Three Into One Won't (quite) Go!

 Whatever the pain, misery and tragedy it has brought, this Covid pandemic has also initiated many in the intricacies of technology to assist with teaching, learning, meeting and simple community living without real physical engagement.  Few, if any, of us can be unaware of the name ZOOM ... even if some have not actually used it, and many more will not have initiated a Zoom meeting.

I have been fortunate in discovering or taking part in a number of regular Zoom opportunities in recent months.  Some are expressions of activities of which I was already a participant, others have been discovered during one lockdown or another.  On Thursday, however, my diary revealed not two but three such events which, if demanding complete participation, would have been an impossible combination.  However, since they formed a partially overlapping chain, I took the questionable decision to attempt some attendance at each one.

At 6.30 came a political discussion on the implications of the 2019 general election, held under the auspices of Make Votes Matter.  The speaker was a very knowledgeable professor whose appearance fitted his credentials.  His wispy hair flowed in all directions and sometimes required the flick of a hand to keep it off his face.  The manner of his delivery was unusual and a little off-putting, for he kept up a quite regular swaying movement from front to back.  Fortunately he was wearing his microphone, so the sound wasn't interrupted.  The slides he used to illustrate his presentation were mostly graphical, and of differing formats.  Although these were always relevant and informative, the speed of their delivery made it difficult sometimes to assimilate the dimensions and significance of one before it was sacrificed in the appearance of the next.

At something short of the hour, as the professor was drawing his thesis to a conclusion, I was not unhappy to 'jump ship' and engage a meeting of the Suffolk Family History Society.  The speaker here had been spared a lengthy journey, and joined us from her home in Clitheroe.  In her native soft Lancashire accent, she presented countless examples of her amazing finds in local newspapers of past centuries.  Clearly her interest exceeded the bounds of her own family research, and she had browsed far beyond the personal to absorb much of the background against which their lives had played out.  It was an example that I wish I had the time to follow up.  That said, I do recall once making the amazing discovery that my grandfather had once appeared in court - a story to be told here on another occasion!

She had held us in rapt attention for over three-quarters of an hour, when I looked at the clock and realised that my third appointment had already begun.  Reluctantly I turned away from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth.  One of my significant discoveries in this Zoom age has been the Western Front  Association.  Their avowed aim is not to glorify war but educational in nature, seeking to maintain interest in the period of the Great War and to perpetuate the memory, courage and comradeship of those on all sides who served their countries, principally in France and Flanders, in that conflict.

Having decided to accept the invitation to contribute to their funds in response to the many enjoyable winter evenings I've now spent in their 'company', I discovered that, for little more than my planned donation, I could join the association.  This means that, thanks to a very efficient administrative operation, I have now received some very interesting back copies of their regular magazines, and have access to potentially useful resources in the 'members-only' sections of their website.

I joined this week's presentation part way through a talk about the development of propaganda during the War, and the ways in which it made use of the media of the time to sway public opinion.  By the time the speaker had finished, I think I was finished, too.  After nearly three hours at the screen, I felt 'Zoomed out' and didn't stay for the questions-and-answers session.

Message to self - if you want to enjoy what you're doing, don't overcrowd every hour of your day!

 

Don't Even Go There!

This was the response I got from one of my colleagues at work the other day.  However, such is my memory, that I can't remember who it was, nor what we had been talking about.  What I do recall is the comment to which he/she responded: "I reckon you get a good idea of the extent of inflation over the last fifty years if you think of today's prices in shillings and pence."

Last weekend included Mothering Sunday and, like many, my thoughts turned to family ... not just my mother, but father too, and our family life together.  The arrival today of my new Council Tax bill, and the recent letter from the DfWP telling me what my state pension will be next month, have enabled me to finalise my budget for the new tax year.  With this in mind, the searchlight of my family recollections has picked out one particular day - probably in a school holiday when I was a bored eight-, nine- or ten-year-old - when I sat on the foot of my parents' bed as mum opened her wardrobe and withdrew an old clutch handbag.

