Earlier this week, in response to a typical enquiry of how was I getting on in the present unnatural conditions, I used the expression, "... more out of interest than necessity". Regular readers won't be surprised to learn that I was referring to my family history researches. For the past couple of weeks or more - I've completely lost account of the passing of time - I've been following up the casual observation a few months ago that one of the characters in my cousin's husband's family tree had the same, rather unusual, surname of my and my cousin's great-grandmother.
I wondered whether there might be any connection ... which is not all that surprising in a rural community. Subject to the limitations of records easily examined on line, it didn't take long to establish that there is no connection. But I decided, "more out of interest than necessity", to continue investigating this woman's family ... not least because she bore the alluring name of Angelina Carman. Some interesting stories have emerged.
One of her nieces, born in a small south Norfolk village, appears in the 1891 census as a 25-year-old housemaid in Ely. In addition to Angelina's niece, Mary Ann, the household comprised two sisters and a cook, the latter of whom shared the same name, Mary Ann. I found it a little puzzling that the elder sister, the head of household, was only 17 but at the time I thought little of it. Later, I sought Mary Ann in 1901 and found her working as a cook in a household in the centre of London. Progress indeed, I thought, but then spotted the names of the people she was working for. It was Newbolt and, sure enough, there were those same two sisters, Henrietta and Sophia, now aged 21 and 17 and Mary Ann the cook from Ely, too, now described as a nurse. I did a quick re-check; hey, what had happened to those daughters' ages?
I checked back at 1891 and looked at the image of the original census. The head of the household, Henrietta, was indeed only eleven! ... Her age had been mis-transcribed. Who, I wondered would leave an 11-year-old in charge of a house with two servants? I looked again at the household in London in 1901. The head was a married man of 56, described as a clergyman. His wife, however, was not present. I returned to 1891 and sought this man there. Sure enough, there he was at the same address in Ludgate, the head of a large household, most of whom were the family of someone described as his 'servant'. Still there was no sign of his wife, though. Then I looked at their occupations: the Revd. William Charles Edmund Newbolt was a Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, and the 'servant' was the verger.
I eventually established that William Newbolt was born in 1844 and married Fanny Charlotte Wren, two years his senior at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the autumn of 1870. In addition to the two sisters, who were born in Malvern Link, Worcs., they also had an elder son, Michael, born in Gloucestershire. In 1911, William was still at the same address - shown as 'married' but without a wife - with a staff of four, including the 'other' Mary Ann who had now resumed cooking responsibilities. Mary Ann Carman, meanwhile, had met a Norfolk-born bricklayer whom she had married in St Albans in 1905 and they had settled in Epsom.
I could find no trace of the Canon's wife or son, and nothing to account for their absence ... although the explanation could simply be that she regularly spent some weeks abroad at that particular time of year and took her son for company. Fanny died in Northampton in 1923 and William in Central London in 1930.
I'm still looking at another 'interesting story'; part 2 may well follow next week!
Friday 24 April 2020
Friday 17 April 2020
Silver Linings ... and a Dark Cloud
Many years ago, I remember prayers being offered for 'those who write what many read'. So I recognise the need for caution in saying this. Is it disloyal, ... or selfish ... or does it even carry a whiff of treason? I'll risk it, and admit that there's more to my life in April 2020 than coping with a pandemic.
First off, I have to acknowledge the blessings of my condition. I'm not considered 'very high risk'; I don't suffer from one of those dreadful diseases that would virtually guarantee hospitalisation (or worse) if I were to be stricken by the virus. However, because of my age and asthmatic condition (which, thankfully, is quite mild compared to some sufferers), I am 'high risk', which means I don't go shopping for essentials.
Secondly, I acknowledge the blessings of my situation. As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have a friend who has added me to her list of 'clients' for a regular shopping expedition (and I'm sure the word adds no exaggeration to what that weekly task must amount to). And, arguably of greater importance, is the fact that I live alone. Let me try to summarise two postings I found online this week that illustrate this.
The first one was possibly fictional, but realistic and quite frightening. It described a family situation, where the mother of teenage children makes regular caring visits to her elderly father. One of the teenagers defies the lock-down and visits his girlfriend, whose work in a supermarket has placed her in contact with someone whose sister has shown symptoms of the disease. The result of this visit then places the boy's grandfather at risk. A family in lock-down is essentially like one person with many bodies. It's virtually impossible to isolate oneself from the rest of the family.
