Tales From the Shelves

Perhaps it's a reflection of my advancing years that, only days later, I can no longer remember what it was that prompted my curiosity.  Earlier this week, I needed to find out the difference between English Bond and Flemish Bond and, despite having Wikipedia at my fingertips, I walked across the room and picked up Ware & Beatty's 'Short Dictionary of Architecture'.  Now, this slim volume doesn't rank highly on my current reading list - in fact it's not even in the running for the bottom place - but it's been in my possession for well over 50 years, since it was presented to me as the Junior Geography Prize.

This isn't the oldest book in my collection.  That honour probably goes to 'Odham's Encyclopaedia for Children', which lives on the top shelf and pre-dates it by some three years.  As its dust jacket declares, it's profusely illustrated with over 2,500 pictures and I won it for being the highest-scoring boy from my school in the 11-plus examinations that year.  Its partner went to Bridget, who now lives in Australia and whom I met again a few years ago at a high school reunion.

As I put these two memories together, I realised that there are many more tomes lurking on my shelves that have a story to tell.  None is as old as these two veterans, but some of the stories bear re-telling.  Take 'Milk, Muck and Memories', for example.  I bought it because of the picture on the front, which reminded me of my father - not that I ever saw him with a horse - but 'horseman' was his description on his marriage certificate.  It is a selection of memories of country life between the wars.  Along with the two pictures that accompany it, it's a souvenir of a visit to Market Rasen nearly five years ago.

'The Highland Clearances' and the other two small books with them are a reminder of another of my travels, bought in John o' Groats while on a railway weekend in Scotland.  'A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes' is of similar, if more intense, provenance.  It's author, Dr. Jonathan Bardon, was commissioned by BBC Ulster in 2005 to do a series of 240 five-minutes talks on Ireland's history to 1939.  It was a series that was later aired on RTÉ during the time that I could receive their programmes on Long Wave in my van.  I heard many of these talks and appreciated both their content and their concise presentation.  A few years later, I had time on my hands after delivering some flowers to Tesco in Dún Laoghaire and, while browsing in a bookshop, I spotted this publication, for which ten chapters had been added to the radio talks to bring it up to date.  I'd tried without success to obtain the book locally ... and now snapped it up without hesitation.

While on the subject of work, notice the two small books at the back: 'Philip's Street Atlases of Norfolk and Suffolk'.  These are the sole survivors of a whole crate of such atlases, large and small, which I collected over several years, just before and after the arrival of SatNav.  I think my collection covered every county of England, parts of Wales and the major cities of Scotland and Ireland.  At the time, they proved invaluable but, with the exception of these two (kept to help my family history investigations and also transcription work that I have undertaken in retirement), all the rest were a parting gift on the occasion of the sale of my Motor-caravan a few years ago.

Not all of my 'library' offers such pleasant stories, however.  The one to which I have given pride of place in this selection is, in fact, an imposter.  I received a gift of 'Quaker Faith and Practice' after conducting an Examination of the annual accounts of Tivetshall Monthly Meeting in Norfolk back in the 1980s or '90s.  It was duly inscribed with the date and the signatures of the Clerk and Treasurer of the Meeting.  Sadly - for what reason I cannot fathom: vengeance, oversight or anything in between - it was the one missing item from a car-load of books that I received from my ex-wife on a car park in Hitchin after a divorce hearing.  Having already accepted the finality of the situation, I decided that a replacement had to be sought and when next in London, I visited Quaker House opposite Euston Station and duly secured this copy.  Even if it has no 'voice', it can still tell the story.

And finally, swirling back again through the years, I bring you the twin volumes on the extreme left of my picture.  When I was first investigating the possibility of training as a Reader (lay minister) in the church, it was to Canon Frank Colquhoun, the editor of these two collections of 'Parish Prayers,' that I paid a visit at his office in Norwich.  He was at that time the Diocesan Warden of Readers, and he advised me to go away and finish my accountancy exams first and then return.  When I did so a few years later, he had retired, but his books were a 'go-to' resource for a number of years after that.

I challenge you, dear reader, to disagree with a suggestion that I heard many years ago that a good library is a valued friend.

