The Widows Might ...

I make no apologies for beginning this post with what appears to be a quote from the Bible.  Close inspection will, however, reveal differences in both spelling and punctuation from the Scriptures.  My need to explain discharged, I shall continue ...

... or might not have found my company enjoyable.  As the only (I think) single man in the party, it was inevitable that the travelling parts of my holiday would find me seated with one of a small number of single women.  By far the majority of participants were either married couples or groups of women travelling together.  I decided that the difference in cost between organising my own independent holiday in Ireland and joining a party such as this was small enough to be outweighed by the absence of the hassle of doing it myself, and that the outcome was likely to prove much more enjoyable into the bargain.

Thus it was that last Sunday I was up at silly o'clock and walking the streets with a wheeled suitcase in tow, trusting that I would be collected on time by a taxi or minibus to meet a coach in Luton.  All the arrangements were perfectly synchronised (thank you, Leger Holidays) and after collecting a dozen or so more people at six further points along the way, we arrived outside that wonderfully-named former railway station on Anglesey about midday.  Here four other coaches met us, and an operation called 'inter-change' took place, whereby feeder coaches were transformed into tour coaches and passengers and their luggage were re-grouped in the right combinations for the correct tour that each traveller had selected.

Church of St. Mary of the
Visitation, Killibegs

In my case, this was a four-day visit to the north-west of Ireland, where I enjoyed surprisingly good weather, saw some exceptional scenery and amassed a staggering 142 photographs!  The tour included standing atop the highest cliffs in Ireland, Sliabh Liag, and a visit around the island's oldest operating pottery and it ended with a bus trip around some of the famous buildings in the centre of Dublin.

The Atlantic waves are gentle here at
Glencolmcille

The sights weren't all, of course.  There was some superb accommodation, highlight of which was the Great Northern Hotel & Conference Centre in the seaside resort of Bundoran, and also a rich variety of good food and good company.

After returning home yesterday evening, my descent into normal life once more has been swift, with a heap of post waiting to be dealt with, a rota swap at church to be negotiated, and ringing bells for a wedding this afternoon.  Where did that wonderful holiday go to?

The Great Freeze, the Great Heaps and the Great That Wasn't

The key-words this week have been 'Cold' and 'Feet'.  And, I have to admit, at the ends of the day, the rest of me has been quite chilled, too.  No, I'm not suffering from any illness (at least not that I know of); it's just that the sun is so high in the sky near the solstice that it never reaches the far end of the lounge where I work.  With the outside temperature being so high, and considering the time of year, it seems unreasonable to have the storage heaters running ... and in the middle of the day it can get a bit overwhelming even at the cold end!  The result is that, while I happily sat out in the sunshine to read the other afternoon, in the mornings and evenings I've been sitting in a fleece to keep warm.

My holiday is approaching, in mark of which a pile of stuff is accumulating in the corner of the room that has been mentally labelled 'Suitcase'; meanwhile a smaller gathering is coming together on the sideboard under the aspiration of becoming hand-luggage.  I'm hopeful of getting some decent pictures to satisfy those friends who say 'can't wait to see the results' ... and also to post on here, of course.

Amid all the preparations, my family history has not escaped attention.  I finished my latest batch of census transcriptions yesterday, and have been drawing to a close the lengthy verification exercise on my own research, checking out the data provided by someone who proved to be a bit unreliable.  This afternoon saw the finish of that exercise, and after a brief lull and the tidying up of a few loose ends, I shall embark on a similar batch of information from a different source.  Hopefully, it will be done by Christmas ... but I've heard that saying before, somewhere!

A little side-shoot from this came yesterday, when I discovered the record of the burial of an unmarried lady who was the sister of my great-great-great-great-grandmother.  It had been assumed that this lady was the wife of a great-great-great-great-grandfather.  Had this been so, and had the two great-great-great-great-grandmothers been sisters, it would have meant that my grandparents were second cousins, a rather nice rounding-off of the family story, and one that would have been quite possible in a relatively small area of north Suffolk.  I was surprised to find such precise evidence, but not really surprised that it existed for, had those two really been sisters, the elder one (the one who I've now found never married) would have borne her two youngest children when she'd passed the age of 47 ... not impossible, I know, but highly unlikely at the time of Trafalgar!

Now I have another set of records to discover ... but that won't be how I'm spending my holiday!

The Elephant Roars!

It's time to tell all about April's political pre-occupation.  I'll begin my account at the start of the year, when it was agreed that our communications officer, who had stood unsuccessfully in the county council election last year, would fight the ward that we felt there was a chance of winning, and the winter months saw some early canvassing to lay the groundwork for his campaign.

When a call went out for party members to volunteer as candidates in the other wards or agents, I read the background information and briefly considered the role of an agent, but decided that, with an experienced agent among our number, I didn't need to entertain that responsibility.  There the matter rested until a second appeal prompted a discussion with the branch chairman.  So far as candidacy was concerned, I have no real time to serve as a councillor; and little inclination to go knocking on doors, which is why the only part I had taken in the campaign thus far was to deliver a few leaflets.