The second is sadly only too common in our crowded cities: multiple occupancy, in other words a number of families living in one property. This short video showed the accommodation for a family of five, all sleeping in one room - I'm not sure whether they had a separate living room, or if they also spent their daytime in that same room - and they shared the bathroom/toilet and kitchen with the other families in the house. The father, whose voice accompanied the video, said they didn't use the kitchen for fear of infection. The restriction this places on their lives is easy to imagine. The other thing that struck me, although not mentioned, was a notice saying that children under ten should not use the bathroom unaccompanied!
Contrast those situations to mine. With the exception of a weekly shopping visit, I have no real restrictions. I can take regular daily exercise (but my normal lifestyle means that this is about once a week or less) provided I say a safe distance from those I meet. My time is my own, and the risk of infection is minimal. Compared to 'normal' life, I now have two days a week more time to devote to my interests and hobbies. I've played more music, listened to more recordings and watched more video than for many a month and the attention to my family history has few boundaries to restrict it. (This week I've explored the possibility of someone on one line being related to a family of the same name on another, which I may write about on another occasion.)
The one, very sad, exception to this idyll came yesterday. I received a much-delayed Easter card, which told of the death of the sender's husband in mid-March. This friend, whom I have known for almost thirty years, has suffered the agony of losing her husband, and the chaos of not being able to make final arrangements because of a hold-up in obtaining the death certificate. Her shaky writing gave evidence of her emotional state. The cremation is finally scheduled for today, and subject to the now essential restriction of attendance by only a handful of family members. Had it not been for the lock-down, I would willingly have driven the 100 or so miles to be there for her. As it is, I can only pray for her and commemorate her husband's passing in this blog.
First off, I have to acknowledge the blessings of my condition. I'm not considered 'very high risk'; I don't suffer from one of those dreadful diseases that would virtually guarantee hospitalisation (or worse) if I were to be stricken by the virus. However, because of my age and asthmatic condition (which, thankfully, is quite mild compared to some sufferers), I am 'high risk', which means I don't go shopping for essentials.
Secondly, I acknowledge the blessings of my situation. As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have a friend who has added me to her list of 'clients' for a regular shopping expedition (and I'm sure the word adds no exaggeration to what that weekly task must amount to). And, arguably of greater importance, is the fact that I live alone. Let me try to summarise two postings I found online this week that illustrate this.
The first one was possibly fictional, but realistic and quite frightening. It described a family situation, where the mother of teenage children makes regular caring visits to her elderly father. One of the teenagers defies the lock-down and visits his girlfriend, whose work in a supermarket has placed her in contact with someone whose sister has shown symptoms of the disease. The result of this visit then places the boy's grandfather at risk. A family in lock-down is essentially like one person with many bodies. It's virtually impossible to isolate oneself from the rest of the family.
The second is sadly only too common in our crowded cities: multiple occupancy, in other words a number of families living in one property. This short video showed the accommodation for a family of five, all sleeping in one room - I'm not sure whether they had a separate living room, or if they also spent their daytime in that same room - and they shared the bathroom/toilet and kitchen with the other families in the house. The father, whose voice accompanied the video, said they didn't use the kitchen for fear of infection. The restriction this places on their lives is easy to imagine. The other thing that struck me, although not mentioned, was a notice saying that children under ten should not use the bathroom unaccompanied!
Contrast those situations to mine. With the exception of a weekly shopping visit, I have no real restrictions. I can take regular daily exercise (but my normal lifestyle means that this is about once a week or less) provided I say a safe distance from those I meet. My time is my own, and the risk of infection is minimal. Compared to 'normal' life, I now have two days a week more time to devote to my interests and hobbies. I've played more music, listened to more recordings and watched more video than for many a month and the attention to my family history has few boundaries to restrict it. (This week I've explored the possibility of someone on one line being related to a family of the same name on another, which I may write about on another occasion.)
The one, very sad, exception to this idyll came yesterday. I received a much-delayed Easter card, which told of the death of the sender's husband in mid-March. This friend, whom I have known for almost thirty years, has suffered the agony of losing her husband, and the chaos of not being able to make final arrangements because of a hold-up in obtaining the death certificate. Her shaky writing gave evidence of her emotional state. The cremation is finally scheduled for today, and subject to the now essential restriction of attendance by only a handful of family members. Had it not been for the lock-down, I would willingly have driven the 100 or so miles to be there for her. As it is, I can only pray for her and commemorate her husband's passing in this blog.