This handbag, dating from the era of World War 2 or thereabouts, now resides in what passes for my family archive - a cupboard in the corner of my own bedroom - where it shares company with, inter alia, a small money box in the form of a 'pillar box'.  These were the instruments of my mother's financial planning, and on that occasion I was permitted to watch - silent by request to aid her concentration, and mesmerised by a side of her that was completely new to me - as she put them to use.  

She had a number of these 'pillar boxes', but only one now survives.  In them were stored coins put by for specific expenses so that funds were available when bills became due.  I don't recall the specifics now, but I expect there were tins for all sorts of monthly expenses that would be provided for on a weekly basis.  In the handbag were a number of envelopes in which were kept further and larger collections of money for annual things, like insurances, Christmas presents and the television licence ... and the family holiday!

With my father at work, and much of his evenings and weekends spent on the garden, the only really family time that I enjoyed in the company of both parents in those years, was the annual week at Great Yarmouth.  I've no idea of the overall cost of those holidays but, amazingly and, unlike other times when a request might be refused on the grounds of 'we can't afford things like that', there was sufficient to pay for all sorts of luxuries.

The first cost was the taxi fare from home to the railway station, closely followed by the return train tickets,  When we arrived, although there were many young boys anxious to earn pocket money by meeting holidaymakers with hand-carts to carry their luggage, another taxi would ensure that both we and the suitcases would arrive quickly, safely and together at the boarding house, something in excess of a mile from the station.

Once greetings had been exchanged and refreshment offered and taken, we settled in, and garden vegetables were handed over for use during the week (this gesture probably contributed to the overall cost of the accommodation: I have no idea whether this was paid up front or at the end of the week).  The first major undertaking was then to get booked up for the various seaside shows. In addition to the Windmill theatre and the Aquarium on the seafront and the Regal at the town end of Regent Road, there were regular performances on each of the two piers on week nights - the Sunday shows with the greater stars were beyond our price range - and we always seemed to fit in a visit to the Hippodrome circus on the Tuesday afternoon.

When these bookings had been secured, the true holiday could begin.  I remember that I was allowed a magnificent half-a-crown a day spending money, much of which, in later years, would be spent on bus fares as I explored the town on my own ... such freedom as would be deemed quite dangerous these days!  Often if we had been for a walk together in the evenings, we would stop at the fish and chip shop just down the road from our boarding house and get some chips to replace the energies used up by the exercise.

When I consider what all this must have cost, I have to marvel at how my mother managed to stretch her resources because, alongside all the other things for which she had to budget, it was all funded by, and saved up for week by week from my father's pay packet, which amounted to no more than £8 or £9.  Once tax had been deducted, there seemed to be an odd 4d in the amount that was left each week, and this was passed to me as 'pocket money'.

All this is a far cry from the luxury of 2021!  I recall now the examples in my mind that remained unexpressed the other day - a single Eccles cake from a packet of four from the supermarket costs 8/- and a cup of machine coffee at a service station almost 3 guineas!

The Search for Sabrina

... or "Sucked Down the Rabbit Hole"

Three weeks ago, I wrote about making rules concerning 'rabbit holes'.  "What are man-made rules," I ask, "if not to be broken?"  So, this week, with the digital ink scarcely dry on that edict, I'm breaking the rule (echoes of our PM here, I confess, but not with such devastating consequences).  To explain the situation, let me begin with a parallel from my Welsh course.  If I'm confronted by a word that - frankly - I've forgotten, I might remember the shape of it and take a punt at filling the gap.  If I'm a letter out, it gets counted as a 'typo' and I don't lose the mark!  I then remember that word next time through remembering that good fortune (sometimes).

Back in the autumn - the second lockdown - I commented here about entering a spouse, discovering that the couple had two children and then entering the first only to find that she's there already, waiting for me!  That surprised me simply because I hadn't remembered the spouse's name, Stangroom.

