Slowing Down

It occurred to me the other day that maybe ... just maybe ... there's a slight possibility ... that my life is other than 'ordinary' (whatever that might mean).  Sundays apart - do you remember the 'Keep Sunday Special' campaign? I'm a firm believer in that - I spend most of the other six days in the week sitting at my desk.  

I suppose, if you take out the time spent away for the essentials of living, like preparing and eating meals, washing, a minimal amount of cleaning, and a couple of hours relaxing in the evening, I probably aggregate about three-quarters of my waking hours in that one corner of my dining room that I laughingly call 'the office'.

And what do I do there?  One segment of my time is devoted to the work that I referred to last week, playing my part in a process of turning printed scriptures into digital format for missionary use.  An growing second chunk is becoming absorbed by my recently having taken on the duties of church treasurer, predominantly the preparation of last year's accounts, but increasingly picking up the threads of week-by-week routines of the current year.

Then there's a fairly constant sliver of 'administration': maintaining records of personal finances, energy costs, records of my car mileage and fuel (a hangover from my professional life when this was a necessary part of my annual accounts), and so on.  And finally, any time that's left gets taken up by my family history researches, which vary from a couple of quite intense days to not touching them for weeks on end, depending what else might be going on.

And amongst all this, is what has become a daily mantra, "Oh gosh, I haven't done any Welsh!"  For almost 900 days in the last three years, I have been studying this, the only language designated by Act of Parliament in this United Kingdom as an 'Official Language'.  For this latest iteration of my learning - I gave up the Teach Yourself book-I used when I first retired, upon realising that it is some 50 years out of date - I owe a debt of gratitude to a lady named Portia.

I met Portia in Llandrindod Wells, when I was helping with the by-election campaign that saw Jane Dodds elected as the MP for Breckon & Radnorshire just a few months before the 2019 General Election.  Portia sat at the desk behind me in the office and she introduced me to a wonderful on-line system called Duolingo.  Apart from being an effective teaching medium, it has the advantage of being free (although there are enhancements resultant upon payment of a fee that I've never explored).  The downside is the compulsive element, which demands daily attendance, upon penalty of paying a forfeit in the on-site currency that is built up by passing regular targets and milestones in one's progress.

Although I'm only just over halfway through the course, I'm finding this pressure increasingly burdensome and I'm thinking of abandoning this discipline once I hit that 900 day achievement.  That isn't to say I shall stop learning.  I was given a wonderful selection of Welsh books before leaving Letchworth, and I shall take a more leisurely look at some of these, making use of the skills I've already learned to advance at a more gentle pace in the coming months.

And what, you may well be asking, has brought forth this exercise of self-assessment?  Quite simply that which the Welsh call annwyd, viz. the common cold.  I set out as usual this morning with a finite set of targets and, as I sat down with some relief for my 'chill-time', I reeled off a list of things that I'd just not been able to fit into my day.  I'm writing this during the week, of course, and I'm hopeful that - suitably dosed up - life will be back to normal by the time you read this, but a little objective reflection is never a bad thing if not taken too far.

It Was a First!

When you get to my age, I think, all the greater is the feeling of utter satisfaction when something happens, or you record some achievement FOR THE FIRST TIME!  

A few weeks ago when I cooked my tea, for the first time ever, I broke an egg and discovered a double yolk inside.  Of course, something spectacular like that just had to be recorded, didn't it? 

But that incident pales into insignificance when compared to last weekend. Four or five years ago I popped along to Northampton for a few hours to the Liberal Democrats' regional conference, but until May 2022, I'd never been to a real, live, pack-your-bags-and-stay-for-the-weekend Conference.

For the last fifteen months or so I've been working for an organisation called MissionAssist.  Now, when I say 'working', yes, it's doing work, but this charity has no employees.  All of its workers, from the CEO down, whether in their first or thirty-first year with them, wherever they are in the world, are volunteers. It's a big international family. 

So, when the boss's PA sends you an e-mail saying that the Annual Conference will be from 13th to 15th May, it's not a command.  There's no three-line whip dictating that you shall attend, lest some dreadful penalty be extorted.  It's a gentle imparting of news, reaction to which is entirely your choice.

