Making a Date

 

 

This weekend has been quite a contrast to the last.  Last weekend we were dealing with the first anniversary of my father-in-law's death.  This weekend, we had a welcome happy event.  A belated party for my mother's seventieth birthday.  It was a lovely evening.  Fourteen of us at a gorgeous Italian restaurant.  Three generations - in-laws, step-relations, grandchildren, children, siblings.  So many relationships amongst the group.

And as we travelled home, nursing a bit of a hangover I must admit (praise the Lord for Diet Coke), I thought about how little time my children have spent with my aunts, uncles and cousins.  My mother is one of four.  Three sisters and a brother.  I am one of ten cousins.  We live all over the country and since the death of my grandmother twelve years ago, I don't think we have managed a date where every single person has made it along.

But my children really enjoyed meeting my aunts and uncles at the dinner party.  My daughter was particularly interested in meeting my mother's elder sister and her husband as they had memories of being children during the second world war.  This was a topic of hers last year and she has not lost her enthusiasm for information about it.  Her own grandparents were either too young or in Ireland and did not have a great deal to share with her.  So once she had got over her (pretend!) shyness, there was a lot of chatter.

So my 2016 resolution - typically a month late - is to organise a happy get-together for my mother's family.  My granddad died at seventy one.  My aunt was saying last night that she was sure he would have lived longer if he had gone to a doctor years earlier.  He should have had, at the least, drugs to deal with hardened arteries but most probably a heart bypass.  I have no fear that his children will not visit doctors but their ages are now in the seventies.

And this, combined with January's list of celebrities who have died at similar ages, brings it home that we should spend more time together.  Just for the hell of it rather than because something awful has happened.  There also needs to be a major exchange of information.  I have previously whittered on in blog posts about making sure that you pump all available aged relations for family history snippets before it is too late.  Well, I will be organising a lovely get together. But with questionnaires to fill in as you enter and no exit until you have completed it...

 

PS  you can still vote for my first creative writing piece at www.kishboo.co.uk

Adolescent Angst

 

On my family tree there are some people who were clearly forced to grow up very quickly.  On every family tree, in fact, there will be ancestors who married young, joined the army young, died of horrible diseases after childhood's blighted with illness.  The ones which stand out on mine are a couple of Anglo-Indian girls who married at 13 or 14 and a pair of brothers who, having lost both parents, were sent, in their early teens, into the army via music scholarships.  Both stayed in the army all of their lives, although only one died in middle age.

 

And now, as I struggle with the beginning of the teenage years for my eldest child, I have begun to question how such ancestors - and the millions like them - managed to begin adult lives so early.  I have been reading quite a lot of articles about teenagers.  My son is a good lad on the whole but there has been that very definite Harry Enfield-esque shift in his manner and attitude.  And, joy, it is only going to get worse.

 

One of the arguments around teenage psychology is about to what extent the 'teenager' is a modern invention.  Some believe that there was no such thing until the 1950s.  That young people went from childhood to dressing like their parents, getting jobs and settling down with nothing in between.  No experimentation, no rebellion.

 

However, the biological and cognitive changes in children between around twelve and seventeen are substantial and surely these cannot be a modern 'invention'.  The changes in their mental abilities during this period are very important for their future lives.  There are all sorts of huge life changes to deal with - all linked to their increasing independence.  And thanks to all of this, they are particularly vulnerable to abuse by others or of substances.

 

So how did our teenage ancestors cope with marriage, work, etc?  Modern Western children could not marry at 13 even if it was legal.  Most are still far too dependent on adults and far too immature in general - despite their attempts to have us believe otherwise via social media!  For example, for my above-mentioned ancestors, I am assuming the girls that married at thirteen then had to run households.  They did not make fantastically wealthy matches and then sit around chatting all day.  My kids can barely keep track of their pocket money or remember to feed the dog!  Actually, maybe despite the faux maturity projected on instagram, etc, possibly we have made teenagers less able to cope.  They are never completely out of contact with us, we drive them everywhere and we agonise over their every grade.

 

I think the 'teenager' definitely is an invention in terms of the recognition, by 1950s advertisers, of the huge marketing potential of the age group.  However, I do think that humans must always have had the attitudes, insecurities and frustrations during this period of their lives.  One of the biggest problems which Marie Antoinette had when she arrived in France, aged 14, to marry the heir to the throne was her own immaturity, capriciousness and tactlessness.   Quite the teen queen.

