Last week I described family history as 'an addictive, if enjoyable, pursuit'; this week saw the culmination - for the short term, at least - of a new, interesting if not actually enjoyable but equally addictive, competitor for my time. Let me go back to the beginning. A few weeks ago, I was approached by a lady at church who began cautiously, "Is it right, Brian, that your semi-retired state has now become permanent?" (It was as word was getting around about the demise of my van, and the corresponding arrival of both car and more 'free' time.)
This lady was one of the churchwardens, people who have responsibility for the 'physical' rather than 'spiritual' running of the church. She had come to me with a proposition. "How would you like to take on the role of our Health and Safety Officer?" I said I'd think about it, and get back to her within the week. I had a little experience in this field some thirty years ago when, whilst working in the offices of a fairly large factory in the town, I served a term as the department's representative on the company's health and safety committee. In the course of this, I'd acquired a number of snippets of information totally irrelevant to office work, but which might possibly be useful now. The following week I gave her my response in the form of a Dickens quote, "Barkis is willin'."
As an aside, I confess to some hesitation about using these words. The only other time I'd said that was after I'd been asked to deal with the outstanding VAT Return for a shopkeeper whose husband was ill. He died soon afterwards, and the surprising outcome was that his widow became my girlfriend for several years thereafter. I wasn't in the market for surprises now, however, ... especially as the churchwarden's husband is a friend of mine! All was well though and, with Christmas out of the way, last week saw a formal handing over of the post.
As I've gradually thought around the responsibilities and discovered sources of 'independent' information, the last two weeks have brought me an alternative addiction to challenge the superiority of research into the parish registers of Norfolk and Suffolk, and scouring of the century of UK censuses available online, while I prepared an initial report of my findings. With this done and submitted, I can now turn to other things again. There's sunshine outside ... I might go and watch a football match this afternoon!
On the same day as that handover, I learned that my new spectacles were ready for collection. It happened that a regular eye-test had almost coincided with the end of my driving career, and it seemed the sensible move to change the format of what have up to now been exclusively 'driving' specs. These have now been modified with new lenses for more everyday use, removing the need to carry a separate reading pair around with me to church, and so on. The old design provided a small close-up section at the bottom for reading the dashboard instruments, with the main area devoted to more distant vision.
I had tried using these for singing one day when I had forgotten the others and found myself totally unable to cope with changing from reading the music to looking at the conductor. Their replacements have a much larger reading section, making this adjustment a lot easier, and I'm now getting used to wearing them all the time when outside.
The only significant problem - one I shall have to overcome with some priority! - is in noticing any unevenness in the pavement in front of me. It would be an unacceptable embarrassment for the Health and Safety Officer to explain a plaster on his nose by confessing failure to negotiate a 'trip hazard'!
Saturday 30 January 2016
Saturday 23 January 2016
A Change is as Good as a Rest!
The other evening, I glanced at the clock. It was about ten past seven; I had been sitting at my desk for about five hours, give or take. I told myself, 'It's time to stop work', and set about making an evening meal. One of the blessings of a solitary life is also one of its dangers: there's no one to tell me what to do. If I should choose, I could sit at my computer for 24 hours a day, every day; no one would mind ... no one would even know, until I failed to turn up for a social engagement, the alarm would be raised and an emaciated corpse would be found huddled over a screen still pouring out error messages!
Over-dramatic? Yes, almost certainly, but it shows the importance of maintaining a balance in life. I hope anyone reading this who is living in such a situation will take heed, because the underlying truth is a serious one.
What have I been doing that is so time-consuming? In two short words, 'family history'. The words may be short ... the task certainly isn't. It's an addictive, if enjoyable, pursuit and, over the last fifteen years I've found cousins in the UK, Canada and Australia, and military links to Ireland, South Africa and India (but no cousins there, as yet). For the last few weeks, I've been filling in some of the many gaps in the family of a 'cousin-of-a-cousin'. He's technically not relative of mine; our link is that his grandfather's uncle married my grandmother's aunt. To do the job 'properly' is painstaking; to unknit the odd detail that has come from mistaken memory is not a little complicated ... hence the long time it's taken, and it's not finished yet!
So, yesterday - for a change - I sorted out a puzzle I'd tripped over a couple of weeks ago, regarding a totally different clan, who had moved family by family, individual by individual, from rural Suffolk to industrial Lancashire in the second half of the nineteenth century. Equally detailed, and equally complex, but refreshingly different.
Another refreshing change was a journey today on the bus to the next town, despite the delight I would have on any other occasion in driving there. This time I wanted to do some shopping, and I knew it would cause problems trying to find a parking space anywhere close to the town centre.