The Dilemma over Children

One of the most talked about side-effects of the Covid pandemic is the effect on, and potential effects of, children.  Notwithstanding the most recent much-belated decision to close all schools (while still requiring them to cater for the children of key workers!), a difficult balance has been hard to achieve over the last ten months.  On one hand is the need for children of all ages to have social as well as academic contact with their peers, and on the other the complex questions of protection.  This has to be taken into account to keep the children safe from each other (albeit perhaps a minimal risk), from the teaching staff, and from passing on infection to teachers or their families.

My attention was drawn recently to the way that, with schools closed, children also impinge on 'normal' adult life.  Of course there is the new challenge of home-schooling.  While some children adapt easily to this, others need almost constant prompting and cajoling to make even the slightest progress.  After all, a day away from school is a great opportunity to do all sorts of other things ... never mind several weeks!  With this unwelcome addition to an existing combination of career, study, and the regular demands of family life and running a home, some young parents are finding it difficult to cope.

Nothing is new in this world, they say.  When I was confronted by similarly conflicting choices in my early adult life, I drifted into, rather than decided on, the simple solution of ignoring children and family and focussed on my career ... a course that had obvious and disastrous consequences and is to be avoided!  Perhaps a closer parallel to today's national situation, with the focus on the children's safety, was the scheme of evacuation that took place in the autumn of 1939.  It had mixed results.  Some children had a miserable time and soon returned to the dangers of home life in a vulnerable city, while others discovered a completely different life that they enjoyed and never looked back.

A few weeks ago, I wrote here about an instance 170 years ago, when a young couple left their daughter Sarah Batley, just over a year old, with her grandparents while they set up home in a new location and, incidentally, welcomed a brother for Sarah.  Soon Sarah returned to her family and all was well.  This week I discovered a parallel situation some fifty years later, where one of Sarah's brothers - named William, after his father - and his wife Jane found themselves in the grandparent role.

William Batley and Jane Elizabeth Canham were married in Norwich in 1878.  In 1881 William was listed as a police officer but, in the ensuing years, perhaps discovered his true vocation for, in 1891, he was working for the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway as a porter in Melton Constable.  He and Jane had only one child, a daughter Gertrude, who was born shortly after their marriage.

Meanwhile, William Barradell was born in 1867 the son of a shepherd in Throckmorton, Worcestershire.  By the 1891 census he was lodging with his brother in Stourport where both of them were working as 'carmen' ... in other words, the forerunner of today's logistics industry.  His brother was working for a local brewery but William may well have been employed by a railway company.  Somehow his travels took him to Norfolk, where he met and impressed Gertrude, some ten years his junior, whom he married in north Norfolk towards the end of 1898.  By this time, it seems, he had moved to - or at least had probably decided on - a less demanding career with the railway company, for in 1901 he was working as a passenger guard and was in the same role ten years later.

William and Gertrude lived in Mansfield for about ten years.  It was there that their first child, Hilda Mary, was born on 10th October 1899.  It was a busy time for Gertrude.  William was away from home up and down the railway, they were scarcely a year into marriage and she was in a new home and a strange town far from her previous life in rural Norfolk.  Added to that Dorothy, her second child, was born on 26th October 1900.  

Hilda had to go.

By 1901, William and Jane Batley had moved to Cromer.  William had progressed to a foreman porter and their home at no.6, 'M&GN Cottages' had been re-invigorated by the arrival of their granddaughter.  This seemed to work out, for ten years later they were found in Jane's birthplace, Banningham, near Aylsham.  William had forsaken the railway and taken up farming as a new career; he was 53 or 54, and Jane about the same age.  Hilda was still with them, attending school in the village.  She went on to marry William Joseph Timmings in Brentford in 1922.  That was where he had been born and bred, but it was another new life for Hilda.  Like her grandmother, she had just the one child, and the three of them were living in Harrow in 1939.

Gertrude, by contrast, went on to present William with a succession of further children.  After Dorothy, three more arrived while they were living in Mansfield, including a welcome son, named William Edwin after his father and grandfather, and a further four more after they had moved to Nottingham, where the family was recorded in 1911.  William Barradell died in the spring of 1936 and Gertrude's mother Jane early the next year.  Gertrude had moved out of Nottingham to Beeston, and settled in with an unmarried son there.  At the age of 80, William Batley took the great step of moving to be with Gertrude, and it was there that he died almost exactly a year after his wife, early in 1938.  

