Channeling my great grandfather

Yesterday we saw a small flock of sheep run past our garden gate. They were on a mission, but being sheep, had forgotten what it was.

I phoned a neighbour who told us later they had been captured and their wooly bottoms had scuttled reluctantly home.

This morning, on a rare walk towards our hills, I was almost knocked over by the same flock, skipping down the 'long acre' looking for clover.

Thankfully another neighbour happened to be walking in the opposite direction. She had been the one who had got them into a paddock yesterday. Between us we gathered them up. She ran ahead and opened the gate on a neighbours field. I got behind them and ran them to the right side of the road. They stopped abruptly and started to graze. Then another neighbouring farmer's dogs started to bark which was enough to get the wooly bums hopping through the gate and be secured, until next time.

I had to smile. I have been doing family history research for 6 years, picking up the mantle of my late father. We're an ordinary bunch, no skeletons in cupboards, no hidden aristocrats (at least on my dad's side). We used to joke that we came from a long line of shepherds and sheep rustlers.

I rest my case.

The bungalow on the corner

My dad was a man of many talents. He was a trained toolmaker and spent his working life controlling a massive lathe, making very intricate pieces of machinery. He started with severe osteoarthritis in his 40s, partly the product of standing on cold concrete floors in draughty factories and shipyards.

He was also a very gifted handyman and gardener. When he and mum bought their first home, it was bought from a plan, and needed a lot of personalising to make it into a home. Dad did this by making the most amazing rose garden, lawns and a garden wall, complete with hundreds of succulent plants. I clearly remember him building it from different coloured bricks and stones. It was a masterpiece.

After Dad died, I had the job of going through the hundreds of slides he kept in the wardrobe in the family home. This was one of them. So many memories. I think I was four years old and I remember clearly him building the wall I am stood next to, so this must be one of my earliest memories.

Mum was equally clever with her hands. She made the dress I am so proudly showing off!

A moment of the ordinary in time and space

Tonight I had the most bizarre experience. I was trawling through the internet, trying to find ANY information about my great grandfather's family. In the process of increasingly more desperate and random searches, I came across the website of the photographer and postcard producer Francis Frith. They took photos all over Britain of villages and towns, large and small from the 1860s onwards, although inevitably the bulk were as cameras became less complicated and less expensive to use, producing postcards for the mass market.

I did a search for my father's village, and lo and behold I saw a photo of a Morris Minor that my dad inherited from his godmother. I'd seen the photo before in a book about Morris Minors, so that wasn't a complete surprise. The site invites you to give comments or information on the photos and so I was able to write a small blurb about the family who bought the car from new in the 1950s, and my family's connection with that family.

But then the BIG surprise. I decided to go through all the other photos of the village. There is only one main street and I have very distinct memories of it from my childhood as we spent every weekend there with my grandparents. In the 1960s there were still lots of independent shops. There was a Co-op (my grandma was a great fan of the Co-op and had shares), the Post Office, several pubs, a fish and chip shop, a library and two grocers.

There before me was a photo of the main road and two women walking on the footpath, one elderly. I took one look at the older woman's gait (flat feet) and the way she buttoned her cardigan, and knew it was my grandmother. Next to her, holding her handbag in a distinctive fashion was my mother. They were conversing and walking on the opposite side of the road to the Coop, heading towards home probably via the Post Office. Such an ordinary, unexceptional view, with the two most important women in my life in it! I am hoping to purchase a copy of the photo, and if I succeed, I will add it here.

Life lessons from a bramble bush

I am COVERED in scratches. With even the best evasion tactics and gloves, I could not avoid it. Over two days we have both had a go at a monstrous blackberry bush (bramble) that has been growing out of reach behind several other bushes and trees. It had gone nuclear so something had to be done.

Our neighbour has also tackled it from her driveway. Still it growled at us.

Half way through hacking and clipping, with overhead branches pulling my hair, and thorns ripping my wrists, I had a glimmer of hope.

There, at eye height, in one of the dense bushes, was an exquisite bird's nest. She had very cleverly parked herself out of sight, and beyond predator reach behind the thick wall of tangled thorns.

I couldn't see the nest from the lawn or the neighbour's driveway. I had to get through the thorns and the challenges of branches that were dangerous in order to see new life.

There is something sweetly victorious about this. Here's to keeping bramble bushes at bay, so that new life can grow and be nurtured.

Book illustrations 1936

I have one book from Dad's childhood. It was given to him by his god-mother, Miss Eva Creaser. She lived in the village where he was raised and was a doting member of his extended family. I met her as a child and went to garden parties in her large house.

In 1936 she gave my dad a book published by Blackie called "Read a story"

Here are some of the charming illustrations. Three of them could be prescient of his future daughter - a little girl threading beads, another one about to go on a journey and most important of all, a girl posting letters!

Grandma and the Temperance League

I am still finding tiny mysteries amongst the family ephemera. Yesterday I was looking through the few books remaining from my grandma's library. In the fly leaf of one entitled "Cradle Songs" I found the following:

Lady Aurea was the daughter of Lady Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle. Lady Rosalind was a leading light in the Temperance Movement and insisted that tenants on the family estates "take the pledge". My grandmother was one such, as was her sister. I have the certificates to prove it!

Lady Aurea was older than my grandmother by a number of years. The book was given to grandma just before Lady Aurea's first marriage. But it is the date which is puzzling. Grandma was a teacher of small children (primary school age), so the subject of the book is not surprising. It is full of poems and nursery rhymes for little people. But why 4th July? This wasn't my grandmother's birthday. It could be the date she took the pledge I suppose. I am familiar with the "people from The House" giving out Christmas gifts to tenants and servants, but again, the date is wrong. Grandma also taught Sunday School in the village which was part of Castle estate. But Sunday School gifts were usually given at Easter or Pentecost.

4th of July.

I wonder why?

When a lawn becomes a meadow

Our lawn goes like crazy close to Christmas. The chap who cuts the grass for us has no hope of keeping up with it. But I love it. I love the fact that the yellow flowers attract bees and butterflies.