On a Seaside Holiday in 1921 ...

We were warned that a summer census would make some people more difficult to find.  I found the man I was looking for quite easily, but also stumbled on the unexpected aftermath of another story besides.

I had been working for much of last year on the family of my cousin's husband's grandmother, who was one of 18 children.  Her younger brother was married in the September quarter of 1917, and when I found him and his wife by 'trial and error' in Great Yarmouth in the 1921 Census, I decided that they had quite likely taken a summer holiday.  He was a farmer, so a June holiday would be quite likely - a fact that I knew from personal experience.  My father was a farm worker and holidays in my school holidays were always ruled out because of the harvest.

I had decided that, when my Findmypast subscription was due for renewal after Christmas, I would upgrade it to included unlimited access to the 1921 Census and, at odd moments recently, I've been looking up the people I thought I'd found already, to get a proper reference make sure I had found the right person and glean whatever else I could from the entry.  In this case, I certainly got more than I'd bargained for!

I found the couple I was looking for - yes, Stephen and Daisy Kerridge (lines 4 & 5) were the farmer and his wife.  I was a bit puzzled that all five immediately visible occupants were visitors, but then I clicked on the 'show more' button and revealed the host family.  Why put themselves last? a gesture of importance to their guests, perhaps,  who knows?  Even as I revealed this bricklayer and his family, my mind was registering the name of the first person on the list: Sarah Boggis.

Notwithstanding that a girl named Sarah who was at school at the same time as me later became a Mrs Boggis, it wasn't until I looked further down the list and found Archibald J Francis that I realised that Sarah Boggis was the ultimate married name of my great-great-aunt.  So here was an intermediate snapshot in a story that began way back in the 19th century.

Archie Francis was, sadly, a figure of fun in the family as I grew up.  In those days little boys didn't question what their elders shared 'over their heads'; we either learned by listening quietly or, as in this case, only as a result of unearthing the family history as a retired adult.

His father, James Francis was born in March 1835 and, at the age of 21, married my 3 x great-aunt, Mary Ann Sturgeon.  By 1871 he was an 'engine driver', and ten years later was more clearly described as a 'threshing engine proprietor', which remained his occupation for the rest of his life.  In 1902, after almost 46 years of childless marriage, Mary Ann died.  Two years or so later, James married his niece, Sarah, who promptly presented him with a son ... Archie.  I think my mother and her family were mildly amused by the fact that this distant relative had suddenly become a father at the age of 70 ... or maybe it tickled them that, at the age of 25, Archie went on to marry his cousin (the daughter of Sarah's elder sister), who was some four-and-a-half years his senior!

James died in 1916 and, still only in her early 40s, Sarah was married the following year to John Boggis.  (I think it was a descendant of John's brother who married the Sarah I mentioned above.)  My grandfather's aunt Sarah had clearly held on to the business that her late husband had built up over the decades, hence her rather unusual occupation on the census form, 'threshing engine proprietress'.  The same logic would prevail regarding the choice of June for a holiday, and why not take her unemployed son with her?  The business could clearly look after itself for a week.

As indeed it did; in 1939, Archie was recorded as a threshing contractor and, two households further on, was John Boggis, a threshing engine owner.  Whether one owned what the other used is anyone's guess, but it's likely they were in business together.

Crocodile and Blue Wave Experience

Yesterday afternoon's lovely sunshine brought to mind an incident - well, a whole series of 'incidents', if I'm honest - nearly 65 years ago that I thought worthy of bringing to a broader public.  It goes to show how different were life, the townscape and social norms then compared to now.

After lunch on a sunny Friday, three or four dozen eight- or nine-year-olds were formed into an excited crocodile and walked forth, two by two, across the school playground.  At the gate in the corner, they made a 180-degree turn to the right, into the footpath that ran alongside the outside of the playground.  Once out of sight of the school building, and a bit further along, they turned into a gateway on the opposite side of the path.  This led them into a public meadow, with a square patch in the middle roped off to protect the town's cricket pitches.

The children kept well away from the square and made for a cluster of wartime Nissen huts and sheds, passing as they did so a fence on their right-hand-side beyond which some of the elder boys used to have their gardening lessons.  They made their way along a well-trodden path between the buildings and through another gateway, turning right into an open area through which ran a broad, straight path, wide enough to be a road.  In point of fact, it wasn't many years afterward that this would indeed be its fate, as it became the main thoroughfare of a completely new housing estate.