One thing about my life that hasn't changed is my love of things quirky; things like a road in Letchworth where the house numbers are ... strange. They start at one end in the low 200s, odds one side, evens the other - nothing strange there - decreasing steadily, until a junction on the 'even side' where the high 100s suddenly change to 58,56,54 and 52. On the other side, they get to about 179 or 177, and then the road finishes at a T-junction! I know the reason for one of these peculiarities, but not the other one, which I only discovered today.
Another quirky thing I discovered today is this mathematical limerick, which I found on social media:
... (in the more usual medium of words) "A dozen, a gross and a score, plus three times the square root of four, divided by seven, plus five times eleven, gives nine squared - and not a bit more!"
I wonder whether next week will bring anything more strange?
Over-dramatic? Yes, almost certainly, but it shows the importance of maintaining a balance in life. I hope anyone reading this who is living in such a situation will take heed, because the underlying truth is a serious one.
What have I been doing that is so time-consuming? In two short words, 'family history'. The words may be short ... the task certainly isn't. It's an addictive, if enjoyable, pursuit and, over the last fifteen years I've found cousins in the UK, Canada and Australia, and military links to Ireland, South Africa and India (but no cousins there, as yet). For the last few weeks, I've been filling in some of the many gaps in the family of a 'cousin-of-a-cousin'. He's technically not relative of mine; our link is that his grandfather's uncle married my grandmother's aunt. To do the job 'properly' is painstaking; to unknit the odd detail that has come from mistaken memory is not a little complicated ... hence the long time it's taken, and it's not finished yet!
So, yesterday - for a change - I sorted out a puzzle I'd tripped over a couple of weeks ago, regarding a totally different clan, who had moved family by family, individual by individual, from rural Suffolk to industrial Lancashire in the second half of the nineteenth century. Equally detailed, and equally complex, but refreshingly different.
Another refreshing change was a journey today on the bus to the next town, despite the delight I would have on any other occasion in driving there. This time I wanted to do some shopping, and I knew it would cause problems trying to find a parking space anywhere close to the town centre.
One thing about my life that hasn't changed is my love of things quirky; things like a road in Letchworth where the house numbers are ... strange. They start at one end in the low 200s, odds one side, evens the other - nothing strange there - decreasing steadily, until a junction on the 'even side' where the high 100s suddenly change to 58,56,54 and 52. On the other side, they get to about 179 or 177, and then the road finishes at a T-junction! I know the reason for one of these peculiarities, but not the other one, which I only discovered today.
Another quirky thing I discovered today is this mathematical limerick, which I found on social media:
... (in the more usual medium of words) "A dozen, a gross and a score, plus three times the square root of four, divided by seven, plus five times eleven, gives nine squared - and not a bit more!"
I wonder whether next week will bring anything more strange?
Saturday 16 January 2016
Age Shall Not Weary Them ...
... but it's certainly been taking a toll on my self-esteem this week! Yesterday saw the first 'day excursion' of my complete retirement. I had spotted in a regular e-newsletter a free WW1 movie show at the National Archives in Kew, so for the cost of only getting there plus a lunchtime snack, what was there to lose? As well as my wish to see two war-based films that were being shown - together with a discussion featuring some of the cast, and others behind the production - I decided to make a day of it, and further some research I'd started some seven or eight years ago.
It wasn't until I made my final preparations on Thursday evening that it dawned on me that this would be the first time I'd made that journey on a working weekday. Would there be a space to park where I had done on Saturdays in the past, along Orange Hill Road in HA8 near Burnt Oak Library? Sure enough, as I made my way there at about 10.0 am, it was very soon clear that there wouldn't be, and invoking 'plan B' revealed a similar situation at Stanmore station car park at the nearby terminus of the Northern Line. Any idea of making use of the underground to get to Kew was thus abandoned and, reverting to courier mode, I drove there instead.
My research concerned my great uncle, who had committed suicide in 1913. Following up on a newspaper report of the inquest, I had an idea that his demise might have been prompted by recollection of or hallucination featuring some even that he had gone through during his military service. (He had spent several years in India, broken only by an 8-month posting to South Africa during the Boer War.)
In gathering my thoughts and papers together for this visit, I decided to check over all the details I had recorded about the man. I was dismayed - and not a little deflated - by what I found. I recall being a little surprised that he was always known by his middle name, William, when I had him recorded as Arthur William Thrower, but this is far from uncommon; indeed I knew someone from my schooldays who fitted the same pattern. In my earlier research I had obtained a copy of his Attestation Papers when he had enlisted in the Essex Regiment in February 1893. I noticed that, although I had noted his birth from the register index as in the September quarter of 1873, his age on enlistment was given as 20 years and 4 months.