Friday 10 April 2020
Well Certified!
It was over two years ago that I realised what a good idea it would be to copy my collection of birth, marriage and death certificates 'to the cloud'. After all, to replace them at the present price of £11 each (or even taking the newly-introduced option of a pdf copy for only £7), would cost several hundred pounds. Now, I realise that many of these were only obtained to provide a step in the research chain, so I probably wouldn't bother to replace them if they were lost, but I would still miss them.
The present lock-down situation has provided me with the ideal opportunity finally to execute this long-delayed project and, in doing so, I've realised just how precious some of these original pieces of history are. Some are dear to me as family mementos ... I almost shed a tear when I turned over my mother's birth certificate: the short-form, with just the barest of details, and written on the flimsiest paper owing to wartime constraints. Others have their own particular stories to tell, some of which I narrate below.
Unique among my collection, and almost certainly the most beautiful, is the certificate of my great-uncle George Evans's second marriage. Although the ceremony took place in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, which later would become part of Northern Ireland, the fact that it occurred before partition meant that I had to obtain a copy from Dublin. I think you would agree that, on purely aesthetic grounds, it was worth every cent of the €20 price tag.
I've written here before about George, who was posted in Ireland during army service, was discharged as a result of an accident, married in Enniskillen and raised a family there, through long service on the railway. His wife, Mary Jane, the mother of their nine children, died of what we would probably call bowel cancer in 1906 and, just over four years later, at the age of 57, he embarked on a second marriage to Margaret McMahon. In 1901, she was already widowed and kept a boarding house in Dublin, said she could read/write and was 42 years old. When she married George in October 1910 she was 55, and didn't sign her name. In the census the following year, it was said that neither of them could read/write. Make of that what you will.
I spoke of pdf versions of English certificates being available at a cost; the authorities in Ireland are much more obliging and will provide free of charge, a copy of the whole page that includes the register entry you seek. I have over 40 of these (which I treat as certificates nonetheless) in respect of George and Mary Jane's descendants, many of whom have army connections. Two of these tell the sad tale of their fourth daughter, Rose Anne, who was born in 1886. In Limerick in 1904, like some of her sisters, Rose married a soldier. Leigh Rowlands had been born in Chester in 1879 and, at the baptism of their first child at Dartford in 1908, he was described as a Sergeant in the Liverpool Regiment.
My Irish register copies reveal that Leigh died of heart disease on 29th Sept. 1909 in the military hospital at Kinsale, Co. Cork. Little over three months later, at the home of her parents in Abbey St, Enniskillen, Rose gave birth to their second son, who was given his father's names, Leigh Wyatt. The baby lived only fifty days and died of bronchitis on 22nd of February. Four days later, Rose registered the death with those poignant words, 'widow of a soldier', and 'present at the death'. Having spent many months researching the family a few years ago, I've never gone back to find out what happened to her later. This reminder tells me that perhaps it's time I did.
My great-great-aunt Alice Thirza Sturgeon was born in Stanton, Suffolk and her husband, William Steggles, in nearby Hepworth a few years earlier. However, they married in Chesterfield in 1890. Thereafter, they moved about quite a bit. By 1901 they were in Great Yarmouth and in 1911 back in Derbyshire again. She died in 1933 at home in Suffolk, and her husband was living in 1939 with his youngest daughter, Pattie, just down the road from my grandparents in Diss, where she had a hairdressing business.
I have the marriage certificate for Pattie's next sister, Gladys (there were nine children altogether, but only five survived beyond nine years) to Archie Francis in 1931. As I scanned it the other day, I noticed that the ceremony took place at St Augustine's, Chesterfield. (That's not the church with the famous crooked spire, but a modern brick edifice on the road to Sheffield.) I was curious about why they should have married there. Turning up the research of many years ago, I found the past links to the area noted above. They were back in Suffolk by 1939, where Archie was carrying on the family business of a threshing machine proprietor.