At the end of this broad pathway, as they walked towards the bright sun, they came to a wrought-iron gate, beyond which was the main road out of the town.  Often this gate would be set open, and the leading children knew that they had to stop here and wait for all the others to catch them up.  When all were assembled, the trek continued, along the pavement, keeping carefully away from the kerb.  Eventually their destination was sighted on the opposite side of the road and, closely watched and monitored by those in charge, they crossed the road and entered the grounds of the Blue Wave Swimming Pool.

This ritual occupied Friday afternoons all through the summer term, supervised by two of the senior teachers: one male and one female, sometimes accompanied by the school secretary.  Here, the male teacher taught the children the basic swimming strokes, demonstrating vertically on the poolside the motions to be copied horizontally in the water.  Somehow this geometric transition didn't confuse the children and in the course of the term many succeeded, first of all in overcoming their fear of the water itself, and then finding the confidence to launch forth supported by the water and actually achieve forward movement, first over 10 yards, then over increasing distances up to 220 yards!  Each stage of progress was rewarded by a certificate.

Depending on our pre-existing circumstances, the skill of swimming wasn't all that was learned.  Boys who had no sisters discovered the sight of female legs to an extent hitherto unknown ... and this before they were aware of the erotic nature of such an experience.  There were others, who had thus far lived under the close control of doting mothers who did far more than they taught, so far as their children's development was concerned; they had to be shown the technique of drying themselves once out of the water.  I suspect that, in the case of the girls, there was a far smaller innovative degree of subsidiary discovery, they likely having had a more comprehensive domestic growing up already.

For my part, it was a skill once learned that kept me occupied and to a great extent out of mischief for several summers, and the overall experience led to a degree of self-confidence that - although I may not have realised it at the time - has equipped me for the whole of my adult life.

Thass loike I saay ... teark loife as 't come

Some things happen one day and are gone from memory the next.  Others stay for decades, as bright and fresh (or so I believe!) as the day they happened.  One that came to mind the other day dates back to my first year of married life, and a dining-room incident while on holiday; another that I recalled the same day stems from my pre-school days, when my mother took me into the shop where, not five years previously, she would have been working in the days before her marriage.  A third recollection comes to mind even as I ponder narrating two incidents of the week just past.  

I'm something of a natural mimic.  When I was driving for a living, I had to be careful when delivering in another part of the country, not to lapse into the local accent.  Quite apart from the likelihood of 'not getting it quite right', there was always the possibility that someone would be offended if they thought I was taking the mickey at the way they talked.  One day I'd been given a job to the Newcastle area and by the time I'd gone the five miles to collect it, I was already muttering to myself 'in Geordie'!

I can't help wondering whether this ability bears some relationship to my delight in languages.  In my days at the local grammar school, I recall getting 98% for French in my first form examination.  In these days of possibly greater wisdom, I find myself being more careful about accents, and I only lapse into the broad tones of my youth on the Norfolk-Suffolk border when I'm among people with whom I'm completely at ease.

Two incidents this week have brought these things to mind.  On Sunday morning after the coffee and chatter that followed our Meeting for Worship, I said something to one of the elders as I was leaving in just that broad accent that I've described ... and realised what an indication that was of how 'at home' I feel in their company.

For the last few months I've been going most Thursdays to a community coffee morning in the town.  This week, instead of a simple quiz to tax our minds, we were asked to help wrap children's presents for Santa Claus to distribute when he comes along next month.  I had been cutting paper off a large roll to fit the books that others were wrapping. When the last of the paper sprang free from the tube within, I turned to the lady sitting next to me and, without thinking, imitated the accent I've been surrounded by for the last year and more as I commented. "Ah've coom to t'end o' t'roll; Ah'm goin' 'oom."

That was an example of the other aspect of my experiences.  I clearly had no fears about offending her ... although, in point of fact, she's only been here a few years herself, after moving up from Bristol, so it wasn't her accent I was imitating.  Instead, she was quite amused and possibly a bit surprised, since I'm usually quite quiet and restrained.

It all goes to show how well I've settled into a new pattern of life.  One aspect of this new shape to things is retiring to the lounge in the evening, and so I'm no longer tempted to carry on working at my desk until bedtime, as would often have been the case before I moved out of the flat.  Instead, I use my old laptop to watch a selection of You-Tube videos.  Two in particular, I find extremely relaxing.  

