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...

 

 

It's Live!

Much excitement here at Piece of String HQ.  My husband has managed to wangle his work diary to enable me to go to Who Do You Think You Are? Live!

 

I suspect that I am going to be quite underwhelmed when I actually get there - such events are often quite frustrating due to the crowds.  However, I will not let that spoil the anticipation.  [He works away and it is usually impossible to pin down a whole day when he can take over dog, children, children's social lives, etc.  Trying not to think about the number of times he has changed his plans at the last minute...]

 

I am highly amused by the use of the term Live for the show, I must say.  I mean, it is a show about, mostly, searching for people who are anything but live.  However, it appears that this title is justified by the celebrity visits - people who have had their family trees done for the television shows.

 

And one of my main reasons for going is, in fact, to try to see the interview with Alistair McGowan on the Friday.  It was his episode of WDYTYA? back in 2007 which gave me the first real leads into my Anglo Indian ancestors.  I had had a lifelong interest in my family tree and as a child, had interviewed grandparents and others.  But despite some cursory searches online, I had not got very far with my dad's family.  It all felt a bit needle in a haystack and I had abandoned those lines for a quite a while.

 

The McGowan episode was a real turning point though, as mentioned before on this blog.  I had watched so many previous WDYTYA? programmes just out of interest.  I watched that one with a pen and paper in my hand.  McGowan genuinely had no idea that he had any Anglo Indian blood from his father.  It was fascinating. (Look on YouTube and you can see his reactions if you have not seen his show.)  As soon as the programme ended, my dad called to ask if I had seen it.  He couldn't quite believe it either.  I was already online at that point!

 

Being so inexperienced in genealogy then, that was my first foray into British Library India Office records!  (http://indiafamily.bl.uk/ui/home.aspx).  I only found one or two mentions of the surname Shaller but it was enough to give my search fresh impetus and spur me on to look for new online resources (Family Search, Families In British India Society, etc) which had not really existed when last I had attempted that particular line.  Strangely, my brickwalls on Shaller are now mostly back in the UK as they are pre-1837.  The Indian bit is as complete as I could have ever hoped.  Always looking though and open to new sources.  Plus I obviously have a number of other Anglo Indian surnames to work on and they are proving harder to crack.

 

I am not really sure what seeing Alistair McGowan Live is going to contribute to my research, come to that, but it feels important to hear what he has to say - if only because he was lucky enough to go to India to see his dad's home and meet some relations.  So, a day of mooching around family history exhibits, and hopefully attending the interview and some workshops, awaits me.  Well, got to get your genealogy kicks where you find them...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read All About It

Today I will be mostly scrambling to finish the book which I am supposed to have read for Book Group this month.  They are meeting at my house too, this time.  So no excuse.  But as I was walking the dog this morning, I was thinking that I really could think of much better things to read.  I do not like the book and with limited time available for reading, I am resenting having to persevere. 

I did also muse about the fact that we are so lucky to be able to read whatever we want, wherever we want, here in First World countries.  Imagine living in a place where learning and reading was restricted.  Many of the recent films for Comic Relief showed African children desperate to get to school, guarding the few books in their possession.  It is terrifying that our world is so unequal.

But how could I link this thought process to a genealogical blog post?  How did my ancestors go about learning to read?  What did they read?  Who taught them?  Of course, the history of education is a huge subject.  Most of us have a vague idea of the increase in child schooling which took place in the Victorian period.  We know that people used to leave school at much younger ages.  We have some idea of the rise of public libraries and we know that books used to be the preserve of the rich.

To narrow it down for this post though, I wondered about the schooling arrangements made for the Anglo Indian children.  The English soldier of the 30th Foot, Joseph Shaller, who took my family line to India, had four children with his Indian partner [the children are all listed as illegitimate].  Three of them were still alive when he himself died in 1822.  And thanks to the work of historian Carole Divall, I have, as previously discussed, managed to find original documents in the National Archives which contain those children's signatures.  Their handwriting was neat and legible.  They were clearly educated.  An assumption born out by the two boys' subsequent forays into teaching and the church as professions.

In the regimental diaries examined by Ms Divall, the number of "wives" and children with the battalion are shown for most months' entries.  In 1811, the Duke of York started a regimental school system and over the following century, teachers were recruited by the Army and sent all over the globe to teach both British soldiers and their children.  Apparently, it was quite usual for the sons of soldiers to end up joining the same regiment as their father so it was a good reason for spending money on their education, be they white or otherwise. 

Interestingly, although I do have other ancestors for whom this was the case, on this particular line it appears that their father's premature death [from illness rather than army action] led them to be taken up by a missionary society rather than joining the army.  So their reading matter was more than likely of a religious theme.  However, they had definitely taken advantage of the army education offered prior this and actually, the arrival of an education officer is mentioned in the diary. 

For Anglo Indian children, education also set them above full blood Indians to an extent.  Not in terms of colour discrimination socially but in terms of their usefulness to the British.  By the height of the Raj, Anglo Indian descendants populated the majority of the posts in civil service, the railways, the telegraph office and so on.  Positions of a certain responsibility but rarely allowed to be full in charge.  Relied on by the British because of their Christian, beholden upbringings yet not fully treated as equals.  Certainly, my grandparents received brilliant educations, at schools still well regarded.