I remember that hairdressing business, and once, at the age of six or less, being sent on an errand to get some hair pins there. Pattie, Gladys and Archie were often mentioned in conversation; after all, all of them were cousins to my grandfather. Gladys and Archie were first cousins, and I wonder if that might have been the reason for marrying away from home. In Archie's case, there was already some sniff of what might have been thought of as family scandal. His father had been married for forty-six years and sired no children. Just over two years after his wife's death, he married his niece, who was Alice Thirza's sister; He was 70, she only 30. Archie was the result. My grandfather was the eldest of his family; he would have been in his late teens when all this was taking place and no doubt the amusement it caused lingered in his memory for many a year!
The present lock-down situation has provided me with the ideal opportunity finally to execute this long-delayed project and, in doing so, I've realised just how precious some of these original pieces of history are. Some are dear to me as family mementos ... I almost shed a tear when I turned over my mother's birth certificate: the short-form, with just the barest of details, and written on the flimsiest paper owing to wartime constraints. Others have their own particular stories to tell, some of which I narrate below.
Unique among my collection, and almost certainly the most beautiful, is the certificate of my great-uncle George Evans's second marriage. Although the ceremony took place in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, which later would become part of Northern Ireland, the fact that it occurred before partition meant that I had to obtain a copy from Dublin. I think you would agree that, on purely aesthetic grounds, it was worth every cent of the €20 price tag.I've written here before about George, who was posted in Ireland during army service, was discharged as a result of an accident, married in Enniskillen and raised a family there, through long service on the railway. His wife, Mary Jane, the mother of their nine children, died of what we would probably call bowel cancer in 1906 and, just over four years later, at the age of 57, he embarked on a second marriage to Margaret McMahon. In 1901, she was already widowed and kept a boarding house in Dublin, said she could read/write and was 42 years old. When she married George in October 1910 she was 55, and didn't sign her name. In the census the following year, it was said that neither of them could read/write. Make of that what you will.
I spoke of pdf versions of English certificates being available at a cost; the authorities in Ireland are much more obliging and will provide free of charge, a copy of the whole page that includes the register entry you seek. I have over 40 of these (which I treat as certificates nonetheless) in respect of George and Mary Jane's descendants, many of whom have army connections. Two of these tell the sad tale of their fourth daughter, Rose Anne, who was born in 1886. In Limerick in 1904, like some of her sisters, Rose married a soldier. Leigh Rowlands had been born in Chester in 1879 and, at the baptism of their first child at Dartford in 1908, he was described as a Sergeant in the Liverpool Regiment.
My Irish register copies reveal that Leigh died of heart disease on 29th Sept. 1909 in the military hospital at Kinsale, Co. Cork. Little over three months later, at the home of her parents in Abbey St, Enniskillen, Rose gave birth to their second son, who was given his father's names, Leigh Wyatt. The baby lived only fifty days and died of bronchitis on 22nd of February. Four days later, Rose registered the death with those poignant words, 'widow of a soldier', and 'present at the death'. Having spent many months researching the family a few years ago, I've never gone back to find out what happened to her later. This reminder tells me that perhaps it's time I did.
My great-great-aunt Alice Thirza Sturgeon was born in Stanton, Suffolk and her husband, William Steggles, in nearby Hepworth a few years earlier. However, they married in Chesterfield in 1890. Thereafter, they moved about quite a bit. By 1901 they were in Great Yarmouth and in 1911 back in Derbyshire again. She died in 1933 at home in Suffolk, and her husband was living in 1939 with his youngest daughter, Pattie, just down the road from my grandparents in Diss, where she had a hairdressing business.
I have the marriage certificate for Pattie's next sister, Gladys (there were nine children altogether, but only five survived beyond nine years) to Archie Francis in 1931. As I scanned it the other day, I noticed that the ceremony took place at St Augustine's, Chesterfield. (That's not the church with the famous crooked spire, but a modern brick edifice on the road to Sheffield.) I was curious about why they should have married there. Turning up the research of many years ago, I found the past links to the area noted above. They were back in Suffolk by 1939, where Archie was carrying on the family business of a threshing machine proprietor.
I remember that hairdressing business, and once, at the age of six or less, being sent on an errand to get some hair pins there. Pattie, Gladys and Archie were often mentioned in conversation; after all, all of them were cousins to my grandfather. Gladys and Archie were first cousins, and I wonder if that might have been the reason for marrying away from home. In Archie's case, there was already some sniff of what might have been thought of as family scandal. His father had been married for forty-six years and sired no children. Just over two years after his wife's death, he married his niece, who was Alice Thirza's sister; He was 70, she only 30. Archie was the result. My grandfather was the eldest of his family; he would have been in his late teens when all this was taking place and no doubt the amusement it caused lingered in his memory for many a year!
