They're Fantastic!

I often moan that, in this well-structured, retired life of mine, there is little of excitement to write about in these weekly jottings.  This cannot be said of the past few days, however.  I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling quite chipper.  I'd beaten the alarm by a couple of minutes, which was useful since I knew I had to clear away the washing that had been drying overnight, before I could begin my normal morning routines.

I was at work on time or a minute or two early, and quickly established what had been left for me by my friend who does the Monday shift.  The working day began well until, a little more than hour in, I walked over to guide a new colleague through a task he hadn't done before.  As I peered over his shoulder I was aware that I couldn't see his computer screen clearly.  My first thought was simply that this was due to the fact that I'd removed my specs when I put my mask on (I still haven't found a way of coping with the combination of beard, mask and specs without misting up).  But, almost immediately, I realised that, in addition to that anticipated problem, I was seeing two misaligned images of what I was looking at.

I went and sat down again and asked someone to get me a drink of water: past experiences of 'dazzled vision' had told me that a drink and closing of the eyes for a few minutes would clear the problem.  This time, though, the symptoms were much stronger and a mere drink was too little, too late.  Before long, although safely seated, I began to feel dizzy, the room was swimming before my eyes and I started retching.  Considerate co-workers quickly took control as, stage by embarrassing stage, my breakfast was transferred to a strategically placed and lined waste bin.  I heard instructions being issued: have you got gloves on? go and get an apron! no, don't call him, his partner is shielding!  My young colleague efficiently closed down the computers and, after being assured that there was nothing more he could do, left for home.  Someone called for an ambulance, and someone else gently wiped my beard ... time after time!

Before long, the paramedics arrived and took control.  A canula was inserted in my forearm.  There were all sorts of questions, to which I knew the answers, but couldn't provide them for the muscular effort of being sick.  Eventually things calmed down; I was transferred to the ambulance and dozed under the influence of a quick-acting anti-vomit drug and against the background of the rattling of the vehicle as it sped to the local hospital.  By the time we were parked outside A&E awaiting a cubicle within, I was feeling quite a bit better.

Once control had been handed over to hospital staff and the paramedics had left for their next call, I found myself in a cubicle with glazed doors that gave me a near perfect view of the nursing station.  I could see for myself the efficient operation of the department.  Nurses came and went, each one carefully and conscientiously announcing her name and what she was going to do to or for me.  Blood samples were taken, and an ECG trace obtained, and temperature and blood pressure noted regularly.  Finally, I was attended - with the same courtesies - by the doctor, American by voice but oriental in appearance.  She was swift and thorough in what she had gleaned from all the data collected.  She announced that I would be given fluids and, in answer to my request to use a toilet, directed me to 'the bathroom, right over there!'

By now, it was mid-afternoon.  I had a drip feeding into my arm and alternated my interest between the ongoing operations beyond the glass and the sudoku I was playing on my mobile phone.  Every now and then one or other nurse would catch my eye as she passed by to the cubicles on either side, and most exchanged a smile.  About the point when the half-litre of fluid I was being given had finished, the doctor returned.  After applying all the standard checks to make sure that I hadn't suffered a stroke, she explained that my unfortunate experience had been caused, in her opinion, by a combination of dehydration (I hadn't been drinking sufficiently on a daily basis for quite some while) and a slow heart rate which, in some ways is not a bad thing, but in other ways causes problems, such as in this instance, when it doesn't get enough of what fluid is there around the body so effectively as is required.

All that remained was to be taken to the 'discharge lounge' (sounds like an airport, I know, but it wasn't so luxurious!) to await transport home.  After an early night, the next day I felt virtually normal, and yesterday morning I was back at work as usual, and with the unexpected delight of having a new volunteer to train, hopefully to fill the remaining slot in our present schedule.  Medically, I've changed and enhanced my drinking habits, and am in contact with my GP to investigate further the overall problems of circulation and heartbeat.

Don't listen to anyone who dares to deride any aspect of our NHS - from personal experience, now, I can say ... "THEY'RE FANTASTIC!"

Older and Wiser

"Jehoram rested with his fathers ..." - 2 Kings 8:24

It's unusual for me to begin with a quotation, but this one, which crossed my reading 'path' this week, seemed fitting for some of the thoughts I was going to share.  Let me say at the outset, though, that my mortal coil is still vibrating strongly and I have no intention of shuffling off it for the time being.  However, the older I get, the concept of 'resting with my fathers' takes a more positive place in my experience.