 

My issue now is how to deal with  these changes, these attitudes without losing communication with my son.  I know it is a phase and I know it will pass.  I just wish I knew when.  To quote Harry Enfield's Kevin, 'It's SO UNFAIR!'

PS my fiction writing efforts are continuing.  My first ever proper short story has been published on Kishboo e-magazine.  If you have a chance, please do read it and vote if you enjoy it!  It has an Anglo-Indian theme, in keeping with my family history interests!

Family Diseases Tree

So this week before writing, I looked back at what I wrote this time last year.  Sadly, a great deal of it was connected with the death of my own father-in-law and it is not an easy readback.  However, in some ways, it seems like far longer than a year ago.  My mother- and brother-in-law have not coped well with the loss.  Well, he was not coping before that really and if you looked at previous posts, you will know of the alcoholism which has consumed him.

 

We have lurched from crisis to crisis in the last twelve months.  Culminating in  my mother-in-law being hospital herself on the anniversary this week.  She broke her arm in a fall.  The fall was caused by a diabetic low.  The diabetic low, the doctors now think, was caused by early dementia.  She is not remembering what she has eaten/taken or when (it was even discovered last month that she had, for reasons best known to herself, thrown away the emergency injections from the fridge).  Quite a chain of events but one which it has taken many near misses to diagnose.  Falls without actually breaking anything.  Being found unconscious due to the diabetes but being brought round just in time.  Many incidents of slightly odd behaviour that we hoped were just age rather than the degenerative dementia.  So we start the second year with a whole new scenario but one with which, due to her location in western Ireland, we are struggling to assist.

 

Actually, both diabetes and dementia run in her family.  (Although for years, when my husband mentioned diabetes being passed down, she denied this!)  So what did the generations before do?  Close ranks and keep the person at home if it was dementia?  Just find a person unconscious on the floor when it came to diabetes?  My mother-in-law was born in 1933.  It was only around ten years prior to that when the first clinical diabetes treatment was made, although apparently there has been an awareness of diabetes symptoms since the times of ancient Greece.  (see Wikipedia for more information).  Dementia, of course, still has no effective treatment.

 

This is what the World Health Organisation website says:

 

Noncommunicable [by which they mean non-infectious] diseases were responsible for 68% of all deaths globally in 2012, up from 60% in 2000. The 4 main NCDs are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. Communicable, maternal, neonatal and nutrition conditions collectively were responsible for 23% of global deaths, and injuries caused 9% of all deaths...

 

...In high-income countries, 7 in every 10 deaths are among people aged 70 years and older. People predominantly die of chronic diseases: cardiovascular diseases, cancers, dementia, chronic obstructive lung disease or diabetes. Lower respiratory infections remain the only leading infectious cause of death. Only 1 in every 100 deaths is among children under 15 years.

 

I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that at least one of my mother-in-law's grandparents had diabetes.  Her mother was born at the turn of the century and developed the disease.  A number of her siblings - of which there were around a dozen - have succumbed to it.  Or to dementia.  (Or both).

 

So in that family alone, there is over 120 years of diabetic history.  And they may be classed as having lived in a high income country but their own family background was, quite frankly, very poor.  Subsistence farming.  Plain food.  Few treats.  It is genetic.

 

More should be done to research these 'non-communicable diseases'.  The sad deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman in recent days have once again shone a light on the lack of treatments for some cancers.  President Obama has promised a push to 'beat cancer'.  But it is not just cancer that needs to be tackled.  We are encouraging developing countries to catch the high income countries up.  So it follows that we are storing up a future of increases in these causes of death.  Only recently, I heard a piece about how breast cancer research funding will only really take off when the world's biggest population - China - begins to see the effects of its modernisation on its people's health.  No-one wishes for another human to be ill.  We should not be waiting for these shifts to happen.  These diseases should not need to be trailing through centuries of family health.

Concise Descriptions

Well, week two of my resolution  to write every week.  Made it by the skin of my teeth!  I have had a subject in mind for a couple of days but just have not put fingertips to keyboard.  [End of excuses]

Anyway, it relates to last week's subject, Herbert Wason Major.  In continuing to attempt to solve the mystery of his provenance, I came across an army record for a Herbert Wason Major.  The dates all tie in so it may well be him.  However, what really caught my eye for the blog was the reasons given for discharge.  The record was not a personal record for him, more a list of soldiers discharged from that regiment and the reasons why.  It is from the 1870s and goodness, you would not get away with the reasons they used these days...