Last year's Conference was held on line, through the good offices of Zoom, and that for 2020 had to be cancelled altogether so, for those who have been part of the MA family for almost any time longer than I have, this offered the opportunity for friends and on-line colleagues to meet each other for a catch-up for the first time for three years.  I'm pleased to say I was far from the only 'newbie' attending and, for all of us it was a chance to fit faces to many who have been no more than names on an e-mail up to now.

Hayes Conference Centre,
Swanwick

I think in excess of a tenth of the total membership attended and, unlike the big conferences that regularly make the news, we didn't have to travel to the seaside.  However, the weather in Derbyshire was exceedingly good, such that a seaside location would have been perfectly acceptable.  

We had an inspirational guest speaker who gave four talks on an appropriate theme, and there were the inevitable reports from departmental managers and workshops to join in, as well as time for casual conversation and to learn what other people's roles consisted of.

And the food was fantastic!  Dinner on Friday evening was welcome after the drive there in late afternoon, but the shock of three cooked meals on Saturday - not to mention coffee and biscuits in the morning and tea and cakes mid-afternoon - was far more than my body is used to, and sleep was not my constant companion that night.  Sunday morning found me by-passing the breakfast buffet and heading for a plate of porridge instead.

At a political conference the last event is the leader's keynote address - remember David Steel's famous 'Go home and prepare for government' line? - and in a way, I suppose our Sunday send-away mirrored that.  Having formally welcomed us after dinner on Friday, and popping up many times between programme items during Saturday, our CEO led us in a service of Holy Communion after the final talk on Sunday morning.

Then it was time for Sunday lunch and departure, some to the nearest train station, others to their cars, and work as usual the next day.  I've already completed two pieces of work this week, and have also expressed my intention to attend next year's Conference.

The Trouble with You, John ...

... is that you had a cousin.  It's not your fault - it isn't his, either.  But the trouble is, you were both called John - and worse - you were born just weeks apart in the same village!  

Some years ago I read about a process called 'Family Reconstruction', and I realised that this was what I'd just started to do with all of my family history data which, up to that point I'd collected willy-nilly and tried to make sense of in a variety of complex spreadsheets, none of which actually did what I wanted.

Then I hit on a far simpler idea.  I started a new spreadsheet, with a single line for each person, starting with all the key personal data, like names, reference numbers, dates of birth, baptism, marriage, death and burial, and following this with columns for each census from 1841 to 1911 ... and since I began, I've had to add two more columns for 1921 and 1939.  

The very sequence of the lines groups the individuals into families and, by shading the census columns for each one they lived through, and leaving blank those before their birth or after their death, I can see easily how the family has grown over the years.  Adding the place-name into the census column lets me see which ones I've found and which I have left to look for.  It's a long job and, I have to admit, it may never be finished.  But it keeps me occupied in retirement and provides satisfaction and the odd blog-worthy story from time to time ... which reminds me ...

A few weeks ago, I wrote here about a tragic murder and suicide in a north Suffolk village.  The deceased couple were John and Betsey Churchyard, and it's their son John who starts this tale.  John was born in Hoxne in the spring of 1878 and in the course of a morning last week I was able to construct the detail of the family of which he was the head.  He married Sophia Allum in 1901 and had six children, who were all living in 1911.  The one thing I was missing was the date of John's death. 

Findmypast very helpfully offered two Suffolk-born possibilities, both born in 1878.  One died in 1934, the other in 1947.  I decided to check the 1939 Register.  At the start of World War II, John was living with wife Mary and two children, the elder of whom was clearly, by name and date of birth, the second son of Sophia.  

A little more digging provided some additional detail. Two  more children were added to the family in 1913 and 1915, Sophia died in 1919 aged 46 and almost five years later, John married Mary Cook. with whom he had three more children.  It was one of these who was the youngest of the family unit in 1939.  Hence the 1947 death date was the one I needed, and it was also fitting that the district included the village where the family had been recorded in 1939.

But the trouble was ... John had a cousin, also John, also born in 1878.  Their fathers were brothers.  Clearly all the details I'd found out tallied, the two marriages, the family in 1939 and the death in 1947 ... but which John did they apply to?  Was it, as I had assumed, the John of the family shattered by tragedy in his childhood, or his cousin, for whom I had only a birth record?  

There was one key piece of data I had yet to explore.  I said that the family in 1911 consisted of six children, all still living.  However, the census listed only five: the second son, still with his father in 1939, and four younger siblings.  Robert, the eldest, was missing.  After some searching, I found a Bobbe {sic!} Churchyard, living with his grandparents in 1911.  These were George and Jane Churchyard.  George was the younger brother of the John who had wielded that lethal shotgun.