Friday 3 April 2020
How is it For Me? You Ask ...
A few weeks ago someone - I can't remember just who it was - was talking to me about retirement. "What was it like?" he asked, "Did it feel like one long holiday?" Despite my almost two year plan of 'phased retirement', when the day came, it was rather like that at first but, as I explained to my friend, soon a structure began to develop. The lock-down response to the present crisis has proved very similar.
For the first week or so I felt somewhat lost. I didn't actually 'sit myself down' and plan it but, as with retirement, a structure has grown up into which I now find I comfortably (more or less) fit. All days are basically the same, of course, and I have to check the computer screen to make sure of the date. Those who know me, either personally or through the regular reading of this blog, will not be surprised to know that the day begins with prayer which, in a way, is mingled with breakfast but follows its own structure that has been established over the last twenty or so years.
My mornings seem to be devoted to priorities, not all of which are practical in nature. In the early days my biggest worry was food. I quickly realised that, if the lock-down in one form or another is likely to last for three or four months, every scrap of foodstuff in my tiny kitchen wouldn't keep me going that long. Replenishment became the great quest. On the home front, I took a 'census' of what I have and how long it would last at my normal rate of consumption. At the same time I quickly discovered that conventional providers of home-delivered groceries either had no available delivery slots or didn't want to take on new customers ... or both. I spent three consecutive evenings waiting up until midnight to try and snaffle up one of a new day's slots in mid-April as it became available ... and failing spectacularly.
I gave that up as a bad job and decided instead to rely on charitable help when the time came. I developed my 'census' into a buying plan, and ultimately an automated shopping list compiler using my beloved Excel. I was just sitting back from this with some degree of satisfaction on Wednesday, when my phone announced the arrival of a text from a friend alongside whom I had been helping at the Ark drop-in She was doing some shopping and wondered if I would like anything ... dropped in! Problem solved from both ends on a 'just-in-time' basis ... or an answer to prayer, depending on your point of view.
Food apart, my morning priorities tend to focus on awareness of what's going on in the 'real world' and keeping the flat in reasonable order. The hoover and washing machine receive the usual amount of attention and the bed is usually made by the time I need to fall into it again. As to the outside world, social media of one sort or another can oblige in greater or lesser detail according to i) the time available to absorb it; ii) my level of interest and the lure of side-attractions; and iii) the sheer volume of what I find competing for my attention.
E-mails come first in this awareness exercise and the first of these, usually viewed across the cereal bowl, is a follow-up devotional study based on my daily Bible reading. After filtering out the junk (why am I suddenly getting lots of ads for American car insurance, life assurance, etc.?), much of the remainder gives me my daily news update including from a couple of daily political sources. Facebook keeps me in touch with specific friends near and far, and with the church family too, and some of my Twitter friends are quite prolific, as well. One of these graduated in Edinburgh, was living there and loving it but, post-Brexit, is now back in her native Germany. She memorably drew attention this week to a recent comment by a UK politician in which she perceived a distinctly Nazi trend. Her comment was (if I can remember it accurately), "Your grandfathers fought and died to release us (i.e. Germans) from this; now you must stamp it out in your own country!"
Another prolific friend on this medium is a professional genealogist in Yorkshire. Like me, she is asthmatic and has recently returned to the tenor horn that she used to play in a band for many years in her youth. While I never gained competence, let alone proficiency, I've once more picked up my cornet, believing, like Jane, that this will help my breathing. I have to keep reminding myself that this result will only come from regular attention, however!
If the morning emphasis is priority, then that of the afternoon and evening is pleasure. There are many media distractions leading to YouTube video items of one sort or another. Last night from this source I was privileged to watch a complete play from the National Theatre - the first of a series, I believe - entitled One Man, Two Guvnors. It's still available to watch until next week.
And then there's the family history. As I've mentioned here and here, in the last few weeks I've picked up a particular line and am steadily filling in the gaps of their coverage down the decades of on-line census records and at the same time expanding their number in my own data base. I've added eighty new individuals in that branch since the start of March and I know there are more to find.