One is The Mindful Narrowboat, presented by a lady cruising the canal system with her dog.  She has an eye for nature and is also quite artistic, for each vlog ends with an 'over-the-shoulder' shot of her entry in a beautiful notebook, in which a poetic summary of the foregoing scenes accompanies coloured sketches of birds, animals or plants that she has noticed along the way. It's rather in the style of 'The Diary of an Edwardian Lady'.

The second video is called Linguoer Mechanic, this one featuring a young oriental lady.  The posts follow a common pattern, with no narrative at all.  She collects a rusty or corroded piece of machinery, dismantles it and cleans each part, before painting and rebuilding the whole, and finally demonstrating it working once more as it did when new.  I'm amazed how she knows what bit goes where!

I Want Apple Crumble!

I make no bones about it, and readily confess that apple crumble is by far my favourite dessert dish.  As a virtually self-taught and very limited cook, it's one that I can manage quite well, with the help of a proprietary brand of crumble mix, an ever-present item in my store cupboard.

Switch on your imagination for a moment, dear reader.  Imagine that, instead of blazing this desire abroad in a blog, I had announced my wishes to a loving and supportive wife.  Imagine further that her response was "But we haven't any apples, darling."  Imagine even further my rejoinder: "That's all right, dear, we've got lots of eggs."  Depending on factors outwith this hypothetical narrative, the outcome would be anything within the range from sympathetic laughter, to "don't be silly!", to grounds for divorce.

This weekend the second-class citizens of this country, who happen to live in Northern Ireland, have been told that they will soon be filing into the polling stations to elect a new Assembly.  Why?  Basically it's because the existing Assembly has been unable to appoint a Speaker and therefore is unable to operate the democratic institution to which its members have been elected.

The Northern Ireland Secretary in Westminster has looked in the store cupboard of legislation, found the shelf where there are instructions for what to do when an Assembly has been unable to govern and - apparently without looking any further - has said 'Ah yes, well you've had six months to try, you'll have to have another election.' Solution provided, problem solved, next business please.  

Only it isn't ... and it won't be.  

The reason the present Assembly has been unable to operate is not that it couldn't come to a decision, but that one party has stubbornly - but possibly with good cause - refused to take part in any discussion towards that decision.  There's little indication that the outcome of a new election will be very different from the present Assembly, and when it's all done and dusted, the new Assembly will face the same problem as the old.  Does the population have to wait another six months with no one to take important and increasingly urgent decisions in the government of the country ... only to face another unproductive - and very expensive - election?

The underlying problem, as Sir Geoffrey Donaldson (DUP leader) succinctly stated on BBC R4's Today programme yesterday, is that, so long as the present arrangements for trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK result in a tariff being charged on goods crossing the Irish Sea, the people of Northern Ireland will remain at a financial disadvantage compared to their fellows in Great Britain or, as he put it, 'be second-class citizens' of a supposedly United Kingdom.  Whether or not he and his party are right to hold his countrymen hostage in this way and deprive them of normal government for months on end is, to some extent, a separate question.

The Secretary of State has to remove his blinkers and realise that eggs won't make an apple crumble.  If he - or his colleagues in the Westminster government - don't address the fundamental difficulty (no apples), no progress will be made, however many eggs (or elections) he provides, in the production of apple crumble (stable and effective government).

I wrote here recently about the basic impossibility of squaring the circle of Northern Ireland, Brexit and the resulting need for a border somewhere.  I don't propose to repeat that here.  What I will say is that to me - and I expect to thousands of others - the solution is blindingly obvious, and one that would resolve other difficulties at the same time.  The UK must seek to re-join the Single Market and Customs Union, the severance from which, as part of Brexit, caused the need for a border in the first place.

The Elephant in the Room!

Well, it's happened.  Many have been foreseeing it for some while.  This patchwork quilt has come apart at the seams - I can't with any realism add 'at last' - and it is seen for what it was ... a pretence, a sham, something thrown together to give someone the transitory pleasure of holding the top job, a job for which she was never fit.  Now she has resigned and we are subjected yet again to see the members of a once respectable political party thrashing around like rats in a sack as they try to find yet another leader who will, incidentally, be saddled with the responsibility of running the government of the country.

