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

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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!