This week, I decided to check his birth once more and, to my amazement, I discovered another entry in the register index, of a William Thrower born in the December quarter of 1872, which would make much more sense. The age he gave at enlistment would suggest that he was born in October 1872 and, with no additional forename to create confusion, it certainly indicated that I'd recorded the wrong details when I set out on tracing my family history all those years ago.
When I set about replacing one date by the other, I noticed that I had recorded his baptism from the parish records ... 8th June 1873 ... earlier than the start of the birth quarter I had previously recorded! The revised picture reveals the fact that he died just weeks - perhaps only days - before his birthday, a time when, aged 41, still single and living with his parents, he might have been particularly vulnerable, emotionally.
The shock of making this discovery of incompetence came hot on the heels of other revelations during the course of a slightly more prolonged exercise tidying up some of my records. During those early days I had received whole bundles of information from distant cousins, and had simply entered it all to my own database, assuming it all to be true. Many correspondents had been similarly generous at about the same time, and much of the incoming details had never been verified.
A location that wasn't clearly identified prompted me to check one particular family on Thursday morning and, in the course of resolving this, I discovered the marriage record for the couple ... only fourteen years after the husband was alleged to have been born! I eventually found his birth some nine years earlier. The whole experience led to a resolve to go through all the items I got from that particular source as soon as I have the time, and verify as much of it as I can.
Although this might take some months, I'm sure it will be rewarding, and restore some of my battered pride. Meanwhile, I have to plan further searches into the doings of the Essex Regiment in India!
It wasn't until I made my final preparations on Thursday evening that it dawned on me that this would be the first time I'd made that journey on a working weekday. Would there be a space to park where I had done on Saturdays in the past, along Orange Hill Road in HA8 near Burnt Oak Library? Sure enough, as I made my way there at about 10.0 am, it was very soon clear that there wouldn't be, and invoking 'plan B' revealed a similar situation at Stanmore station car park at the nearby terminus of the Northern Line. Any idea of making use of the underground to get to Kew was thus abandoned and, reverting to courier mode, I drove there instead.
My research concerned my great uncle, who had committed suicide in 1913. Following up on a newspaper report of the inquest, I had an idea that his demise might have been prompted by recollection of or hallucination featuring some even that he had gone through during his military service. (He had spent several years in India, broken only by an 8-month posting to South Africa during the Boer War.)
In gathering my thoughts and papers together for this visit, I decided to check over all the details I had recorded about the man. I was dismayed - and not a little deflated - by what I found. I recall being a little surprised that he was always known by his middle name, William, when I had him recorded as Arthur William Thrower, but this is far from uncommon; indeed I knew someone from my schooldays who fitted the same pattern. In my earlier research I had obtained a copy of his Attestation Papers when he had enlisted in the Essex Regiment in February 1893. I noticed that, although I had noted his birth from the register index as in the September quarter of 1873, his age on enlistment was given as 20 years and 4 months.
This week, I decided to check his birth once more and, to my amazement, I discovered another entry in the register index, of a William Thrower born in the December quarter of 1872, which would make much more sense. The age he gave at enlistment would suggest that he was born in October 1872 and, with no additional forename to create confusion, it certainly indicated that I'd recorded the wrong details when I set out on tracing my family history all those years ago.
When I set about replacing one date by the other, I noticed that I had recorded his baptism from the parish records ... 8th June 1873 ... earlier than the start of the birth quarter I had previously recorded! The revised picture reveals the fact that he died just weeks - perhaps only days - before his birthday, a time when, aged 41, still single and living with his parents, he might have been particularly vulnerable, emotionally.
The shock of making this discovery of incompetence came hot on the heels of other revelations during the course of a slightly more prolonged exercise tidying up some of my records. During those early days I had received whole bundles of information from distant cousins, and had simply entered it all to my own database, assuming it all to be true. Many correspondents had been similarly generous at about the same time, and much of the incoming details had never been verified.
A location that wasn't clearly identified prompted me to check one particular family on Thursday morning and, in the course of resolving this, I discovered the marriage record for the couple ... only fourteen years after the husband was alleged to have been born! I eventually found his birth some nine years earlier. The whole experience led to a resolve to go through all the items I got from that particular source as soon as I have the time, and verify as much of it as I can.
Although this might take some months, I'm sure it will be rewarding, and restore some of my battered pride. Meanwhile, I have to plan further searches into the doings of the Essex Regiment in India!
Friday 8 January 2016
Is the Old Giving Way to the New?