When War Came Again

I was never a Boy Scout but I believe their motto to be that worthy phrase, 'Be Prepared'.  This hasn't been our present government's position regarding either the pandemic or the problems of cross-channel freight (those thousands of lorries queuing at Dover have dropped out of the news; I wonder whether they have all moved by now).  Despite Churchill's agitations, it wasn't the situation at the outbreak of war in 1939 either.  However, preparations for one upcoming challenge at that time were well in hand, ... the 1941 Census.

Within four weeks of Mr Chamberlain's radio address that Sunday morning, adaptations had been made and forms printed and circulated for the compilation of what we now know as the 1939 Register.  It wasn't a census and the information collected was slightly different but, to genealogists in the last few years, it has proved very helpful, bridging the gap between the latest available census of 1911 and the memories of our oldest relatives today.  And the Register provided the gateway to this week's story from my favourite pastime.

As last week's episode revealed, I was fascinated by the fact that the wife of one of my 3x-great-aunt's extended family had been born in Ireland.  Thwarted in my endeavours to discover a military reason for her East Anglian parents being there, and forsaking any hope of discovering how she met her husband, I decided to move forward in time and see what happened to her children.  George William Batley returned from South Africa on 11th February 1903 and lost no time in marrying his sweetheart.  As noted last week, their first child was born later that year.

By 1911 their family, living at 23 Alderson Street, comprised George, that first son, and siblings Charles, 5, and Florence, 2.  Later searches revealed that Florence and George had another daughter, Elsie, who was born later in 1911.  When confronted by George's illness and later death during the spring of 1915, Florence was pregnant with their fifth child.  Who can imagine her emotions when a healthy daughter Eva was born that October?

As I tried with mixed success to find these children in 1939, I first explored the possibility of a marriage for Florence junior, that 2-year-old of 1911.  Sure enough she had married ... to Frederick David Balls, in 1935.  As is often the case, young men are not to be found in the 1939 Register, because anyone serving in the armed forces was not included in the registration.  I did find Florence, registered at the home they had established in Daplings Buildings, the exact location of which I've been unable to establish.  However, this entry had been ruled through.  I checked out another possibility and found her also entered in the household of steel erector Albert E Cornwell at 5 Alderson Street.

It was an address the familiarity of which escaped me at first.  I thought instead about this 30-year-old whose husband had now been called away on active service.  She had either closed up - or had completely abandoned - their home and now moved to a different part of the city: how had she found somewhere else to live as the unknown fates of wartime unfolded?  As I glanced at this family unit, wondering who else was in the household, I noticed the duplication of her name.  She was Florence A and so was Mrs. Cornwell ... and one of the others had the surname Batley!

Albert Edward Cornwell was born Weasenham in west Norfolk in 1883.  In October 1901, having been working as a groom, he enlisted in the Norfolk Militia; on 5th December, he transferred to the Norfolk Regiment but sadly his service papers don't appear to have survived.  Although, in 1911, he was recorded with the 2nd Battn. in Belgaum, India, any detail of his later service is unknown.  He surfaced again in post-war Norwich, where he met - and clearly made quite an impression upon - a young-looking widow who was actually some four years his senior.

Albert and Florence were married early in 1925, and their daughter Doreen was born that spring.  When the Register was compiled, Florence was shown as only two years older than her husband.  The last member of the household was Eva, the child born after her father's death in 1915.  My question was answered.  What could be more natural for the young wife at the start of the war than to be taken in by her mother's new family?  Sadly, she and Frederick never had children, and I was unable to find a record of his death.  Maybe he didn't return from the war.  If so, Florence didn't re-marry, for her death was recorded as Balls in 1981.

All the rest of the family survived the war.  Florence senior died in 1978, and Albert two years later. Eva married in 1941 and Doreen in 1956; both had families and died early in this century.