So I had my answer - The John whose story I had now established with such detail, was the son of George and Jane.  The John with the tragic childhood also married during the Edwardian decade.  He was living as a gamekeeper in a nearby village in 1911 and it was he, I have decided, who died in 1934.  Amusingly, perhaps, his second daughter was born in the same year as a daughter of the other John.  Each was called Florence, but at least each was given a second name.  One was named Sophia after her mother, the other Louisa after her aunt.

I spoke of the stories that come from looking deeply into families in this way ... there is more to tell here so watch out in the coming weeks!

As I Live and Breathe!

I was privileged to grow up in a market town.   Unlike children of farm workers in an earlier age, I was under no pressure to follow my father on the land because no other jobs were available.  In fact, quite the opposite applied.  If I'd grown up on a farm as he had, farming - or at least farm work - would have been part of my life almost from day one, and finding my early amusement in the farmyard would almost inevitably have led to a life on the land. 

In my earliest memories, I sometimes didn't see my father from one weekend to the next: he had gone to work by the time I got up, and I would be in bed by the time he got home again - at least this would have been the case in the summer time.  

By far the greatest part of my early years was therefore spent in the company of my mother and her family.  The family home was within easy walking distance of ours; so, too was the town itself.  The things that filled my early experiences were linked to the shops and businesses in the town.  Mine was essentially an indoor childhood.  Little wonder, then, that my working life was office-based and in the general area of business, finance and commerce.

I've progressed gradually in adult life to an awareness of agriculture and the farming way of life through reading, through talking to my father man-to-man, and from the researches into my family history.  It's essentially head knowledge, though, not heart knowledge; it's not an emotional attachment.

'What has brought about this latest bout of introspection and self-analysis?', I hear you ask.  The answer is a combination of three things ... possibly four, if you include my move to south Yorkshire last summer. Last week, I decided to visit the outer parts of Barnsley, to see in daylight where I would be driving after dark for last night's election count.  On my way there, I passed what was clearly the winding gear (now preserved) of a former coal mine, and afterwards I did a little research to find out about it.

The second factor was loosely connected, to browse a couple of websites containing both written and pictorial material relating to the history of my new home town.  From the 1890s to the 1980s the town, its people and its economy were focussed almost completely on coal mining.  There were a number of collieries in the immediate area, and many of their employees lived in the town.  

When in 1907 it was decided to develop a mine that had last been active in the eighteenth century, the enlargement of the town itself, already well under way, accelerated to keep step.  Many new streets were laid out, mainly in the area between the town centre and the location of my home on the edge of the built-up area, and it seems likely that the whole area lived and breathed coal - almost literally!

Finally in my explanation, I came to the end of a book I've been reading over the last few weeks, How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn's tale of life in the mining valleys of south Wales.  Although a work of fiction, it presents a very believable picture of life in a mining community at the turn of the twentieth century, made more so for me as I walk around this town of mine.  The only things missing are the mountains and the growing slag heaps.  Since the closing of the mines in this area, these have been landscaped and the sites put to new uses.

One of those websites I was looking at carries a whole list of newspaper extracts, many of which are reports of the inquests following deaths in the mines.  As always, these gave full details of the deceased including their complete address.  The other day I walked around some of these streets and I could easily imagine fathers and sons emerging from the doors I was passing, making their way through the town to work, not knowing whether or not they would safely emerge into daylight again at the end of their shift.

This multi-faceted experience has brought to life the contrast between, on the one hand, growing up in a community such as this, when there would have been little alternative to following one's father down the pit, or like my father, with a similar inevitability about life on a farm and, on the other, the early life I had when there were so many options and opportunities that I just didn't know what to choose as I drew near to leaving school.

This flood of possibilities wasn't without its downside, though.  For one thing some choices just weren't possible, either for lack of academic qualification, or the absence of parental approval.  Having finally made my choice, I discovered after six months that it wasn't for me (although ten years later, I realised that it might well have been if I'd had a vision of what could have developed from that situation).  I left for another job, for which, with A-levels, I was over qualified.  One dead end led to another until eventually, while working in an office at a factory a few miles from home, it was suggested that I might like to take day-release towards gaining a professional qualification ... and the rest, as they say, is history!