The Christmas season has left me with a couple of memorable, and significant echoes. Both came to me from the lady with whom I spent five days between Christmas and New Year, my closest cousin. At some point during the holiday I had been explaining some intimate detail of my personal financial records; she commented, "Once an accountant, always an accountant!" Then in an SMS exchange after my return home, I'd confessed to being so engrossed in what I had spent the afternoon doing, that I almost forgot to prepare my dinner. My choice of words to do so suggested that I had felt guilty about this situation, and prompted the exhortation, "Relax! You're retired now!"
These comments, particularly the second one, crystallise the fact that the transition from work to retirement, far from being overcome by a year of playing one as the foil to the other, will still take a while to achieve. My present life pattern is very much desk-based and, as I told my optician the other day, I do spend a high proportion of my day looking at a computer screen. Many of the disciplines that have been established and developed since I ceased to be a salaried accountant continued, of necessity, all through my second career as a courier; others, more personal, continue still, and will do so for the foreseeable future.
Although a slightly more balanced timetable is beginning to emerge, the very fact that I refer to it as a timetable does, in itself, give the lie to any claim that this is a significant move from the rigidity of the past to the liberty of the present/future!
The common characteristic of a number of items so far in this very young new year is a need to chase things. When I cancelled my courier insurance after I'd stopped work, the broker told me that I ought to receive a cheque for the proportion of the year when my van would no longer be on risk. 'within a month or so'. By coincidence, this sector of the business has now been transferred to a different office of the company, and when I called them to see where my cheque had got to, I was told, "I don't know why they told you that ... it's quite likely to be up to three months!" Although, financially, this is not good news, it does mean that I can legitimately park the matter at least for a few more weeks.
Then there is the matter of the registration document for the car that has replaced the van. The small fragment of the previous document, bearing the reference V5C/2, refers to sending this to DVLA if the new document hasn't arrived within four weeks. By the start of this week, four weeks had elapsed, so I downloaded the form V62 to send with it and filled it in. As I searched the fine print for the address to which to send the pair of them, I discovered another 'but relax!' clause. "If you do not receive it within this time, please allow six weeks before contacting us."
Following my visit to the opticians I now have up to three weeks to wait for my new spectacles, and with all these things dropping off the immediate 'to-do' list, life is beginning to lose the sense of urgency with which the new year began. I noticed the other afternoon that I was yawning, in a way that indicates neither hunger nor fatigue, but rather in the manner of chilling out, as if during the second week of a summer holiday.
I think an attack of relaxation might be coming on ...!
These comments, particularly the second one, crystallise the fact that the transition from work to retirement, far from being overcome by a year of playing one as the foil to the other, will still take a while to achieve. My present life pattern is very much desk-based and, as I told my optician the other day, I do spend a high proportion of my day looking at a computer screen. Many of the disciplines that have been established and developed since I ceased to be a salaried accountant continued, of necessity, all through my second career as a courier; others, more personal, continue still, and will do so for the foreseeable future.
Although a slightly more balanced timetable is beginning to emerge, the very fact that I refer to it as a timetable does, in itself, give the lie to any claim that this is a significant move from the rigidity of the past to the liberty of the present/future!
The common characteristic of a number of items so far in this very young new year is a need to chase things. When I cancelled my courier insurance after I'd stopped work, the broker told me that I ought to receive a cheque for the proportion of the year when my van would no longer be on risk. 'within a month or so'. By coincidence, this sector of the business has now been transferred to a different office of the company, and when I called them to see where my cheque had got to, I was told, "I don't know why they told you that ... it's quite likely to be up to three months!" Although, financially, this is not good news, it does mean that I can legitimately park the matter at least for a few more weeks.
Then there is the matter of the registration document for the car that has replaced the van. The small fragment of the previous document, bearing the reference V5C/2, refers to sending this to DVLA if the new document hasn't arrived within four weeks. By the start of this week, four weeks had elapsed, so I downloaded the form V62 to send with it and filled it in. As I searched the fine print for the address to which to send the pair of them, I discovered another 'but relax!' clause. "If you do not receive it within this time, please allow six weeks before contacting us."
Following my visit to the opticians I now have up to three weeks to wait for my new spectacles, and with all these things dropping off the immediate 'to-do' list, life is beginning to lose the sense of urgency with which the new year began. I noticed the other afternoon that I was yawning, in a way that indicates neither hunger nor fatigue, but rather in the manner of chilling out, as if during the second week of a summer holiday.
I think an attack of relaxation might be coming on ...!
Saturday 2 January 2016
According to Taste ... or Need?