To give a few excamples:  'Old Age';  'Inefficient'; 'Worthless'.

And I began to imagine if we could use such descriptions in public service discharges today...

Quangos, MPs, civil servants, spin doctors.  And don't get people started on the Environment Agency or the local councils.  The list is endless.  To say nothing of the private sector. 

Of course things are so much better and fairer now.  But back then, they could dismiss someone's career of choice with a one word answer.  Chapter and verse for reasons?  Warnings?  Suspensions?  Why bother with all that!  Maybe these soldiers had been warned, reprimanded, penalised before their discharges but those one word descriptions do make for hilarious reading.  The words used as 'reasons' are repeated for different men too, which makes one wonder what the army's definition of "inefficient' or 'worthless' actually was.

If I ever get any time, I intend to look into some random discharge records and see if this habit was peculiar to this regiment.  Somehow, and rather sadly, I doubt it.

So long, Napoleon

 

 

So. I had pretty much given up on my blog.  Not on writing.  Or family tree stuff.  I just felt I had nothing sufficiently interesting to say and no time to think.  But it is a New Year.  With new goals and intentions.

 

And one of mine is to post once a week.  To give me a break from my attempts at longer pieces. I also have a renewed interest in my family tree (I will explain shortly) and I am hoping to stick to regular times for all of my writing so this blog commitment will help give structure.  I hope.

 

Anyway, the renewed genealogy interest has come in the form of a most annoying piece of news.

 

One of my most prized family discoveries had been my four times great grandfather, Solomon Major.  He joined the 66th Regiment of Foot in 1805 and in 1817, in Bengal, he produced (as ever, no sign of a mother on the paperwork, indicating illegitimacy) a son named Robert Clement Major.    Solomon left India in 1817 and his regiment were sent to St Helena to guard Napoleon.  A fact which, as an obsessive history reader, I loved.  (I ignored his abandonment of Robert and subsequent English marriage!)

 

But...  The Ancestry website very 'helpfully' leaves you links to items which may be of interest.  When I looked last week, for the first time in ages, there was a link to someone who had included the Majors on their tree.  But theirs looked very different to mine.

 

Now, I have blogged before about the wariness with which one should approach information from other people's trees (my own mother was dead and buried in America according to one Ancestry tree!).  However, I was really interested in this Major tree because that family is a real brickwall for me.  My great grandfather Frederick Clement Major did not leave India after Partition and we do not even have a date of death for him.  Other than his parents' names, his grandfather Robert and Solomon, I have very little.

 

But this new tree's Robert Clement Major had many children, one of whom was apparently Herbert Wason Major, Frederick Clement's father (come on, keep up!).  After fruitless digging, I posted a query about these extra siblings on Rootschat.com (an excellent source of help).  And after a number of replies, the whole top of my Major tree - including the treasured discovery of Solomon and Napoleon - is now thrust into doubt. 

 

So to cut a long and boring story short, I think Solomon as a wonderful family tale may be gone.  It looks increasingly like my Robert Clement Major should actually be a Robert Clement Major from the British Army.  He was born and raised in Barbados (!), married Mary (also from Barbados) and then lived all over the world before settling in England.  His children were born at various postings and his Herbert Wason was born in Jersey in 1853.  There is an army record for Herbert showing his resignation from his lieutenancy in 1876.  This would probably fit with his eventual Police profession in India.  Ex-military men often found employment in the Empire's police forces apparently.  It is the Wason bit which bothers me.  I have wondered if it was mis-transcribed before but I don't think so.  It is clearly written on a number of original sources and is just so unusual.  There is also record of connection between Wasons and Majors in Barbados.

 

The 1881 census is quite definite that Robert Clement was born in Barbados but there was definitely a Robert Clement born in Bengal in 1817.  At the moment, I can't prove either of these connections one way or the other.  But I reckon Herbert Wason might be the key.  His son, my great grandfather Frederick Clement, was very definitely Anglo Indian. If the newly discovered Herbert married an Anglo Indian then that accounts for Frederick's 'caste' , for want of a better word.  And there goes the Napoleonic dream. Bother.  Or other words.

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....