Unusually for us we went to a party this evening. I'm rubbish at taking photos but got two of grandson making horrid faces. He did do some washing up and was thought to be charming by those who had had enough to drink.

More ancestors

I’ve spent many hours over the last ten days with the dead rather than the living, obsessively chasing my ancestors. It is a grand pastime - and possibly a gross waste of time, but doesn't cost nearly as much as a similar obsession would have done even twenty years ago, when journeys around graveyards, churches and Records Offices across much of England would probably have been necessary, and plenty of letter-writing to boot. Now, with so much interest in ancestry, the available sites have packed in the data. Thanks to outriders on the same family tree as me I have been able to discover so much in such a short amount of time it staggers me. One twig of my mother’s line has taken me back to 1536. It’s sad not to be able to put flesh on their bones. I imagine them as folk who didn’t move much from the village or hamlet of their birth, who kept their heads down tilling the soil, but all around them times were a’changing. Henry VIII was in full Reformation mode, laying waste to monasteries, and generally getting up the Pope’s nose. 1536 was the year of the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ one of the largest uprising against him.

Some disappointments have occurred: I haven’t a single drop of Welsh blood in me. The paternal line started in Hampshire and Wiltshire, moving into Wales only two generations back, probably in pursuit of work. My grandfather and his two sons by a first marriage worked as colliers, (‘timberman, underground’ I read in the useful census - what’s the plural of census?) My maternal line could have populated Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire by itself. They were all good breeders, regularly producing eleven children, most of whom seemed to survive. On helpful seeker after the same ancestor added the note that Joseph C had a wife and eleven children all of whom he left behind when he emigrated to America. he evidently expected the sons at least to follow him to a better life and was disappointed when they didn’t. eventually he returned to the place of his birth and died there. I’m glad to learn that at least one set of genes includes a questing, ambitious visionary. For the most part they were farmers, millers and carters of some substance but didn’t travel far outside their parish. The wives, if they were left widowed, became dressmakers. One poor soul was a charwomen at 60 with a son of 6 years (though as she had an unmarried daughter living at home I suspect he was the daughter’s child!)

I’ve also ‘met’ a distant cousin (I’m useless at working out relationships. She is my paternal grandfather’s sisters grandchild!) her father loved Scotland and wanted to live up here but his wife didn’t. They compromised by spending lots of holidays here and he died in Rosemarkie on the Black Isle where his ashes were duly scattered. It’s just over an hour’s drive from here so I shall make a pilgrimage to locate his spirit.

Now what do I do with all this arcane knowledge? If I were Chillsider I would sew a huge collage to hang at the back of my bed where there is a space just waiting for such an interesting, potentially beautiful, item, but I have neither the skill nor the patience. I suppose I could use glue.

Skeletons in closets

When my mother died and I found her mother's marriage certificate I realised she had been conceived out of wedlock. I was thrilled. It had always seemed such a dull family to be born into.

Things got even better when I got a computer and was able to do a bit more prying into the family cupboard. It seems her mother, my witch of a grandmother, had had her way with a 17 year old boy, since he was 18 when they got married.

A few years after that piquant discovery I received a letter from the half-brother I didn't know I had . He was the result of my 18 year old father's fling with a married woman whilst her husband was fighting for King and Country.

Today I find that my lovable but dotty Aunty Ivy, who in her autumn years swung on the garden gate singing hymns in her nightie, was probably not my father's sister but his cousin!

They might have told me.

Wordsmith

My favourite spinner of words was Oscar Wilde (Shakespeare invented them when he couldn't find one to fit. I like that too!)

Some quotes from Oscar:

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

Words

Events in Arizona have caused waves of reaction, possibly the most interesting and potentially useful being the recognition on a wide scale that words have power, can hurt, and the way they are strung together can carry great influence s the people who speak them are responsible for the results of what comes out of their mouths. Political hyperbole has reached such a fever pitch in the US that finally people are being forced to realise the likely results of telling their followers to take arms, regroup and reload, bring bigger weapons to bear, be warriors for the cause.

The president they have now is a thinker; he is quieter, better read, better educated, more intelligent, more in control of his own oratory and hopefully that too is sign that the American people are fed up with being led by ignorant puppets wearing cowboy hats. Hopefully it means that rootin’ tootin’ gunslinging Christians like Sarah Palin won’t have a chance at the White House whereas once upon a time she would have been a shoo-in, a George Dubya in skirts.

So much for self-righteousness. My week brought me two opportunities to experience just how difficult it is to keep an open mind and hold back from tack-spitting judgement. Not that I was roused to fever pitch by the 2 friends I lunched with but both in their ways provoked thoughts on subjects that I felt I had justifiable opinions about and the right to express those opinions.