Filling the Gaps

Last week I wrote essentially about mother and daughter, Mary and Sarah Batley.  This week's story begins with Mary's first son and Sarah's brother, George, who I said had been born in Norwich in 1851.  Having grown up in Norwich and its suburbs, it will be no surprise to learn that it was in St Mark's, Lakenham, on the southern side of the city, that he was married on 13th October 1873 to a Norwich girl, Jemima Green.  She bore him six children but, sadly two of them died shortly after birth.

As I traced the lives of this family through the censuses, gradually certain gaps were isolated, that would need a bit more attention.  Their second son, George William, born 28th July 1876, was an example.  He was missing in 1901, but reappeared in 1911 with a wife and family of three children.  They had been married for just 8 years; his wife Florence Annie had been born in Ireland: could this explain where George had been in 1901?

Another gap in 1901 was George's younger brother William John, born 12th October 1880 (this was the second use of those names: his brother had died just weeks old, and the names re-used ... as was often the case).  This gap was easier to fill, though.  As I had found many years ago in the case of my great-uncle, William had joined the army and was in barracks at Colchester.  This find opened up new lines of investigation as I pursued the answers regarding George.

Although George and Florence had been married in Norwich, their first son was born in ... Colchester, another significant clue.  At this point, discoveries were coming thick and fast and - even thought it was scarcely a week ago - I can't clearly recall their sequence.  I found Florence's baptism record, showing that this took place in Athlone in the county of Roscommon, although my recent Irish holiday told me that Athlone is in Westmeath.  Study of maps new and old, however, revealed that part of the town lies to the west of the Shannon and was therefore correctly described as Roscommon.  Characteristic of many such towns in both countries, the border has since been shifted to tidy things up.  I also found Florence's birth registration, which revealed the address as 'Batteries', which the map confirmed was in that western part of the town.  The name suggested a military connection there, too.

Last weekend found me downloading a score of military records from which I can now report that, having started adult life as a tinker's labourer, George enlisted on 13th October 1896 in the 4th (militia) Bn. of the Norfolk Regiment.  This was a life that he found to his liking, for within the year, now slightly grown in stature and correspondingly a few pounds heavier,  he transferred to the 2nd Battalion on a Short Service enlistment (7 years with the colours followed by 5 on reserve).  The battalion were in South Africa from 4th January 1900 until 10th February 1903, accounting for George's absence from the census.  By the time of his return to these shores, George was a corporal; he and Florence were married shortly after and their first son was born before the end of the year, presumably in married quarters.

George was promoted to Lance-Sergeant in April 1904 and, still so-described, was discharged to the reserve on 28th August 1909.  On the outbreak of war in 1914, he returned to the regiment.  This war was a different one, though.  I haven't discovered what action he saw, if any; a medical report of  March 1915 referred to a bout of influenza in January that had developed into chronic bronchitis, rendering him unfit for military service.  His discharge on medical grounds was confirmed on 22nd March and he died on 31st May.  He was buried with military honours in Norwich cemetery.

Perhaps inspired or encouraged by his brother, William enlisted in the militia on 18th April 1899.  The militia battalion was 'disembodied' in July 1901, a reduction in strength perhaps justified by the progress of the war, but William was re-engaged in April 1905 to complete his term of engagement, having been under regular training in the meantime.  Finally discharged from the regiment on 19th April 1909, on 9th August of that year he signed a Territorial Force attestation with the 1st East Anglian Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.  Like his brother, he seemed set for a military career.  However, he was discharged on 26th May 1911 under 'para 156(3) of Territorial Force Regulations'.  Research tells me that this clause refers to the soldier's own request, so what prompted it remains a mystery.  He was at home in Lakenham at the census two months earlier.

Many questions remain unanswered.  Why did George claim to be two years younger than he actually was (18 instead of 20) when he enlisted?  The medical report in March 1915 gives 'age last birthday' as 39 when in July 1914 he would have been 38.  The civil registration of his death shows age 37 ... still 2 years short.  Another open question is that of Florence's father.  The family appears in the 1901 census in Norwich, showing that he was born in the Norfolk village of Shotesham, and his wife in Ipswich.  I've found no trace of a military record for him, although Florence's birth registration shows his occupation as 'Corpl GR' and they were married in 1875 in Woolwich, another place with military connections.  Over the years I've become familiar with a number of regimental abbreviations but GR is unknown to me.