For one thing, I find that passing into or through years that correspond to my parents' ages as I was growing into adulthood has helped me appreciate some of the pressures and concerns that they may have been going through - either individually or together - but which they may have either seen no point in, or had realised it would be impossible to, share with me at the time.  The prime example is coming to terms with children who are far more concerned with their own lives than having anything to do with their parents!

Naturally, I cannot imagine what either of my parents was like in their younger years vis-a-vis their own parents.  However, given that the general pattern of life has arguably changed more between the 1970s and the end of the twentieth century than probably any comparable period in our history, I suspect that my grandparents' experience of children growing up would have been vastly different to that of my parents or myself.

Another contributory factor to this ageing topic has been my dream life.  Many have been the mornings when I've surfaced into the real world with a lingering memory of a dream that included strange incomplete, yet identifiable, characters from a varied selection of my past experiences: different workplaces miles apart in distance or time; my present friends associating with me in the house where I grew up, and so on.  It's as if my relaxing mind has flicked through the library of my memory, plucking a page from here and a page from there, and stitching them together in random sequence into a temporary collage for my nocturnal delectation.

And the obvious extension to this line of thought is my fascination with family history and the habit I've found of putting together a story (even if not the real one!) that fits behind some of the family groups as I discover more about them and gather their true history census by census.  I see yet another decade's crop of new children, and wonder what a mother's life must have been like, and how long her body would cope with the strain.  The older ones grow up, perhaps moving to new surroundings near and far in search of work, making new acquaintances, starting families of their own.

Very rarely do I see someone's occupation labelled 'unemployed'.  Unlike today, it seems there was always something to turn to in order to make a living of some kind in the absence of a welfare state.  I do wonder sometimes just what some of the jobs actually involved ... given the one- or two-word descriptions on the census returns.  

One of my on-line friends, a professional genealogist, recently posted a section of a census page, illustrating the way that some industries had - perhaps still have - their own language: terms that meant something specific to them, totally different from what we might understand, albeit the words might be the same.  I this case it was the weaving trade, where a brother and sister were described as a 'scrutcher' and a 'cheeser'.  Fortunately the post was accompanied by a link to a glossary of weaving terms, so I was able to translate.  

I have a few weavers in my own database, mainly ancestors of my cousin's husband, whose tree I explored for a golden wedding presentation a few years ago, and I'm now minded to retrace some of those steps and see what peculiarities I can illuminate from this resource.

A Numerical Adventure

It's been one of those weeks ... Everyday life continues to flow according to a comfortable structure.  Work has changed from full days to half days because of the latest lockdown, but it's just as satisfying and involves getting up with the alarm on the same two days.  On the news front there's nothing spectacular happening either.  Covid is still killing hundreds every day - though I know that's certainly spectacular in a very sad way for those who've lost loved ones - and even Biden winning the presidential election isn't news any longer.

One piece of good news yesterday was the picture of a bespectacled northern gentleman walking out of 10 Downing Street.  I say 'gentleman' in its broadest possible sense, of course.  His cold and sinister appearance, along with the reputation that goes with it, betrays the warmth and welcome of all the northerners I know.

But, blog-wise, this tranquillity provides me with a lack of substance and, as is so often the case, I turn to the family history for inspiration.  I wrote the other week of my current major projects, each in its way a correction of earlier oversight, and the way that my attention to these had been distracted by the discovery of a whole branch of my family tree where records I had received from distant cousins had remained un-checked and undocumented for many - too many! - years.  This distraction has grown legs!

Digging up records, whether on line or at the record office, is far more attractive than entering administrative cross-references, and I decided that I would take each person in this branch and trace them, so far as I could, from birth to death through all the available censuses.  According to a book I got a few years ago, this is a process known as 'family reconstruction' and, ever since I discovered that the 1911 census carries the details of every married woman's children: how many she had borne and how many were still living at the time of the census, it's something that I've tended to do for the majority of my 'new discoveries'.

This particular family is the one that embraces my 'ancestor no. 27'.  This reference is derived from a system that will be known to those of my readers who have dabbled in family history themselves.  It's known as an Ahnentafel number.  The name is derived from German and means 'ancestor table'.  In this system, I am no. 1, my parents are nos. 2 and 3, my grandparents 4,5,6 and 7, and so on, with the father of each individual being given a number that is twice his or hers, and the mother that number plus one.  If you run this sequence up two more generations, you will find that no. 27 is the mother of my mother's paternal grandmother or, in other words, one of my eight great-great-grandmothers, by name Eliza Burlingham (or Bullingham ... some members of the family used one name, some the other).

