It's been some while since my last 'confession', i.e. a blog where I've told you what's been going on in the last week. In some ways that's because nothing really spectacular has come my way, in others, it's because my mind (if not my body) has been occupied.
This business of a change to my broadband provider that I described in my last blog, still hasn't come to a proper conclusion. I haven't been able to watch a programme on iPlayer yet, although I have managed to catch about a dozen minute-or-two snatches of a one-hour programme in between trying one strategy after another to resolve the underlying problem. While this problem has been going on at home, and soaking up much more of my time at the desk than usual, I've found that my mind wanders back to it while I'm driving, too. I usually switch off the radio or mp3-player in the last mile or so before reaching a destination, so I can fully focus on the job in hand. The other day I was several miles into the return journey before I realised that I hadn't switched the radio on again, and by then I'd missed what was an interesting programme!
As I said, not a lot of interest has happened workwise, so keen 'courier-observers' will not have missed much. In fact, Monday last week was totally empty, apart from a 4.30pm call advising me that, 'Today has been a bit dead ...,' (I knew that already), '... but can you be in West Bromwich at this address ... for 9.0 tomorrow morning.' If only there were a little more notice of empty days, one could prepare for them. I suppose it'll be the same for death ... one day.
One thing that has been something of a triumph this week relates to my family history. I can't remember whether I have told you, dear reader, about my great-uncle George. He was last heard of in his native village in Suffolk at the age of 7, when he was recorded in the 1861 census. Last heard of, that is, until last summer when I had what I had determined would be my last shot at locating him in the next census ten years later. Miracle of miracles, there he was in Colchester Barracks, a private soldier in the 27th Regiment of Foot (which later became the 1st Battalion, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.)
It was then the work of but a few minutes to discover that he'd been discharged from the regiment in March 1876, following an accident with a target, and gave his future dwelling place as Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. Subsequent research revealed that he had married a local girl there at Christmas, and was listed in the 1901 census still living in Enniskillen with his wife and nine children. I learned of the marriage of his two eldest daughters and the death of his wife during the next ten years, one daughter living with her family in Belfast, the other in Dartford, Kent. Of George and the rest of the family there was no sign. He'd disappeared - again!
Last weekend I discovered that the Irish civil registration indexes up to 1958 are now available on familysearch, the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), whose beliefs have led to their becoming one of the major sources worldwide of family history information. I spent much of my otherwise 'dead' Monday seeing what I could find about George and his family, and in particular discovered that two more of his daughters had married before records for what became Northern Ireland disappeared in 1922. Unfortunately, the records that were available to search didn't give the name of their respective husbands.
The reply to an e-mail to the General Record Office of Northern Ireland was less than helpful, indicating that I would need to actually visit GRONI if I wanted to learn more with minimal expenditure (which the cost of getting there would outweigh at the outset!) Back to the internet and, more in hope than expectation, I posted an enquiry on a mailing list I'd joined last autumn for this very purpose
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