Gosh, how time flies!

Is it really that long since I last posted? I have been really busy with everything from work to clearing the snow!

This time, I would like to blog about everyday things that we take for granted. In the UK, there is a new series on the television, a re-make of the very good series of the 1970's, called Survivors, a very thought-provoking scernario.

For those who haven't seen it, or those outsiode the UK, it is about the people left after a major flu outbreak. (The cause of the loss of population could be anything really!) The main idea is, what would the people left after the loss of 90% of the population of the globe, do?

It really is an eye-opener, the people who we think of as leaders are useless in that scenario, the people who are needed are actually the ones who have basic knowledge; how to milk a cow, how to cook what you have, how to kill an animal and prepare it for cooking, how to light a fire etc etc. In fact, although they haven't shown it, the only people who wouldn't actually care about the situation are the people who live on basics anyway! The people of the jungles, Eskimos, African tribesmen etc. The people who are in the "rich" nations would be totally lost without their computers, electricity, comunications systems, cars, pre-packed foods, freezers, fridges, water on tap, the list could go on ad-infinitum.

The funny thing is, the people who are left are trying to replicate their old living conditions, putting a lot of effort into finding luxuries and not placing basics at the top of the list. It is a very interesting and thought provoking excersise, do it next time you have an hour to spare, think about how you would cope if all your home comforts around you were gone and you had to start from scratch. Most modern houses would be useless because they haven't got a fire-place and that is just a start! The best houses to live in would be old Elizabethan Manor Houses because they have massive fires and kitchens that you can actually cook in. Ever tried boiling an electric kettle on an open fire? Fuel, wood and coal, would be worth more than oil and central heating would be useless as there would be no electricity to pump the water around.

Just think about it, it will amaze you just how many things would be useless and how many "important", rich people would be taken down to the lowest of the low in such a catastrophe.

Look at your ancestors and how they would have coped, before 1800, it would have had little effect really, as most of the population were relatively self-sufficient. They were able to live off the land and had no home comforts anyway! The more we have, the more we have to lose and the less we know about "how to live", how many of us could actually kill and butcher a pig? How many of us could make bread? (Don't forget that you need yeast and flour to make bread and the stuff in shops would soon go mouldy.) How many of us know where the nearest well is? How do you make soap? etc etc.

Give it some thought and thank your own God that, today, you don't have to live like your ancestors in 1800, or, if you are like me, my ancestors in the town slums of the 1930's and the village cottages in the 1960's!

Glynn

:)

Age is just a number!

I haven't written anything for a while as I have had "man-flu" and, before that, had a long week-end in the Loire valley in France.

The week-end in France has to have been one of the most enjoyable times of my life. As everyone who has had any dealings with the French know, their parties go on for days and their hospitality knows no bounds.

When I was at school in the early 1970's, I had a French pen-friend, as many of us did, but the difference with my pen-friend and I was that we kept in touch. When we left school, Patrick came over for a holiday with his mates and when I went to work in an hotel in 1978, after training at college, I stayed with his family for a week on the way home.

Patrick was my best man and his parents and wife came to my wedding. His family are really my family and vice-versa. When he rings my parents, he says "Hello Mum!"

My wife and I travelled to France the day after the tunnel was closed due to the fire, but the organisation was superb and we actually arrived on French soil a little earlier after travelling by ferry than we should have done if we had caught our scheduled train! The trip on the motorway was uneventful till we got to Paris and we took a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of Paris! Luckily, at a traffic light, I asked a lady if I was going in the right direction and she told me that I needed to turn around and go back! We got there in the end!

The party started then, Friday night, family meal and Saturday morning family breakfast. The rest of the 100 guests arrived at 1pm on Saturday and that went on with aperativs, lunch, wine, champagne, family entertainment, disco, band, dancing, magic, sing-songs etc etc till 1.30am.

The Sunday started with family breakfast for 30, lunch for 27 and dinner for a more cozy 12.

It was great to see my pen-friend's parents again as they have moved to the south of France and I haven't seen them for 19 years. Patrick and I generally get to see each-other and immediate families most years, but it is great to see the whole family and friends again. One of his friends, who also had an English pen-friend, was there and it was great to see him again after all these years.

We left at 5.30am on the Monday and came back to reality, a fantastic few days, reminding me that I can't really be 15, as Patrick was celebrating his 50th birthday and, as he always was six months older than me, I must be heading up that way too.

Can't be can I?

Glynn

:)

Gravestones

I know, not a very "nice" thing to talk about, but to me, a gravestone can be one of the most interesting and informative objects that we family historians can find.

Most Churches are lovely to walk around and to feel at ease in, just being in a Church makes me feel peaceful and relaxed. To visit a Church that was used by my ancestors is always a very special event for me. Just thinking that my own family walked up that same pathway and through that same doorway into the very same building and worshipped in that very space is just mind-blowing. The Font in my local Church has the date 1603 on it and one of my ancestors was baptised in that very Font in 1620. Just think, those numerals were fresh when that event took place! Subsequent family members were baptised in that Font (not me though as I was baptised in the Methodist Chapel) and numerous members of the family have married and been buried in the village before and since.