When someone learned last Sunday that - church attendance apart - I'd spent Christmas and Boxing Day on my own, she was aghast. But I live alone, I'm not a 'party animal', I have lots of 'stuff' to occupy my time, and I had celebrated the One Important Thing about Christmas ... what actually did I miss? Nothing.
That's not to say that, by Saturday evening I wasn't ready for my 100-mile trip the next morning. I was. I'd got myself all prepared in advance and, after what was termed by one person a 'love breakfast' at church following the early service, I was on my way. I then spent five days at the home of my cousin and her husband. It's the longest time we've spent together for some while, and I think we all learned something from it ... probably me the most, since it was their home, after all.
Although we share the same country, language and culture, there are inevitably differences in attitude, opinion, habit and preference, which all add to the richness of the experience of sharing time with each other. Certain aspects of life, however, always have to change on these occasions.
To take one example, I tend to live with my doors open; there's no point in closing them for privacy. I mean ... privacy from whom? And one door has to remain open because of an essential cable that passes through the doorway. But in my cousin's house doors are usually kept firmly closed ... for one specific fur-coated, four-legged reason!!
There are other easily imagined considerations too; considerations, for instance, like kitchen routines, catering for more mouths, with greater cooking and domestic expertise, and with a different range and arrangement of the fittings and equipment. And then there's always the need for me to think of others when using the bathroom!
As we agreed in conversation during the week, each of us - indeed every family, I expect - has developed a way of living that suits our own situation; our individual needs and circumstances. It's rather like driving in a different country. Because driving on the left suits us in England, that doesn't mean that it would be a good way for us to drive in America. Apart from the distinct and dangerous possibility of meeting traffic coming in the opposite direction, the detail of road junctions and layouts would make that difficult, not to mention the problems of the vehicles having the controls on the opposite side. Either the whole system has to change ... or nothing.
I returned home - driving on the left! - to one or two changes here. I've acquired a curtain to isolate the warmth of my lounge from the cool of the kitchen, and I'm amazed at the temperature difference when moving between the two. I've also jettisoned the fitted sheets on my bed, which were becoming over-worn, and replaced them with flat ones. The exercise of changing the bed linen probably still takes me about the same time, but different techniques are of course involved. I've dredged up from the depths of my memory the skill of 'hospital corners', which I acquired about fifty years ago as a fully-mobile but undischarged recoverer from facial surgery, when my boredom was relieved by helping the nurses with simple tasks about the ward ... something that would be unheard of in these days of health and safety regulations!
That's not to say that, by Saturday evening I wasn't ready for my 100-mile trip the next morning. I was. I'd got myself all prepared in advance and, after what was termed by one person a 'love breakfast' at church following the early service, I was on my way. I then spent five days at the home of my cousin and her husband. It's the longest time we've spent together for some while, and I think we all learned something from it ... probably me the most, since it was their home, after all.
Although we share the same country, language and culture, there are inevitably differences in attitude, opinion, habit and preference, which all add to the richness of the experience of sharing time with each other. Certain aspects of life, however, always have to change on these occasions.
To take one example, I tend to live with my doors open; there's no point in closing them for privacy. I mean ... privacy from whom? And one door has to remain open because of an essential cable that passes through the doorway. But in my cousin's house doors are usually kept firmly closed ... for one specific fur-coated, four-legged reason!!
There are other easily imagined considerations too; considerations, for instance, like kitchen routines, catering for more mouths, with greater cooking and domestic expertise, and with a different range and arrangement of the fittings and equipment. And then there's always the need for me to think of others when using the bathroom!
As we agreed in conversation during the week, each of us - indeed every family, I expect - has developed a way of living that suits our own situation; our individual needs and circumstances. It's rather like driving in a different country. Because driving on the left suits us in England, that doesn't mean that it would be a good way for us to drive in America. Apart from the distinct and dangerous possibility of meeting traffic coming in the opposite direction, the detail of road junctions and layouts would make that difficult, not to mention the problems of the vehicles having the controls on the opposite side. Either the whole system has to change ... or nothing.
I returned home - driving on the left! - to one or two changes here. I've acquired a curtain to isolate the warmth of my lounge from the cool of the kitchen, and I'm amazed at the temperature difference when moving between the two. I've also jettisoned the fitted sheets on my bed, which were becoming over-worn, and replaced them with flat ones. The exercise of changing the bed linen probably still takes me about the same time, but different techniques are of course involved. I've dredged up from the depths of my memory the skill of 'hospital corners', which I acquired about fifty years ago as a fully-mobile but undischarged recoverer from facial surgery, when my boredom was relieved by helping the nurses with simple tasks about the ward ... something that would be unheard of in these days of health and safety regulations!
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