Animal Magic!

Let me begin with the racing results ... I ended last week with the observation that one horse was becalmed mid-course, since I was awaiting the outcome of an offer of help.  The horse fell, and never finished the race.  I had a text exchange with my friend early this week, saying that the quantity of food involved was much more than a car could accommodate and a van had been arranged for the job ... oh, to have turned the clock back a few years!

I also mentioned last week the excitement of using on-line conferencing technology.  When the instructions arrived on Monday, I found them confusing and, being unclear whether I should need to use both laptop and phone, I decided to have a little run-through the link-up process before the event.  It was as well that I did for, although the program was simplicity itself to use, it did require a preliminary set-up to match the software with my laptop and a brief test with a picture of myself on the screen, asking 'what shall I say, then?' and waiting for the echo of my own voice (it never sounds right, does it?).  Once the second sound option had been chosen - I hadn't realised that the laptop has a hidden microphone to complement the webcam - all was well, and I was able to bookmark the configuration ready for the live meeting last evening.

The meeting itself went quite smoothly.  As the 'new kid on the block', I said very little and learned quite a lot, about the organisation itself and the ongoing business that the meeting was held to discuss, but also about some of the people involved.  I imagined the chairman to have been an engineer in his working life; he had done all the thinking and designing and now needed to write the whole thing up so it was in a fit state to make public.  The secretary seemed to take little part in the meeting, but at the end demonstrated her efficiency by being able to reel off a comprehensive action list of what each of us had agreed to undertake before the next meeting.

And the other significant follow-up is the business of changing horses mid-race.  The switch-back to BT will now not be going ahead.  The people at Virgin explained that there is much more involved than simply responding to BT and saying 'yes, please.' not least the fact that their contract requires 30 days notice of termination.  Other factors, too, are involved, including a new contract at a lower price.  A friend has made me a novel piece of furniture out of scrap wood, at the precise dimensions to fit between two bookcases and carry the Virgin hub in a sensible position instead of dangling on the floor like a dog straining to get off its leash.  This little 'dolls'-house table' will not now be suffering immediate redundancy.

The latest snippet of gossip to emerge from my now secured internet connection has taken nearly 136 years to reach me.  In an idle moment - yes, they do still exist - I was making yet another attempt to document the demise of my great-grandfather.  He was present at the census in 1881, ten years later his wife was described as a widow, and in 1892 she re-married.  Search where I might, for the last twenty years I've been unable to find either a death record for him or a record of his burial.  I decided this week to begin a detailed search of the newspapers that are available on line.  Searching for 'Evans' and the name of the village where they lived, 'Syleham', for the 1880s, I again found no trace of great-grandfather, but the first of about 40 results mentioned his son, my grandfather. 

The extract that had appeared in the results simply provided the text immediately surrounding the key words I'd submitted.  I saw "defendant.  Zechariah Evans, labourer, Syleham" and my immediate thought was 'Oh dear, what had grandfather been up to?'  Like you, perhaps, I hadn't spotted the full stop.  When I looked at the article, which actually covered several column-inches of the Ipswich Journal of 24th November 1883, I discovered that the word 'defendant' finished the previous paragraph, which had identified the man's solicitor.  My grandfather, 15 at the time, and his elder brother, 18, had seen the defendant driving two very lame bullocks along the road, and the defendant, a local farmer and dealer was brought before the local Magistrates Court for the non-reporting of a case of foot and mouth disease.  The boys had seen two of the beasts being brought home, essentially from market, and were the first-reported of a number of witnesses in a successful prosecution.

I'm now looking for more idle moments that I can use to dig even further into this rich resource.