Funnily enough though, there are just two MIs to that family in the grave-yard, we were mostly from Agricultural Labouring stock and obviously didn't go much for memorials!

One of the best MIs I have seen was during a transcribing project I helped with in another local Church-Yard. I, luckily, was given the area concerned to "do" and I came across this stone much to my excitement. It was to a Crimean Veteran and his Army career as well as some details of his time in the Police force were noted on his memorial. I duly took down all the information and we decided that this was a good project for the Society to carry out. Some other members and I set about finding as much as we could about this man and what a journey that was.

From just one small insignificant stone in a mid-Norfolk grave-yard, we now have the story of this one man from his birth in bastardy, his service record, the details of where he fought and what was going on at those battles, his injuries, his marriage, his joining the Police force (with his signature on the form), his death and his wife's subsequent marriage. Not only that, but we also found that his mother and her husband emigrated to Australia and we have a lot of information about the family in Australia.

All that stemmed from just one little stone in a Church-Yard in Norfolk.

Next time you are looking around the stones in a grave-yard, keep a good look out, you never know what you will find.

Glynn

If a picture paints a thousand words

then why can't I paint you? The world will never know, the you I've come to know...........

No, don't worry, I've not gone totally mad!

I am just thinking about our family photographs and what we do with them. I normally, if I think of it, write on the back, in soft pencil, the name, dates and details of the person concerned.

I have this lovely picture of my great, great, great grandmother, Lydia. She was a wonderful lady, in my mind anyway.

Born in 1812 and married in 1831. She had her first child in 1832, lost her husband in the same year and re-married in 1834. From her second marriage, she added another twelve children to her family, though two died as infants. Her second husband died in 1868 and she went on to live to the very end of the century, laid to rest on the 29th December 1899.

Her photograph shows me an elderly lady, but I know a lot more about this face that looks at me from the C19th. I know her descendants have spread all over this world. They live in Canada, Australia, France and my Mum, her great great granddaughter, still lives in the village that she called home for her entire life.

There is no marker to where she was laid to rest, but her genes live on, who needs a memorial, I'm her memorial!

Glynn

Queues outside the bathroom........

I have had a busy couple of days and today, I have been putting together some information for my book about living conditions in the 19th Century. It is amazing how far we have come in a few years.

This morning, I was in the garden having a coffee with my wife when I saw the bathroom blind go down. I had wanted to get into the bathroom before going into town, but the blind going down signalled that the bathroom was going to be out of bounds for at least 30 minutes as our 17 year-old son had beat me to it! I did some more paperwork and then stood outside the door making a nuisance of myself till a towel-clad teenager appeared, in no particular hurry, "I'll be out in a minute!" door closes and teeth brushing noises, then door opens, big grin and I get in at last!

The reason I'm telling you this is that I have been looking through a newspaper of 1850 and a little part of it is included here. Most 1850 newspapers are very boring, but I find the adverts and specially the property auction adverts, to be fascinating. We only have one bathroom, we have another wc downstairs, but only one bathroom. More and more people are having en-suite bathrooms these days, some houses are being built with all en-suites and I expect one day, it will be only the poor who have the one bathroom for a family to share.

When I was a child, we had a bathroom indoors because my uncle and my Dad had put the bath in, but we had a toilet down the yard, it was bucket under a wooden seat. My grandparents had an outside toilet too, but theirs was very scary to me as it was just a big hole in the ground, a vault that my grandfather had to dig out every so often. At least we had our own toilets.

These poor people in 1850 had to share an outside privy with other houses! You will see, from the advert, that the seven houses shared a privy on the property of No 2, what it doesn't tell you is how many people that included. In 1851 there were people of those names apart from Robert Sadler, all living in the same lane, (Paradise Lane), those people appear to have had to share the same privy, (it could have been more than one seat), how many people were living there in 1851? 47! Yes forty-seven! Yet I am moaning about not being able to get into the bathroom when I want?

How times change!

Glynn

Grey Days

Oh well, some days are good and some days are not so good. You know what I mean, the times you get up and wish you could swap your head over, like Worzell Gummage.

We went for a bike ride today to blow the cobwebs away and it is great to get out into the Norfolk countryside.

This little chap looks ready to meet the world, Teddy at the ready, gosh weren't I sweet?

I must get up in the loft and see if Teddy is OK.

GB

World War II

Like most of you reading this, I am too young to remember the war. I count myself very lucky that I have never known fighting on our own shores, but I am also very aware that there are wars going on around us all the time, our own country deeply involved in them and our own men getting killed.

The thing that has bought this all up today is the local museum which is just up the road from where I live. It has held a "Village at War" weekend and there are hundreds of people there today, enjoying the sunshine and this afternoon we had a Spitfire and Hurricane fly over the house. Even I can recognise the drone of their engines!

I just feel so thankful to those men and women who fought so that we can be here today, in comfort. I don't want to get negative, but I often wonder what they would think if they saw how Great Britain has turned out.