Tuesday I lunched with J. We have children of a similar age so the conversation opens with an exchange of news from the family front. We agree that they may be in their thirties but we are just as anxious about them as when they were three and wish we could still pick them up and cuddle them to make everything better. It helps to talk to another mother like this and I hope J felt as warmed as I did by this part of the meeting. Then we moved on to books and films. We shared a liking for Buffy the Vampire Slayer but I couldn’t follow her into an equal enjoyment of the ‘Twilight’ series. Not that it’s a problem. What is a potential rock in the water is J’s pleasure to see the, to me inexplicable, insistence on celibacy before marriage. I’ve never seen the point of that and I’m constantly amazed at the growing following amongst the young. I’m also amazed by the assumption that it’s a ‘Christian’ virtue. Since when? Probably like most Biblical laws it arose from the social mores of the time. A father would get a better deal for a virgin daughter and no man likes his wife making a cuckold of him. Simple. Probably women liked the idea that men should remain faithful too - more security for them. It’s all very practical in context, and given the frailty of our human egos. I’m sure papers have been written on it but it looks pretty basic stuff to me. Times have changed. Saving oneself often leads to disappointment, but of course that can’t be admitted!

Second encounter to follow.

Linked in to everywhere.

Playing around with the iPad during the day is fun but limits me to exploring the internet because there's no word processing possibility, as far as I can tell. I chase up information then when I get bored with that I look up people I've lost contact with over the decades. Often I don't find them but yesterday I had two successes. Firstly I located the address of a cousin I haven't seen for 50 years. Shall I write? Probably not as I'm bad enough at writing to people already in my life, but the temptation is there because he may give me some clues about my father's family. I have huge gaps in my knowledge of my Welsh ancestry that I would like to fill.

Then I found someone who has left me with a rather bigger dilemma. A friend lost contact - broke contact - with his son some years ago. They had a row I think. I liked the young man, (my teenage daughters were rather taken with him as he is very handsome, like my friend) and I felt sad about the situation, which of course is nothing whatsoever to do with me but I always feel it's a tragedy when parents and children lose each other in that way. There must - in my head anyway - be pain and regret alongside the stubborness and bitterness. Maybe it's being an only child myself. Anyway, now I have the opportunity to change things, if it needs changing, because the son is on Facebook, large as life, in teeny tiny speedos that look like a posing pouch , standing in some blue water under a blue sky. I've have made no contact as yet but the dilemma is: do I assume my friend has also seen that his son is contactable or do I shut up?

Cock-a-doodle

Plinth-works coming soon to Trafalgar Square. For me the cockerel gets the big vote. It'll give the pigeons something to think about.

I was a bit concerned yesterday when I came across a link to one of my own blogs whilst looking up information. When I clicked on the link it took me to my 'manage your blog' page with my email in full view. I don't think that is supposed to be able to happen. ??

Calendars

Every year it takes me a month or two to find a calendar I can bond with. I like to choose a different artist or school each time. Last year it was Art Deco posters. I then have trouble parting with the prints but can find nothing stisfactory to do with them. It's a dilemma.

I also get this welcome present from the daughter of a friend in the USA. Each page must take her an age to assemble because almost every month contains a surprise envelope with cards she has designed herself, or inspirational mottoes and sayings. I have a book of sayings her mother collected while she was alive and I've added to it myself from time to time.

the electric chair.

In an attempt to make the staff more comfortable (me) boss-lady has bought this addition to the chair I sit in for 5 hours daily. The red lights that look like eyes are tough little nubbles that rotate whilst rising up and down the back giving the seated one a 'Shiatsu' massage. It even heats up while it's doing this. The massage is quite efficiently deep and painful so can only be endured for a couple of circuits. It does help to keep me awake..

The chair I got from Barry many years ago - if you are reading this Barry I wonder if you remember it? They made things to last in the old days!

Fishy dreams

I had two very small fish in a tank. These fish came to my attention because they seemed to be looking for something - needing something. I fed them but they weren’t interested in food. I filled up the tank with water because the level looked a bit low. S and I went looking for a shop that would sell us an aquarium and fish-keeping equipment but we couldn’t find one open. When we got back to the tank it was empty with one fish gasping on the bottom, lying across the plug hole (there shouldn’t be a plug hole in a fish tank I think!) It looked a bit weird but I didn’t investigate. I shouted to Sandy to help me refill the tank and then I woke up so I have no idea if the fish - one or both - survived.

Looking back the fish lying across the plug had an oddly human look about it.

OK, water is usually seen as symbolising emotions. Fish - well, all characters in a dream are me so perhaps my inner self (younger than my outer self and symbolised by my grandson?) needs emotional outlet. It’s a thought. can’t do much with it though - except write....