To end - as did a much more accomplished diarist than I - 'And so to bed ...' I'm gradually working my way through Ellis Peters' excellent series of medieval whodunit books about a crusader-turned-monk named Cadfael. His adventures in twelfth century Shrewsbury and north Wales complement well my own Welsh language studies ... so much so that, earlier this week, I had Sheet 126 of the OS 1:50,000 series spread out wide on the dining table!
For the first week or so I felt somewhat lost. I didn't actually 'sit myself down' and plan it but, as with retirement, a structure has grown up into which I now find I comfortably (more or less) fit. All days are basically the same, of course, and I have to check the computer screen to make sure of the date. Those who know me, either personally or through the regular reading of this blog, will not be surprised to know that the day begins with prayer which, in a way, is mingled with breakfast but follows its own structure that has been established over the last twenty or so years.
My mornings seem to be devoted to priorities, not all of which are practical in nature. In the early days my biggest worry was food. I quickly realised that, if the lock-down in one form or another is likely to last for three or four months, every scrap of foodstuff in my tiny kitchen wouldn't keep me going that long. Replenishment became the great quest. On the home front, I took a 'census' of what I have and how long it would last at my normal rate of consumption. At the same time I quickly discovered that conventional providers of home-delivered groceries either had no available delivery slots or didn't want to take on new customers ... or both. I spent three consecutive evenings waiting up until midnight to try and snaffle up one of a new day's slots in mid-April as it became available ... and failing spectacularly.
I gave that up as a bad job and decided instead to rely on charitable help when the time came. I developed my 'census' into a buying plan, and ultimately an automated shopping list compiler using my beloved Excel. I was just sitting back from this with some degree of satisfaction on Wednesday, when my phone announced the arrival of a text from a friend alongside whom I had been helping at the Ark drop-in She was doing some shopping and wondered if I would like anything ... dropped in! Problem solved from both ends on a 'just-in-time' basis ... or an answer to prayer, depending on your point of view.
Food apart, my morning priorities tend to focus on awareness of what's going on in the 'real world' and keeping the flat in reasonable order. The hoover and washing machine receive the usual amount of attention and the bed is usually made by the time I need to fall into it again. As to the outside world, social media of one sort or another can oblige in greater or lesser detail according to i) the time available to absorb it; ii) my level of interest and the lure of side-attractions; and iii) the sheer volume of what I find competing for my attention.
E-mails come first in this awareness exercise and the first of these, usually viewed across the cereal bowl, is a follow-up devotional study based on my daily Bible reading. After filtering out the junk (why am I suddenly getting lots of ads for American car insurance, life assurance, etc.?), much of the remainder gives me my daily news update including from a couple of daily political sources. Facebook keeps me in touch with specific friends near and far, and with the church family too, and some of my Twitter friends are quite prolific, as well. One of these graduated in Edinburgh, was living there and loving it but, post-Brexit, is now back in her native Germany. She memorably drew attention this week to a recent comment by a UK politician in which she perceived a distinctly Nazi trend. Her comment was (if I can remember it accurately), "Your grandfathers fought and died to release us (i.e. Germans) from this; now you must stamp it out in your own country!"
Another prolific friend on this medium is a professional genealogist in Yorkshire. Like me, she is asthmatic and has recently returned to the tenor horn that she used to play in a band for many years in her youth. While I never gained competence, let alone proficiency, I've once more picked up my cornet, believing, like Jane, that this will help my breathing. I have to keep reminding myself that this result will only come from regular attention, however!
If the morning emphasis is priority, then that of the afternoon and evening is pleasure. There are many media distractions leading to YouTube video items of one sort or another. Last night from this source I was privileged to watch a complete play from the National Theatre - the first of a series, I believe - entitled One Man, Two Guvnors. It's still available to watch until next week.
And then there's the family history. As I've mentioned here and here, in the last few weeks I've picked up a particular line and am steadily filling in the gaps of their coverage down the decades of on-line census records and at the same time expanding their number in my own data base. I've added eighty new individuals in that branch since the start of March and I know there are more to find.
To end - as did a much more accomplished diarist than I - 'And so to bed ...' I'm gradually working my way through Ellis Peters' excellent series of medieval whodunit books about a crusader-turned-monk named Cadfael. His adventures in twelfth century Shrewsbury and north Wales complement well my own Welsh language studies ... so much so that, earlier this week, I had Sheet 126 of the OS 1:50,000 series spread out wide on the dining table!
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