What's behind it all?  Some would say it's a combination of world events: the Covid-19 pandemic; the war in Ukraine and its resulting effect on energy prices; a global decline in economic growth.  Some go further, and are persuaded to admit a degree of incompetence in leadership.  A few risk being labelled as 'Remoaners' or 'Remainers', as they suggest that the effects of these international matters have been made worse for this country by the self-inflicted difficulties and isolation resulting from Brexit.  Although that was some years ago now, these effects have become visible at last in the form of increased (and apparently unforeseen) levels of bureaucracy and paperwork that have frustrated - and in many cases totally annihilated - international trade and have, at the same time, generated political frustration in Northern Ireland that is yet to be resolved.

Is that all?  No.  The roots of the present fiasco stretch back much further than that.  If you have 6 minutes to spare, listen to this interview with trade union leader Mick Lynch.  He specifically refers to situations created decades ago in many industries, not just his own.  

Many background aspects of British life were distorted and made more difficult to operate by the introduction of a raft of private companies to manage them.  Naturally, private companies have shareholders, and shareholders expect dividends.  And where do these dividends come from?  In part, I expect, from the efficiencies that were introduced by commercial managers as they competed with each other for business.  But in far greater measure, I suggest, they come from increased prices to those using the services, whether it be transport, energy or clean water and sewerage facilities.  And of course there's another component to commercial management - bonuses: bonuses that can be fairly easily won, and are, in effect, a virtually guaranteed addition to an already generous salary.  These, too, have to be met by either increased productivity or turnover (which is another term for increased prices, when the consumption of those services is relatively stable).

But what is really behind all this trauma?

My Bible readings this week have been in the book of Jeremiah.  There are many parallels with the present political situation.  The nation is under threat.  An invading army is just beyond the borders and people's leaders are turning in fear to their spiritual mentors for help.  They are told in no uncertain terms that this is a peril they have brought upon themselves.  They have not fulfilled the responsibilities of leadership.  This is what they should be doing: "Administer justice every morning; rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed." (Jer. 21:12); "Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place." (Jer. 22:3)

You can read these two chapters in full here.  They illustrate the penalties of selfish rule and oppression in many guises.  These penalties can be readily understood in terms familiar to us, living two millennia and more later.  The underlying truths are still valid today.  Both as a nation and in the way our governments have led us down the decades, although efforts have been made to improve the lives of individuals, we have moved away from the basics of how man should treat his fellow man.  Instead of being the servant of the people, the state has become their oppressor.  Instead of welcoming the foreigner in need - as was the case eighty-odd years ago - we have shut our doors, closed our boundaries and barricaded ourselves with punitive legislation - poorly administered - against any acts of international human generosity.  

I fear we will all pay the price for the neglect exercised by those we elect.

A Flick Through the Diary

It's been an interesting couple of weeks.  Quite apart from my car journey last weekend and its unexpected ending (see last week's post here), lots of other 'stuff' has happened.  There have been acute aspects of long-term matters, expected developments and surprises.  Such a mix deserves more than just a place on the diary page!

Let's start in the kitchen.  For many years, it's been my habit to split a loaf of bread into three and store it thus in the freezer, removing one third of a loaf at a time for use.  The reason for this is simply to prevent the end of a loaf from going mouldy before I get around to using it.  For this process I use old bread bags to pack two portions of each new loaf into and, in order not to introduce any contamination - and thereby undermine my aims from the outset - I sterilise them first by popping them in the microwave for half a minute.

This week, I followed my usual habit, but the microwave objected, expressing its feelings with a flash, a bang and a puff of smoke.  After packing the bread away in the freezer in un-sterilised bags, I ventured gingerly to test the microwave with a mug of water.  To my surprise and great relief, the water got warm and I've used the machine quite normally ever since without further mechanical protest.

Before we leave the 'engine room', I have to admit a superlative degree of procrastination when it comes to maintenance arrangements.  Over the last few months the hot tap has begun to drip.  It moves easily enough to the off position but, it still allows water to drip out unless I apply pressure at the 'head' of the tap.  Once I release that pressure the drips recommence.   One night, out of curiosity, I measured how much was being wasted and found that almost a litre had accumulated from bedtime to breakfast.  Inspired by recent videos of the discoveries as the level of water in the nearby reservoirs has got lower and lower, and realising that my drips are contributing to this decline, I finally called the agent yesterday to arrange for a plumber to visit.