Of course, this is a very minor happening in thousands of years of human education history.  Yet as can be seen now in Africa and other underdeveloped areas or in deprived areas of the First World countries, education is key to moving onwards and upwards for any person or for society as a whole.  Look at India now - the gaps between the educated castes and the others.

So I am going to try to be grateful for my excellent education, for my many life chances and for my easily-fed love of reading, even if it means reading The Geography of Bliss by tomorrow.  However, I do not recommend it....

Note:  Nor do I recommend falling asleep whilst lying in bed reading a Kindle.  Woke with a start to a fat lip as it fell on my face.....

The State of the Union

Today is the climax to the Six Nations Rugby Championship of course and I find myself a rugby widow for the day.  To be fair, this is a rare event.  It takes quite some important rugby event to persuade my husband to change his football habits.  [The lure of beer all day definitely helped his decision, I believe.]

 

However, when he does switch, he always supports Ireland.  He was born in the UK but, as whittered about in previous posts, he has Irish parents.  He will support England ahead of the others in a championship though if Ireland are not in the running.  There is a table of precedence, you understand...

 

And as I listened to the coverage on Chris Evans' Radio 2 show yesterday on the various points combinations needed to establish a winner today, I did wonder how these competitions work in other families.  In my family alone, I have an Anglo-Indian father who supports England with every fibre, a Scottish stepfather and a Scottish sister in law who are both highly patriotic but also mad keen Celtic fans for the football which links to their Catholic heritage.  This is a loyalty shared by my Irish Catholic husband.  He supports Middlesbrough as well, for his sins.  Are you keeping up with this? 

 

My nephew was born in England but, at three, for the sake of diplomacy, has to be dressed alternately in Scottish and England outfits in order to keep all grandparents happy.  His Scottish grandfather, my brother's father in law, is as Scottish as they make them for sporting loyalties.  Yet he voted against Scottish independence.  My brother continually treads a fine line of popularity with his in-laws due to his Englishness.  My step sister of course has a Scottish father but has an English mother.  I really must ask her where her loyalties lie on these occasions! 

 

And the thing is, I don't think we are that unusual these days.  A good friend has set off for Murrayfield today with her seven year old.  She is Scottish through and through but her son remembers only England.  And her husband is Northern Irish...  I could give many other examples.

 

The first rugby international took place in 1871 between Scotland (see picture above) and England.  And presumably, in ordinary families, this was an event only mentioned in the newspapers.  Not something to be thinking about and cheering or arguing about. 

 

It took around a hundred years, with the advent of the 1970s television coverage, for the Six Nations to gain huge popularity, although as far as I can work out, some matches were televised from as early as 1948 - whether rugby league or union.  As a child of the 1970s with a rugby mad father, I have vivid memories of him settling himself down for a good old shout at the TV, be it for the Six Nations or England v New Zealand All Blacks or whatever.

 

As our families have fractured with the increase in geographical and social mobility over the last 150 years, maybe the improvement in communications has allowed us to reinforce our sense of belonging to something wider via sporting loyalty.  (For rugby at least, it seems quite good natured.  I may be wrong.)  We can feel part of a wider picture, wherever we are in the world.  As for me, I do support England - it is what I was brought up on.  However, for the sake of Anglo Irish peace in our house, I will refrain from any match analysis, whatever the result today!

 

Timing is Everything

 

This week I have met with two old friends, for dinner or for walking.  But our conversations have been remarkably similar.  It appears that my generation are reaching the sandwich time so often spoken of in magazines and Sunday supplements.

 

We had our children later, although not as late as many these days.  We have elderly parents and other relatives who are ailing or worse.  And we are trying to hold together households which are increasingly chaotic with work and child arrangements/activities.  To say nothing of the social lives of the family, the pressure to help with community stuff and the maintenance of gardens and property.

 

Our time is at a premium.  But this is the one thing which we cannot increase or reinvent.  Since, say, a hundred years ago, most human lives in the West have changed beyond recognition.  Labour saving devices, phones, internet, transport and travel, the homes we live in, the list is literally endless.

 

One of my favourite sets of books is about a Napoleonic British spy called Roger Brook.  The author, Dennis Wheatley, was unbelievably skilful at weaving Roger into historical events.  (Even now, I sometimes have to remind myself, when reading history from that period, that certain  events were not actually brought about with the help of Roger Brook, the character was so believable.)

 

However, an element of the books which has always struck me is the amount of time it takes for Roger to do anything.  Be it travel or post or getting clothes made or whatever, his time is so much more stretched than ours.  In order to prevent himself from being unmasked, in one book he rides flat out for three or four days from Moscow to Paris.  Three or four days!  And that was a mad feat of horsemanship to save his own neck - it should have taken over a week.  In another, he takes months to sail from England to the Caribbean.  His dispatches take weeks to get to his masters.

 

Would our modern mindsets cope if we had to return to these times?  We think we are time poor these days.  Imagine if we had to allow days at a time for a business journey.  Jolting along in a carriage, twiddling our thumbs.  No phones or laptops to amuse us or allow us to work.

 

Progress is great but maybe we should value time a bit more.  Instead of wishing for more hours in the day, I for one need to get better at doing what is important.  None of us know truly how much time we have.