Tiny treasures

It was Sunday yesterday, the day of rest, and I was confined to barracks for most of it because I’ve been losing a battle with some disgusting virus tickling up my lungs. The result was a pool of boredom that drove me to abandon ‘Bones’ (I’ve bought the whole series now) to root through some boxes left from the move, and I found, not what I was looking for which was a couple of useful hooks to hold my tea-towel and apron in the kitchen (obviously men designed these fittings!) but these tiny treasures kept in a box belonging to my mother. I have no idea how old the tape-measure and the purse are but they are certainly from the days when a lady’s handbag (did they call it that I wonder? Or was that a holdall into which babies could be popped when necessary) had still to grow into a A4 sized affair yet was needed to hold such items ready for any emergency.

The tape measure, 36”, would not go round MY waist now, sad to relate, but would measure a piece of knitting or a yard of material. The farthings that were inside the purse where dated 1921 and 1942 so have Britannia on the latter (the Empire was still intact) and a wren, on the former. Very sweet but why a wren? If anyone can tell me I’d like to know. Too lazy to chase up Wikkipedia.

Human Traces

I was awake until 3.30 am then restless after finishing a first read of Sebastian Faulk’s novel ‘Human Traces.’ A first read because, as is usual for me, I was impatient to follow the characters to the end of his narrative so some of the more didactic passages just had to be skipped over to be returned to and absorbed later.

Reading this so soon after ‘Freedom’ has left me with the possibly unfair image of the Franzen novel as a cartoon - in the earlier sense of that word , a sketch for a piece that will one day be fleshed in. The insights and occasionally memorable passages hang on the outline like areas given more attention than the rest. I read somewhere that Franzen, after a long ‘dry’ spell reworked the beginnings of something he had thrown aside, a couple of chapters about Patty. That possibly explains why she is so unevenly drawn, detailed at first then blurry, her motivations confused rather than explained by subsequent events.

Probably ‘Human Traces’ can only really be relished by people who are interested in the history of psychiatry and the quest for understanding of the human mind. But then aren’t all humans, if they are able to rise just a little above the fight for mere survival, fascinated by the how’s and why’s of our mental states? The first clumsy forays into attempting to locate the seat of the mind (and even the soul) by cutting into the organs of the dead look foolish now but the intensity of the desire to find clues can’t be derided. The two men, Thomas and Jacques, who are the main characters in this almost 800 page opus go through moments of despair as they realise how little they will be able to learn in their lifetimes and how far science has to go before the secrets of consciousness can be uncovered.

The passage of time, from the 1870’s to just after the tragic madness of the 1st World War, in fact saw huge strides made in scientific method, more sophisticated equipment was developed, microscopes improved and people were able to gaze deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the universe in microcosm. In the final chapters words like ‘chromosomes’ appear. But Thomas and Jacques, good men who sought to ease human suffering as much they desired to find the secrets of life, were to die sadly knowing they had come hardly a step closer to helping the poor lunatics who had inspired their work. Only, as Thomas hopes somewhere early on in his career, their explorations had perhaps made people more kindly toward the sufferers of derangement.

The women who circle around these two men, their wives, lovers, patients, children, are as clearly drawn as themselves and their normal lives, lived in the shadow of the madhouse (a smart clinic and sanatorium in the Austrian Alps but nonetheless an acknowledged madhouse) , are a vivid backdrop to the task the men have set themselves, the ‘normal’ life the mad are denied.

I’m awed by Faulks. Now he IS a real master of his craft.

1st working morning of 20011

I spent the morning freezing my butt off in the shop, a potentially gloomy time that was cheered because I was allowed to play with my daughter's new iPad. That was fun. I checked you all out. I also found tens - hundreds - of crits of 'Freedom,' not one that agreed with the personal irritations I registered, but there were a pre-decimal dozen or so which were less than euphorically positive about it.

I did enjoy the iPad but... not sure how creative I could be with it and I was terrified of dropping the skinny slab because I'm clumsy these days. The book page ('app' should I say? I hate this disintegration of the language...) is sort of fun, but the number of words per page is so few that it felt like reading a Ladybird. Maybe that's adjustable.

New additions to the family - chinchillas. Cruella stop slavering. Kes stop whimpering - poor Kes thinks they were her Christmas present and we're beng slow handing over!

They are very fast these creatures. I need a better camera, a steadier hand or a quicker reflex (now on my Amazon wish list).

Freedom from Freedom.