This week, following my new rule, I began the task of completing that distant family with the intention of documenting births, adding deaths and declaring them 'closed'.  In the case of the first sibling, Mary Ann Batley, being female, I needed to find a marriage in order to locate a death.  When I discovered that she had married Henry Stangroom in 1849, the 'Rabbit-hole Rule' went out of the window!  It's not a common name - and I remembered it this time! - there had to be a link with November's experience.

In the 1851 census, the Stangroom family, living in the Norwich parish of St George, Colegate, comprised Henry, 29, and Mary Ann, 22, a 2-year-old daughter named after her mother ... and one Sabrina Stangroom aged 11, also described as daughter.  My immediate thought was, 'daughter of a previous marriage - Henry must have been a young widower'.  Then I looked again at the ages ... it was possible for him to have been married at 18 and a wife to have died, but was it likely?  I sought the foggy area of the 1841 census for clarification.  Henry was there with his parents and a younger brother, but no sign of wife or daughter.

the Sabrina of Welsh legend - sculpture
discovered in Worcester museum

Sabrina was said to have been born in Roydon, the next village to where I believed Mary Ann to have started life - Bressingham - (although the 1851 enumerator had clearly entered her birthplace as Loddon! which I take as a mis-understanding of Roydon).  I checked birth registrations for the area, but there were no entries for Sabrina or Stangroom, let alone the combination of the two, for a wide range of years.  I also browsed Roydon baptisms for any child with that name, again without success. Would 1861 yield any clues?  There was no trace of the family at all.  Had they been struck by some epidemic?  In this search, I discovered the death of Mary Ann aged 6 in 1855, but of her parents ... again, no sign.

How about 1871 ... did they just not register in 1861, or had the pages simply been lost?  Sure enough, Henry and Mary Ann were there, along with three more children and a 'nurse child' (about which I shall have to seek some meaning later).  There was no sign of the mysterious Sabrina, though.  I began to retrace my steps.  What actually did I know about this family?  I went back to 1841.  There was Stephen, 50, wife Ann, 55, and sons Henry, 20, and John, 10.  Stephen was a weaver, Henry a shoemaker.  Then I remembered my autumn experience and looked back at that Stangroom family.  John, the father of the 'surprising' daughter Edith, was born in 1830, according to his age recorded in 1861, where he was ... a shoemaker.

I returned to the image of that 1861 entry, in the parish of St George, Colegate, and browsed back and forward from it, looking for Henry and Mary Ann.  Sure enough, there they were, only two pages away, with the same three children listed ten years later ... and an elder daughter SABINA!  The family's surname had been mis-transcribed as Stangaard, although how they came by that, I couldn't see.  Much more understandable, though, was the transcription of the girl's name as Labina: the initial letter could easily be mistaken were it not for the S of the surname ... which they had got correct even if what followed was wildly out.  The key to the mystery, however, was not so much the clear spelling of Sabina, but her age ... she was 15.

Armed with the correct details, I easily found her birth recorded in the December quarter of 1845 in the Guiltcross district, which includes both Roydon and Bressingham.  She was registered with the surname Batley!  How Henry and Mary Ann had met - he was from a Norwich family, and this was before the Batley family had moved there - is not clear, but it does seem that Henry, who clearly acknowledged Sabina as his daughter, might have made an effort to shield his wife's potential embarrassment in 1851 by adding a few years to Sabina's age to make it seem impossible for Mary Ann to have been the girl's mother when she would have been only 11.

Perhaps this six-year-old was big for her age!

A 'Fistful' of ... Dollars?

I don't know about you, but there's something irresistible about a tiny fur-ball with prominent eyes and pointed ears, known familiarly as ... a kitten.  When I say irresistible, I don't mean that I want to buy one, or even have one as a present.  For one thing the lease on my flat prohibits animals; for another thing, I recognise that owning such a creature commands responsibility and a degree of expense, neither of which are, of themselves, so attractive.  