This whole exercise has revolved around finding people where they aren't expected.  That's a thought that certainly has relevance at this particular weekend and my thoughts go out to all who find themselves 'where they weren't expected' today.  As one friend put it after completing a substantial shopping expedition earlier this week, "I wasn't expecting to be cooking Christmas dinner this year!"

Wherever you are, I wish all my readers all the best for the rest of the festive season and a brighter New Year.

Moving to the City

 A few weeks ago, I wrote about tidying up my family history records, and how that task had been 'agreeably distracted' into tracking one particular family through the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Despite all manner of other interests and seasonal obligations, I'm pleased to say that this has continued and, during the course of this, a number of interesting stories have come to light.

The family I've been looking at is that of my maternal grandfather's maternal grandmother, Eliza Bullingham or Burlingham.  She was the fifth of a family of eight children born to George Burlingham and his wife Mary, formerly Mary Finch, between 1827 and 1844.  In my earlier blog, I wrote of Eliza's eldest sister Sarah, and the discovery that her daughter had married one of Eliza's sons.  This week, I've been following the life and fortunes of Mary, the next of Eliza's siblings.

Mary Burlingham was born in either Thorpe Abbotts or Brockdish (Norfolk villages lying along the Suffolk border in the valley - such as it is - of the river Waveney) and was baptised at Brockdish on 21st October 1832.  At some point in the next two years, the family moved to Wattisfield in West Suffolk, which is where George, her father, had been born and it was there that the rest of the Burlingham children were born.

Meanwhile at South Lopham, just over the border in Norfolk, Norwich-born Thomas Batley (a name sometimes found as Battley or Battely) had married Mary Finch in July, 1825.  William, their first child was born there in 1825 or 6 and then the family moved to nearby Bressingham, where William was baptised on 30th April 1826.  By 1841, they were living in Roydon.  Although about ten miles (depending where their respective houses were located) separate Roydon and Wattisfield, this didn't prevent William Batley and Mary Burlingham meeting and growing attached to each other.  Early in 1849, Mary found herself pregnant and they were married in the June quarter of that year.  Their daughter, named Sarah after her aunt, was born before the year was out.

Much is made of the mid-to-late 19th century being a difficult time for those dependent on agriculture for a living - the 1870s in particular - and the fact that many families moved to the newly industrialised north in search of work.  But it was already difficult for larger families to find work as they grew up in earlier decades.  With their family now complete, late in the 1840s, the Batleys moved to Norwich and at the 1851 census Thomas and Mary and their five youngest children were living at Castle Ditches in the parish of St Michael at Thorn.  William and his wife had left baby Sarah with her grandparents in Wattisfield, and were making a new life for themselves in Norwich, living in Rising Sun Lane in the same parish as William's parents.  Mary, now said to be 21, but in truth somewhat younger, was expecting her second child, George, who was born on 19th May that year.  Both Thomas and William are shown as labourers.

The 1861 census shows that progress had been made in their plans.  By then they were living in Golden Ball Street, William being listed as a shoemaker, while Mary (now revealing her true age, 28) is credited with the occupation of a shoe binder.  Their family then consisted of five children and Mary's 20-year-old sister Maria was also with them, described as a domestic servant.  Whether working for them or outside the family is not indicated.  Most census records list the children in order of age; most that do not show the boys first, followed by the girls.  The sequence of this entry is somewhat strange.  After William and Mary come Sarah, 11, daughter Eliza, 2, and Maria, followed by the boys: Thomas, 6, George, 8 and William, 3.

St Michael at Thorn was close to the centre of the city.  Castle Ditches was, as its name indicates, close to the foot of the great mound on which the Norman castle was built.  By the start of the nineteenth century, it had become a general dumping ground and refuse pit.  The area was levelled and advertised for development in 1826 and it's likely that both Thomas's and William's 1851 homes were part of that development.  Golden Ball Street ran through the middle of the area and obviously the houses there afforded greater accommodation.  As the decades passed, prosperity increased and they moved from parish to parish further out from the city centre.