The thought of being what was described as a 'paper candidate', i.e. to stand for an office that one has neither chance nor ambition to hold, seemed hypocritical.  It was then explained to me that, if we entered no candidate in a ward (as had been the case in two wards in 2014), voters of our persuasion in those wards were faced with a 'Hobson's choice' of voting for their least-disliked candidate, or not voting at all.  By offering a Lib Dem candidate, we would be doing those people a service, and also get an idea of the level of support existing in those wards, upon which we might build in the future.  On this basis I agreed to stand, and was assigned the smallest of the five wards in our town.

Church members and a bell-ringer living in that ward were gently persuaded to sign my nomination, supported by our branch secretary and another party member and the 'campaign' was under way.  I was given a supply of leaflets and told to exercise my judgement as to their distribution and, "if you want to knock on a few doors, do so, but you're on your own."  The other paper candidates were told the same, and all the main effort was concentrated on the target ward.  I looked at the map, decided which roads would be addressed and which ignored, allocated my free time accordingly and the fortnight was thus filled.

Pitted against a well-established and well-liked Labour councillor of some twenty years standing, I felt somewhat overawed by the situation.  I did as I had been bid and knocked on a few doors the first night; there were some interesting responses, including one jovial life-long trade-unionist who politely told me he wouldn't be voting for me, but offered the consolation that I would be his second choice!  It was further consolation to be told by one young man that he had already sent off his postal vote in my favour.  The second night's effort destroyed my enthusiasm.  Eleven doors were knocked, seven without reply; at one I was told to go away, and the other three were clearly not going to offer me any support.

On the day, I secured just 73 votes, the second lowest in the town's five wards, and better than only five candidates in the whole district.  It wasn't until the following evening that I realised that to achieve 5% of the vote, in a ward where I was told we haven't fielded a candidate for about 20 years, is a reasonable result ... especially considering the effort (or lack thereof) that I had expended.  Our candidate in the target ward achieved a decent second place with almost 27% and, town-wide, the Lib Dems increased their share of the vote by 8%.  It was a privilege to be part of this degree of success.

The most interesting part for me was to be present at the count and follow the mechanisms that translate all those 'Xs' to the announcement of results in the prescribed form that we have seen so often on television.  I confess to be fascinated by elections and it was revealing and satisfying to see it all in action.

So, where does my political 'career' go from here?  The honest answer is that I don't know.  Of one thing I'm certain: my leg has not responded well.  It still hasn't recovered from delivering nearly 500 leaflets in a week.  The physical demands are different from normal walking, with so many changes of direction up to doors and away again, as well as diverting into and out of gateways.  I'm not sure I would entertain that 'exercise' on another occasion.  Maybe something more administrative will give expression to my enthusiasm.  Only time will tell.

See-saws ... and Roundabouts, but no Swings!

This week has proved a real see-saw so far as the weather is concerned, with showers and longer periods of rain alternating with days of bright - and eventually warm - sunshine.  And I suppose you could say that my week has followed this example.  I had few definite plans at the start of the week and, for the most part, the wetter days followed my usual round of personal family research, census transcription and a variety of church worship and meetings ... all very predictable.

So far as these go, the only real highlight was the arrival on Wednesday of a CD of Suffolk baptism transcriptions that I'd ordered last week.  This completes a set of eight, representing all four deaneries where most of my family lived, from the mid-18th century up to the start of the 20th.  Its arrival enabled me to verify many events in one particular parish whose records I hadn't so far examined in the numerous visits I've made to the record office over the years.  The cost of the CD is matched by that of about two visits to the actual archive, not to mention the amount of time required.

The other tilt of the see-saw was a fairly exclusive visit to a stately home in Norfolk.  This was organised several weeks ago by the Norfolk Family History Society.  I'm not a member of the society, but on learning about the trip, I contacted the organiser and asked if I could join the party.  This was quite acceptable, provided I agreed to pay for an unused seat on the coach by way of a fair contribution to the overall cost.  Given the exclusive nature of access to this particular estate, I was content to comply.

So it was that, at lunchtime on Tuesday, I drove through the gates of Hockwold Hall.  These days it's an auspicious wedding venue, where a quality event seems to be virtually guaranteed, and the proprietor and his family made us very welcome.  The hall itself dates back to Elizabethan times, and the variety and life stories of its occupants down the centuries made for a very interesting narrative, which accompanied our tour of the garden.  The warm sunshine provided a complete and welcome contrast to the previous day's cold and miserable rain.

Also on Wednesday came a small tilt of the balance from the true ordinary: this was a thrice-yearly meeting to make preliminary decisions about the content of the church magazine, of which I'm one of a team of three co-editors.  The immediate result of this is the need to arrange an interview with one of the church members, and plan what questions I shall pose to my 'victim'.

Left until last is any mention of the 'elephant in the room' of the last few weeks: the local council elections that took place yesterday.  Suffice to say that I didn't win the contest I was involved in, and nor had I expected to do so.  As to the details and the aftermath, I shall leave further comment until another time ... when I've had a chance to process them properly.