Last week the postman delivered a large cheque from a finance company.  It looked real so, in great excitement, I paid it into my account.  On looking closely at the covering letter, however, I became suspicious that this could be a scam.  There were many factors, but one in particular was the sentence about 'if you have difficulties in banking this cheque', which invited me to 'provide your bank details to us on the above number and we will cancel the cheque and pay the funds into your bank account.'  I decided to leave the money in my account for a few days to see whether it would be clawed back once the banking system discovered it wasn't real.  Meanwhile I wrote to the company expressing my misgivings.

Deciding this week that sufficient time had passed, and that reclamation would have happened if it were going to, I distributed the cash: some to charities, some to savings and some left for current use.  Within hours of my doing this, I had a phone call from the finance company explaining that the cheque was genuine.  After expressing my relief, I asked for more explanation.  It transpires that one of my pension policies had a 'guaranteed minimum pension' clause and, at the time my Financial Advisor had arranged the transfer of this policy as part of tidying up my occupational pensions, its value didn't meet that guarantee provision.  What I have now received is compensation for this oversight ... some nine years after the event!

The flow of my editing work for WEBBS has dried up for the moment.  On one hand this has allowed me to focus on other things, such as family history, but it also leads me to feel unfulfilled as regards my contribution to the charity's work.  My supervisor is taking advantage of this lull to offer help to another team who are coping with an urgent request and, as a result, some of this week has been spent 'back in the typing pool', keyboarding scriptures in the Balochi language.

And - last for this post - I can report that my development work as church treasurer has reached a 'plateau'.  I've finally agreed my 'DIY ledger' on Excel to the embryonic system I've been setting up on QuickBooks and, when three bank statements arrived this week, I was able to enter them with some confidence into both systems.

What excitements will the next weeks hold, I wonder?

Wrong Turnings

Many a good novel or play of the past has carried a subtitle: I offer but two examples, which you may or may not recognise: "or What You Will"  and "or The Mistakes of a Night".  This may not be in the same league, but today I offer one of my own to apply to what I'm about to write: "or Oh, I Know Where I Am Now".

When I started driving for a living, the number of times I'd driven within the M25 could be counted on one hand ... two at the most. I've often told of praying for a red traffic light so that I could snatch a quick peek at the map on the seat beside me.  Eventually I learned my way around the metropolis, and my subtitle above was often muttered after following the map from one new destination to another.

Since moving to Yorkshire last summer, I've had to undergo just such a customisation.  At first it was finding a shorter way to join the M1 southbound to avoid a lengthy dog-leg via the A1(M) and the M18.  The first route I took was to junction 35 by way of Swinton, Rawmarsh and the outskirts of Rotherham.  Then I found a shorter way through Mexborough and Conisbrough to junction 1 of the M18 and, more recently I've discovered an even shorter route to emerge at junction 31.

In each case, having noted my chosen route from the map (SatNav was no use because, as soon as I turned away from its suggestion, it was trying to turn me back again), I found I had to make the journey quite a number of times before I got it right, and I've lost count of the number of times I've told my cousin that I 'took a wrong turning at so-and-so'.  The worst of it was, having checked with the map and realised where I went wrong, I then got that bit right next time, but made a different error instead.

During the Covid pandemic, having enjoyed many of their zoom lectures, I decided to join the Western Front Association, and last month I attended my first live meeting of the Yorkshire branch.  The route was quite straightforward: A1(M), A64 and the York ring road.  The only trouble was that virtually every time I'd driven up that part of the A1 I'd been going further, and by the time I spotted the A64 turning, I was in the wrong lane, still heading for Scotland!  I only just got to the meeting in time!

Today I went to the next meeting.  It was very good, and the speaker excellent.  I made sure I was in the right lane at the right time and the journey was hitch-free.  The bug was still with me, however. and I muffed getting on to the little side road to get me onto the village roads between the A1(M) and home.  Instead of heading for my own front door, I was on the main road again, heading back towards Leeds!

Needless to say, I took the first possible escape route.  I battled with totally unknown winding lanes and the blinding low-angled sun in my face, and at last I uttered that well worn subtitle again. I'd arrived in Hooton Pagnell, a beautiful village of stone buildings that I pass through if I go to watch Frickley Athletic play football.