William and Mary went on to have a family of ten, six sons and four daughters; William died in the summer of 1889 at the age of 62 and later that year daughter Sarah was married.  In the 1891 census Sarah, now the wife of William Meadows, described as a 'Laster and heeler', were living in Quebec Road, while her widowed mother was living with two of her younger sons in nearby Rosary Road, both in St Matthews parish.  William Meadows died in 1906 and Sarah's mother Mary in 1909. In 1911 Sarah was living in the same area, with a teenage lodger, and her brothers and their families close by.  She died in 1925.

Of the parish of St Michael at Thorn, which had played a great part in the family's settling and early life in Norwich, little can be seen today.  The church itself, which stood at the corner of Ber Street and Thorn Lane, was hit by incendiary bombs on 27th June, 1942, leaving only the tower and part of the walls standing.  The whole area was flattened as part of the post-war redevelopment in the 1950s and the church door is the only survivor, having been re-erected in the restored church of St Julian (now something of a tourist attraction) as the entrance to Mother Julian's cell there.

Flat-dwelling

"Curiosity killed the cat" was a proverb often quoted to support not telling children a truth that parents thought was best not shared with them.  I can't vouch for the feline consequences, but curiosity is certainly lethal so far as time is concerned.  I recently wasted an hour or so trying to find out some facts about flat-dwellers.  In particular my quest was simply 'what proportion of people living alone in this country, live in flats?'  Lots of reports touched on one or other characteristic, but nowhere could I find the precise answer to my question ... at least not before giving up the search with the words, 'life's too short!'.

What I did find was that, in 2019, approximately 29.5% of all UK households were single-occupancy, and 'the greater proportion' are men, which could mean as few as 14.8% of households.  But, although owner occupancy by single householders varies from 50% at some ages to 75% at others, nowhere does this seem to be split between flats and detached or semi-detached dwellings.

Whatever that proportion might be, the fact remains that I'm one of them and, in a succession of three dwellings, have been so for the last 21 years.  It's no surprise that, over that time, it's a situation with which I've become familiar and things that others might find peculiar - for example, having two front doors, and hence two front door keys - have become commonplace.

My flat-dwelling familiarity hasn't always been the case.  I'm not suggesting that my parents were snobs - they certainly had no right to be! - but in overheard conversations certain people in the neighbourhood might be referred to thus: 'Old <so-and-so> lives in the flats', the words being uttered in tones that implied that Mr. <so-and-so> was one of a lower class of people, part of a sub-culture that was not to be associated with.  And any suggestion of entering the block of flats to deliver to, or worse, communicate with such people was definitely not to be entertained.

Unquestionably, a block of flats, like any household, has its own smell, that is only noticed briefly on entry and soon becomes part of the normal ambience.  I've noticed this when making deliveries to other blocks on the estate and elsewhere.  Occasionally I've had a visit from a member of the local constabulary, announcing that they've had a report of drugs in the area and asking if I've smelled anything worthy of their attention in this regard.  I'm not sure whether I'm believed, but I usually explain that my sheltered life has meant that I wouldn't be able to identify whether or not an out-of-the-ordinary smell might be drug-related.

I may be fortunate to live in a quiet close, with neighbours who, like me, are busy getting on with their own lives and give me no cause for complaint.  That isn't to say that the place is silent.  In fact, it's quite comforting to have the sound of others nearby.  As I write this I can hear the steady beat of modern music from the flat above, but it's not at a volume to cause interference to my concentration.  Some sounds are of a regular nature, like the couple next door who can be heard nipping outside for a smoke last thing at night, and it's far from uncommon to sit in the toilet and hear a sudden gush in the downpipe just inches from my left ear!  But I know what it is, and that it signifies the existence of life around me, so it's not intrusive.