The family I'm working through therefore comprises all of her brothers and sisters, their respective wives and husbands, ... their children ... and their spouses and grandchildren.  So far, since the middle of October, I've added to my database 31 individuals of whom I had no knowledge before, and who were born between 1830 and 1911.  The greatest surprise came after I'd entered the husband of Sarah, one of Eliza's elder sisters, and discovered that they had two daughters.  When I made to enter the name of the first to my database, I found that she was there already ... along with her own husband, eight children, three grand-children and a great-grandson with whom I've been exchanging Christmas greetings for many years!  That daughter had married her cousin, who happened to be Eliza's son.  Having discovered the son's marriage some while ago, I'd never explored his wife's family.

I'm fascinated by the way that, although in a comparatively small area of the country, there are links between different branches of my tree, albeit not often so closely linked as this.  This is the twenty-first time one person has claimed two places in my researches and I can't help wondering how many more I shall find!

Here We Go Again!

 Pedwar can diwrnod o ddysgu Cymraeg!*

If you thought my title was going to lead to a tirade about going into lockdown for the second time, you were wrong, although I admit my opening comment might have given you no clue.  In fact that sentence is a squeal of triumph, for it echoes the (much anticipated) announcement that I read on this screen an hour or so ago, that I've now been learning Welsh for 400 days.

In point of fact, it's quite a bit longer than that, as you will find out if you read on.  Although I wasn't aware of any Welsh connections - and many decades of family history research have yet to contradict that understanding - I first began to learn yr iaeth Cymraeg* over fifty years ago, when I was planning a holiday in north Wales with my then girlfriend.

As it happened, our relationship fell apart some weeks before the expedition was due to begin, and instead I found myself hitch-hiking on the south coast.  I think I ended up in Eastbourne ... where there would certainly have been no call for speaking Welsh!  However, the fascination for a language that thwarts the dictionary by changing the beginnings of its words lingered and, as I visited the land of y ddraig goch* from time to time, I would pick up books like "Welsh is Fun!" and "The Pocket Welsh Dictionary" which still sit idle on my shelves.

Five years ago, now, aware of the potential dangers of letting the brain stagnate in retirement, I picked up once more that same "Teach Yourself Welsh" book that I'd begun to use in my youth.  Although very structured much as the French that I learned at school and the German that I dabbled with shortly afterwards, since it was now locked some fifty years behind the curve of language development, it was teaching me a language that was almost archaic.

To accompany my studies, I had acquired a modern translation of Y Beibl* and a couple of small books written in Welsh and found that - even with the help of a decent dictionary (thank you, W H Smith, Bangor branch) - the words that I was now reading differed significantly from those in my teach yourself book.  

Last summer there was a parliamentary by-election in the Brecon & Radnorshire constituency and I decided it would be a nice idea to combine my political interests with a few days' break in a part of Wales that I hadn't before explored.  In the campaign office, I met Portia, a woman from Northamptonshire who, with her Welsh-born husband, had moved into the area a couple of years previously to take on his parents' former house.  Their children were now attending a Welsh-language school and so she was making an effort to keep up with them, using a language-learning app on her phone.

Fired with renewed enthusiasm, I got the details, got the app, and began the course for myself.  After a few weeks, with the frustration of fumbling my way around the phone's keyboard along the problems with accents getting the better of me, I gave up again.  But, this time, I was hooked!  I discovered that the same system was available on line, simply by logging into the website every day.  As well as teaching a system recognised by the Welsh education authorities, the program has a distinctly competitive edge, with league tables and a notional currency that pays a reward for each exercise completed.  I can 'pay' in this currency for an amulet that secures the continuity of my studies if I have the odd day off, so my achievement is spread over a number of six-day weeks, but is still something of which I feel justifiably proud.

And this time ... I don't feel like giving up, so there won't be any slipping back to start all over yet again!

* - Pedwar can diwrnod o ddysgu Cymraeg! - Four hundred days of learning Welsh;  yr iaeth Cymraeg - the Welsh language;  y ddraig goch - the red dragon;  Y Beibl - The Bible.