But to watch one at play could entrance me far beyond the time I can really spare for the task.  One thing that fascinates me is the consequence of placing a kitten for the first time in front of a mirror.  You can see the curiosity - for which cats are lethally famous - spreading across its face.  'Who is that?'  'Can I make friends/play with him/her?' 'Why does he/she move when I move?'  Eventually an explorative expedition is mounted to the far side of the mirror, only to find ... nothing!

Another thing that fascinates me, with absolutely no desire to be part of it, is war.  During the course of the recent Covid-caused personal restrictions, I've discovered the Western Front Association, and a series of publicly available webinars they have produced regularly ... so much so that I've now developed the habit of booking up for each one as it's announced, anxious to absorb as much as I can of their content before the series comes to its inevitable conclusion in the next few months.

There's one aspect of a battle that is difficult to convey on-screen, whether we're talking about those in comparatively recent times, i.e. the twentieth century, or those longer ago, and that is the sheer chaos, resulting from the noise, smoke and smell of the conflict.  The result, as those who have survived can testify, is a partial or complete loss of spatial awareness: you have no idea where your comrades are, whether near or far, and in what specific direction.

And what have these two fascinations do to with each other ... let alone with my title?  I can sense your bewilderment.  Let me put you out of your misery forthwith.  I was surprised when research told me that the expression 'smoke and mirrors' was coined by an American newspaperman in the 1970s.  I felt sure that it was used in one or other of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories decades earlier.  It seems I was wrong as regards the origin, but I'm confident of its meaning as derived above and as I'm about to apply it.

I woke up this morning to the news - announced, if I have the story right, late last night - of a pay award of just 1% to our hard-working and self-sacrificing nurses.  It's described as an award but, in reality, with inflation running somewhere near 2%, it's actually a pay cut!  Hardly what they deserve after their indescribable contribution to the fight against Covid.  

When interviewed about this, the Health Secretary replied, I understand, 'It's all we could afford.'  I imagine that he then followed up by listing all the other costs that the pandemic has caused, the furlough scheme, the enhancement to Universal Benefit, awards for this and that, not to mention the additional funds announced only this week for major new projects such as the Freeport scheme.

One of my earliest political memories is when I realised for the first time that politicians never give a direct answer about money.  When the question is 'Why haven't you done X, Y or Z?', nine times out of ten the answer is in the form of, 'We have spent £k millions on A, contributed £m billions to B and funded C to the tune of several hundred thousand pounds.'  where A, B and C are only distantly, if at all, linked to X, Y and Z, and the sums of money mentioned are way beyond the imagining of the average listener to the interview.

It's all done to sound as if the most phenomenally generous things that had been done in the field outweighed the need for the specifics enquired about, so why should such a trivial matter be raise at all?  Another memory comes to mind.  It was a day when I had made a banking blunder that would have resulted in my employer's bank account being overdrawn by some thousands of pounds.  The 'penalty' I had to bear was no greater than a train trip to the nearby city, bearing in my pocket a bundle of £50 notes, brought after lunch by my boss from his home, and amounting to several months' of my salary, to be paid over the counter into the affected account.  

Money ... the answer to anything, it seemed, except for the real need.  In that case, a lesson to be learned in checking what I was doing before committing such a faux pas; in the case of the nurses - an interview with one of whom I heard on this evening's news bulletin - some genuine compensation for the years of under-payment, putting up with the unbearable combined pressure of demand coupled with staff shortages, and the additional strain and embarrassment of being dependent on foodbanks to feed their families.

I think of some of the £million scandals that have been in the news in recent months,  A BMJ article in July, for example, quoted £10 billion being set aside for test and trace systems, of which £9 billion remained unaccounted for.  Apparently £4.25 billion would increase NHS salaries by a more realistic (considering recent years' shortfall in pay increments) 12.5%.

When I put these figures side by side I wonder whether my title should have come from another film in the same Western series: 'For a Few Dollars More' ...