Occasionally I've developed friendships with my neighbours, but this tends to be the exception rather than the rule.  Usually, the most intense exchanges relate to the taking in of each other's parcels.  The previous owner of the flat next door lived there herself for many years but then moved away and rented it out.  At this point I became her 'eyes and ears' for any threat to her property.  In an earlier flat, I had regularly exchanged greetings with the young lady who lived opposite, but we'd never had a conversation until I was about to move out because my landlord needed to sell the flat.  "I wish I'd known earlier," she told me, "I have a well-paid job in the City and as a result I have savings I want to invest.  I could have bought your flat and you could have stayed there as my tenant."  Such an arrangement would indeed have suited both of us, and that flat was nearer the town centre than my present home, but it wasn't to be.

I think, on balance, that the benefits of not having more rooms to keep clean, having a secure place to park my car - even if I do have to share the closest space on a 'first-come' basis with others who live nearby - and tidy grounds that I don't have to maintain, outweigh the potential of a separate front door onto the street and the constant headache of structural responsibilities.

It Goes Back Centuries!

I've been thinking about words.  Let's face it, despite the variety of our modern lives - or, indeed maybe because of it - they are probably the most common things we have around us ... and that is surely true whether they are in our native tongue, one we've learned at school or since, or one in some foreign language we've never seen before.  Words are words, and we see them on every side.

From time to time I've seen 'tests' on social media that give credence to a calculated claim that the inside of words is far less important than the combination of their length, context and their initial and final letters.  Indeed, a tweet this morning provided me with two examples of this very fact.  It was actually a reply to one I'd spotted yesterday but which, being puzzled by it and unable to understand its point, I had passed over.  Yesterday's section of the story concerned a supermarket's in-store sign showing a glass of milk and the two words 'Lleath' and 'Milk', with the caption 'Another entrant to the milk war!'.  This morning's response cited another sign (no picture this time), saying 'I had a similar argument with <name of national supermarket chain> over Psygod!'

Now, in my travels, I've been into stores in both Scotland and Wales and have seen many signs like this that are written in both English and either Gaelic or Welsh, and the fact that I've now been learning Welsh on and off for three or four years, meant that the words for milk and fish are common to me.  Hence, my puzzlement why there should be consternation over a milk sign bearing both languages.  This morning, however - fish being less common in my lessons than milk - I suddenly realised that 'Psygod' should read 'Pysgod', and I looked back at 'last night's milk'.  Sure enough, it should have read 'Llaeth', and the meaning of the exchange became crystal clear.

Geography isn't the only thing that affects words and their use.  History must bear its share of the blame for word-confusion.  This morning, shortly after reading that second tweet, I was planning what turned out to be quite a busy day and caught myself muttering, 'Now let's set these things in order.'  I've read somewhere that a preposition is not the way to end a sentence; whether true or not, it's stuck in my memory ever since I read it and, if true, it would surely apply to the phrase as much as to the single word, so my mind set about re-phrasing what I'd said: 'Now let's set in order these things.'

You can tell that I was only half intent on what I was doing, for my thoughts drifted further down the revision path.  I realised that, if I were to be more economical and say 'Now let us order these things.', it would convey a totally different meaning, i.e. to requisition goods from an outside source, rather than to arrange things - in this case ideas - already in my possession.

That was all to do with the sequence of the same known words.  It's perhaps coincidence that all these thoughts came in the space of about two hours earlier today.  During my early morning prayers, my mind drifted to a line from a hymn, written only in the nineteenth century by John Bacchus Dykes, but using words common a couple of centuries earlier.  I'd sung it often when I was younger, without giving it a second thought, but today's child might be puzzled by the archaic tenses of "Which wert and art and evermore shalt be."

It's time to draw this 'socially distanced' ramble through the textbooks to a close, before I drift off to Norman-French, Anglo-Saxon and Greek.  But let me just explain those three unusual words in that hymn line.  The 'which' at the beginning is a personal reference to God, to whom the whole hymn is presumed to be addressed; until the seventeenth century - and possibly later - it was common to differentiate between singular and plural in the second person.  This is still the case in many languages (French, German and Welsh, to my knowledge) but English became lazy and now uses 'you', 'your', and 'yours' whether we're talking to one or a hundred people.  The words in this hymn are the archaic forms of 'were', 'are' and 'shall' that would have been used with 'thou', the single word for the second person, that has long since fallen out of use.

The moral of my early morning is therefore not just to be careful what you say, but also the order in which you say it ... and how you spell it as well!