I got to the end of 'Freedom' finally and can add a third reason for hating it, after first acknowledging that there were moments when I warmed and even got involved with it. The third reason for my dislike was the characters. They have all been exposed too much already; like Macintosh or Monet. There's the stereotypical, middle-class bored housewife who's been denied the career she really wanted but who tries to subsume her frustration into being a 'good' woman who cooks like Betty Crocker and is first in line with the Welcome baskets. Then there is her equally stereotypical soya-drinking, teetotal, save-the-planet, be-understanding-to-everyone, make-allowances, ecogeek husband (in earlier literature they wore sandals and sported beards). There's the bright son who revels in his mother's doting love but wants sex with the girl next door who's everything his mother despises (and incurs Ma's bitter jealousy by the way). There's the daughter who resents her mother's obsession with her brother and is consequently cold toward her. There are the petty envies of neighbours and friends, along with the previous mistakes of grandparents and forebears generally to explain and define the characters of these main protagonists. There's the glamorous rock-star, an old school friend of the husband, who doesn't wear wholemeal sweaters and isn't moral or idealistic so can romp with the bored housewife with only the merest qualm. There are the signs of the times - drugs and pollution, disaffected youth.. There's the obligatory reflections on the attack on the Towers, the assault on Iraq, the immoral reasons that caused America to stop selling arms to Saddam and start whacking hell out of the country instead. It's all been done before. I'm jaded with the parent/child wars, by the divides, rebellions, identity crisises in middle-class society (not just American) I've read too many vignettes on these subjects, seen too many soaps/series and movies that cover the themes.

There was one moment when I cheered and suddenly felt the narrative had some point to it, that was when Walter (the aforementioned do-gooder Eco-geek), suddenly exposed to the fact that his wife and his best friend have betrayed him, (how corny is THAT?) reacted as any soap hero would by taking too many antidepressants (Veriteserum maybe?) which resulted in him yelling out what he really felt about a project he had been trapped into and which is about to turn poor whites into yet more wealthy middle classed red-necks, who will in turn continue the downward slide of America in its cancerous ruination of the planet. I even understood when he rued his outburst and tried to intellectualise - too late - what he had said as the whacko-aggressive social elements, always on the look-out for a cause through which to channel their anger, amass themselves behind the spirit of his ill-chosen words.

But that moment petered out.

I suspect Franzen of seeing himself as a latter-day Tolstoy since he likens one of his characters to Pierre, tilling his fields, trying to transform his futilely ideal political philosophies into a personal return to nature. It did no harm to nudge the critics in that direction.

2011

Have a good one everybody! Most years I don't make resolutions for fear of breaking them therebye increasing the feelings of inadequacy I'm prone to. This year I have made a couple but am keeping quiet about them - at least that way I'll be the only one who knows if I fail.

I've probably started my grandson on a life of alcoholism by topping up his glass of mulled wine as fast as my own Friday night as we watched episodes of the 4th series of 'Bones' put in my stocking by Santa via my daughter. Sanders is as fond of a good gloopy, slushy autopsy as I am luckily and is quite able to see the humour in the characters - Brennan's rain-man rationality and Angel (David Boreanaz's REAL character) messing around as an FBI agent! They may not be much like the books but they're very entertainingly silly. I love them.

We did finally move on to something slightly more age-appropriate, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone which S claims is the only one he really likes because it's not dark. In the run-up to my Christmas each year I always re-read the HP's, a habit which has crept up on me until it has become a tradition.

So we watched the fireworks set off by neighbours as the year changed, accompanied Harry to his triumphal denouement, and fell into bed at 1.45. I ws amazed to be able to get bacon, egg and fried potato into S by 9 am the next morning before he went off to spend a day sea fishing with his father.

Thus the traditions have been observed and the snow has gone (except for the depressing grey hillocks of slush where the ploughs created small mountains of the stuff). My back yard looks like a peanut-packaging plant strewn with the discarded husks and the birds aren't lining up along the fence each morning. I think they go first to the nearbye field of cows to share the delicious silage.

Just to prove to myself I can read something other than crime I took in Sebastian Faulks 'A Week in December' and was very impressed by it - had to stay awake most of the night to get to the end which didn't help my mood the next day. By contrast I borrowed Franzen's 'Freedom' ('A Masterpiece' says the New York Times) and am hating it. I've tried to work out why it's annoying me so much. Is it the American culture, that alien land of baseball, sports jocks, Bush (his ghost lingers) and Macdonalds? Is it (and this seems more likely) the monotonous tempo of the writing? Too many short, breathless sentences like landscape rushing past a train window without the soporific heart-beat of the track noises. Now I'm sounding like Pseuds Corner. Succinctly, I don't like his style. The characters should be sympathetic enough but I don't find them likeable even whilst I understand them. I could just toss it but my ex liked it so I have to keep going to give a good account of my reactions when I return his copy (it's an ego thing!). The first 120 pages weren't so bad. Maybe after the end of the Chateauneuf du Pape left from yesterday's lunch it will read a bit more like War and Peace or Madame Bovary or The Four Gated City or one of the other real literary masterpieces it's being ranked with.