2006-04-05
I much appreciate those of you who have dropped by, especially those who left me a note, over the last couple of weeks. Like a few of my friends here I’m in a bit of a hiatus as far as writing is concerned. For some reason I seem to have lacked motivation for putting things down on the keyboard but I’m sure it’ll pass. As I said – the layout of this new office isn’t exactly conducive to feeling that I have the privacy to write without someone appearing behind me. My normal time for writing here and to Jo used to be in the half hour before I went home and I had hoped that that would prove to still be OK because there are few people about at that time. But somehow I find my own eyes drawn by what the handful of bodies still in the building are up to, so I imagine everyone else is doing the same. Probably I’m being paranoid. But I already started to consider that Jo will be sitting next to me soon and much as I am looking forward to that, I don’t really want her to know about this. At one time I really swithered about letting her read – especially when you guys were being so supportive – but now I’m rather glad I kept it from her.So what’s been going on with you all? What’s been going on with me? I’ve done what I hoped I wouldn’t. I became a cycling-bore. The new office is located somewhere where there is absolutely no chance of parking. The first day I came in by bus, which is really very easy, relatively cheap (good old Labour councils eh?) but takes forever. First morning it was pouring with rain and I was confined alongside someone who had both a streaming cold and, the tell-tale signs showed, a hangover. You know me – emetophobe – I worried for the whole hour in that the raking cough was going to bring up last night’s consumption. And going home took about as long (if more comfortable) so the second day I took the Fatman’s advice and got on the bike (well Jack’s bike actually). 25 minutes to work, 38 minutes home – I live at the top of a long hill! And since then I have actually been enjoying conversations about which route to take, where the worst pot-holes are [at which point we break-off to deplore the hose-pipe ban in the south of England where the water companies admit ONE THIRD of the water they produce leaks into the ground because they don’t repair their pipes often enough!] and the merits of fingerless cycling mittens over woollen winter gloves. And then there’s gel saddle covers and wipe-down lycra. And I already hate myself saying and thinking these things. But as soon as it becomes commonplace to me I promise everyone I’ll stop thinking about it.
Next week I’ll be away on holiday with my parents. Lynne and I decided they’re just getting too old these days for us to for and stay with them – it’s too much for them to cope with – so we’re taking them away to a holiday cottage down in Suffolk just so’s we get some time together and don’t let another whole year pass without seeing anything of them My sister and brother are coming for the weekend too and we’re all going to go out looking for dead (and maybe live) relatives. I’ve been spending a little time sifting through old census returns on the internet and working out where the various parts of my family came from. It turns out more than half of my 16 great-great grandparents were within about thirty miles of each other in the 1850’s although as the assembling of the pieces that created me all happened in different parts of London none of them will ever have come into contact with each other. I know researching family history is fairly commonplace these days (because it’s easy) – and yes that’s another area in which I would compete for a place in the Bore-for-England team – but my parents actually attempted to do it back in the early 1950’s. Back then it was a question of writing off to vicars in the area you hoped were relevant and asking them to look up (or let you do it) dusty old parish registers. My father has never owned a car so he used to get on buses to distant places and hope for the best. When I told him I’d started looking into this he looked out all of his old records and handed them over. He discovered a few generations back but had just missed out on the vital clue. From what I can see, for 150 years my family (that is the paternal line) lived in one village which he got close to, but never visited. So that’s where we’re going, to see if we can find any gravestones and living descendants. And just ten miles away is another village where my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother came from. So we’ll go there for her.