Words Fail Me!

This week has been something of an anti-climax.  The project I've been working on - which failed in its objective, but which produced a number of interesting stories that I've shared with you - has finished, the loose ends tidied up and I've had to look around for something new to grapple with.  If you are interested in my final reflections on family history and what can lead from it, this has been the inspiration for my 'other' blog this week.

The immediate aftermath of no longer having something that has been the focus of attention for a while - to the extent that I described it the other week as 'an obsession' - was that I felt lost, unable to focus properly on what I did turn my hand to.  It was as if there were something over my shoulder, calling me away, something that I ought to be doing but had neglected.  I can only imagine (forgive me, please, if this is you) that bereavement must be similar but far more pronounced and long-term.

Those who know me of old will not be surprised to learn that my interest has been re-kindled in something that was parked long ago, rather than turning to anything actually 'new'.  Many years ago, I had the idea of writing up my family history in narrative form and producing a book that I could pass on to my children, or circulate among interested friends.  I began ... and, realising what a mammoth task it was, and totally incompatible with a working life, abandoned it.

This week I've picked it up and, in the form that I'd left it probably ten years ago, abandoned it again.  However, I can now see that what I had produced has possibilities in two different directions.  For the moment, I've selected the one that I think will be easier, a biography of my mother (which will, almost of necessity, include her side of my family history).

Apart from anything else, the exercise of reviewing in detail what I wrote then has brought to light a number of short-comings.  The disciplines with which I recorded my research were somewhat lax compared to what I do almost as a matter of course these days.  There were also a number of errors that had to be corrected, including one that I corrected yesterday, still felt dissatisfied about ... turned out the original correspondence that had led to the entry ... and then uncorrected my correction, upon realising that it hadn't been an error in the first place!

The further I get into this - and I realise that, to date, I've only just scratched the surface - the more I find myself 'digging'.  I'm venturing into boxes that haven't been opened in months ... years, often.  And with the digging comes discovery; and discovering some artefacts that lead to memories of my own past.  One such memory the other day was of a stroll that I took with my cousin at least 65 years ago, along a quiet country lane, each of us holding one of our great-uncle's hands.

The occasion was a visit we made to the 'old family home'.  I say 'we made', but of course it was a case of our 'being taken along' when our mothers paid a rare visit to the house where their own mother had grown up.  The other day, I pinpointed within a few months when it was that the family moved there.  It had to have been in 1881 - and, since it was a farm, I would guess at Michaelmas that year - because the aforesaid great-uncle was born there that November, but the family had been recorded in the neighbouring village at the census the previous April.

I referred to having a memory of that stroll; what do I actually remember of it?  If I try to describe it, words fail me ... literally!  It has to have made a deep impression to have lingered so long in my memory and yet, if I try to describe what we saw, what was going on around us, how far we went ... nothing.  It has an importance that deserves a whole paragraph at least in my life story, and yet a single line can sum up the entire experience.  To try to encapsulate that in a form that can be passed on to others is beyond the power of words.

What is needed is to turn time back, take a cine-camera with us and re-walk the walk ... a total impossibility, of course.