!

For me, writing a blog has been a highly challenging and unusual experience.  I am around 80 posts in now and I am sure I should post more regularly than that.  I am definitely a bit rubbish when it comes to having stuff timed and ready for while I am on holiday and that sort of thing.  But I do enjoy the writing process at least.

I have gained a lot from at least attempting to be disciplined as a writer (of sorts!).  I need to get my viewing numbers up though.  To that end, I hope shortly to have buttons on the page for readers to share a blog post directly via Twitter or Facebook.  However, if you are a regular reader and like what you read, as opposed to stumble upon it accidentally and wonder what the hell I am going on about, I would be really grateful if you would think of ways in which you could share the blog.  Book groups, by email to friends, on other blogs or forums. Every Little Helps, as the blue and red supermarket says...

I am learning how to use Twitter but I fear I may be a decade older before I truly understand how to grow my audience that way!  I seem to be stagnating with my number of followers at present.  Any suggestions, anyone?

Family Values

 

I am just at the end of ten days in Florida.  It has been quite something.  As regular readers will know, we recently lost my father in law and we were unsure until two days before as to whether we would make it to the US.  However, as a family bonding exercise it has been amazing.  We have queued, gasped, screamed and laughed as a family.  We are very lucky.

And something which has struck me in every park, but particularly the Disney parks, has been the very strong sense of family shown by the American families.  A Florida visit seems to be a rite of passage which is used at all stages of life and by all strata of society.  The first visit in your stroller, the first visit when you are tall enough for all the rides, the spring break visit with your college friends, the visits as a parent yourself and finally the visit as a grandparent sitting on a motor scooter but still loving it.  My husband and I do not have large immediate families.  Complicated but not large. So huge group family holidays are somewhat out of our experience. We do have friends though who all return to the same holiday camps or hotels en mass year on year and they get a lot out of those times.

However, Florida and especially Disney offers something different.  It offers a kind of history and heritage.  People collect pin badges each year and attach then to their pass holders like badges of honour.  They look forward to seeing the same rides which have been there since their own childhoods (I think some date from the ark!) whilst also expecting new and cutting edge stuff for their children. They want to do the "I remember when" thing with their grandchildren or the "remember when" with college buddies on reunion trips.  And don't get me started on the tradition of matching family trip t-shirts!  You can have them ready and waiting at your hotel...  This was actually the most un British aspect of the whole thing.  Drawing attention to yourselves!

All in all, this aspect of Orlando has been very educational as a family.  Today, we were queuing for the biggest ride of the year - Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts at Universal.   We queued for ninety minutes and we were closely followed by a three generation group who were pushing a very elderly guy in a wheelchair.  Having read the warnings about the ride, we were privately concerned at his being included but hey, not our business.  And do you know?  He was wheeled right to the train, marvelling like the rest of us at the pre-ride settings.  He was helped onto the ride and he had a blast just like we all did.  He sat with his son and his grandchildren and he loved it.  Another thing which we noticed actually - the provision for those with disabilities or need for assistance was outstanding.  Every theme or water park had help for nearly every ride.  It was very inclusive on all levels - age, ability, etc.

Not so much a post about family history as the importance of family today but I hope still worthy of consideration.  If you do go to Orlando though, just beware of the road system... It will stretch marriages to divorce... a whole new chapter of family history in the making! We were on the verge of counselling after getting lost for the fourth day in  row...

Articles of Interest

I am away at present and will not be posting as regularly as usual for a few days but in The Guardian on Saturday 28 March, there were two pieces relating to family history subjects which I would definitely recommend reading if you can find them on the website.  I show the links below but if they do not work, do search on the website using the writers' names.

I Turned My Great Grandfather Gay - Patrick Gale

I Found My Birth Mother Through the Newspaper Small Ads - Catherine Chanter

Incidentally, I would highly recommend the free Guardian app.  You get the full paper as far as I can tell, as well as updates on stories.

Thank you, Baldrick

 

- 'Thank you for introducing me to a completely new sensation, Baldrick.'

- 'What's that, Mr Blackadder'

- 'Being pleased to see you.'

 

I love Blackadder in all his guises.  In fact while gulping gas and air to produce eldest child, I was listening to audio recordings of Blackadder, much to the midwife's own amusement.  Today, I was reminded of the above quote for a somewhat strange reason though.

 

To backtrack, as a teen I was always known as a bit Millie Tant.  Always had a cause and a Left wing one at that.  I shouted my way past 10 Downing Street under Thatcher, I went to anti Poll Tax meetings before it was even law and listened to ranting Scots telling what misery was on the way.  I had the full collection of CND and Greenpeace badges.  I think I was drunk for a week in the student union when Thatcher fell.

 

So today, it really stuck in my throat to realise that a series of programmes I wanted to watch were a) presented by Michael Portillo and b) really quite good.  A new sensation indeed.  Yes, while ironing for an hour, I was totally engrossed in Portillo's State Secrets on BBC2 iPlayer.  Me, who was working in Westminster when he was still in power! Me, who knew his slayer Stephen Twigg as a fellow researcher!  Oh dear, oh dear.

 

His State Secrets are a look at some of the papers hidden in the National Archives in Kew and the items chosen were mostly fascinating - everything from an X-Ray of Hitler's head to Henry VIII's catering list for a banquet and a job review for the official executioner.  I haven't watched all the episodes yet but yes, I admit that I will be watching them, choke, choke...

 

Having been to the Archives myself, it was amazing to see behind the scenes and there is no doubt that the collection is astounding in its breadth.  It was amusing, though, to note that Portillo did not show any signs of having done the National Archives training DVDs - which ordinary users must sit through before entry.  Plus, of course, he did not have to join the queuing system in order to access his chosen items.  I thought it was an unbelievably efficient system when I went but now, having seen the lengths of the corridors of documents, I am even more impressed by having been able to see my choices within an hour.

 

Portillo has been presenting TV for a while now but none of his previous efforts had managed to break down my prejudice.  He seems now to be quite "reasonable" (to quote David Cameron's favourite description of his policies!)  Maybe he has mellowed in old age or is just hiding his spots better these days.  State Secrets is to be recommended if you can get past the presenter's history.

 

As for myself, my Millie Tant days are long since past.  Not sold out, just tired out.  I was swiftly disillusioned once I worked in politics and this year, twenty years later, for the first time in my adult life, I am not even sure who to vote for.  Being for or against Thatcher was such a galvanising force when I was young.  The current leaders just seem to merge into one blur.  No chance of Blackadder's totally new sensation with them, I fear...