The joy of researching the family tree isn’t really about the bulk of the work you do gathering documents and double checking identities. It’s not even about the unexpected turns and the participation of ancestors in big moments of history (although that is, admittedly, rather exciting).

It’s the small unexpected stuff. It’s the dragging out of old boxes of photos because “you’ll be interested in this”. It’s not necessarily interesting to anyone else and there’s as many similar stories as there are people on this Earth. But it is … the whole point.

I’ve discovered that my mother used to be a sophisticated fashionista with a perfected sultry film-star look whenever a camera was turned in her direction (a million miles from me who has lived in jeans all my life and is still not quite sure how to use make-up!).

I’ve seen grainy black and white photographs of both my grandfathers while they were still in their prime of health. I’ve had my memory jogged of long forgotten homes and significant places.

But the most valuable are pictures of my father. Relaxed, confident, seldom without a cigarette in his mouth, ever the joker (he is usually acting up for the camera). It’s odd. I can see glimpses of the personality of the person he became, of course, but at the same time they are images of a man I never knew.

It’s poignant because he died just shortly after I got married – just at the point where I was starting to get to know him more as a person… an adult-to-adult relationship rather than a father-to-daughter one.

But thanks to some faded snapshots kept in a cardboard box in the back of a wardrobe, a sort of two-dimensional frozen-in-time machine, I can take little peeks through to the past.

And that makes it all worthwhile.

In an addendum to my previous post on researching your family tree, I just thought I’d issue a quick warning so you don’t get ripped off.

If you’re looking to purchase birth, marriage or death certificates via ancestry.co.uk (i.e. them acting as intermediary), they charge £19.99. Don’t do that. Go direct to the General Records Office and it only costs £7 if you know the GRO Index reference or £10 if you don’t – a significant difference.

Researching your family tree is expensive enough without spending double on the certificate copies.

I’ve recently been getting back into researching my Family Tree … well, more my kids’ family tree as I’m using them as the focal point and going back into both Akra’s and my family history.

It’s a project that works well for my temperament – something that’s easy to pick up, get totally absorbed in, then put it down again for months/years until the interest comes back – no backtracking and “catching up” due to the time the project was ignored is required.

There’s something very satisfying about searching records databases to try and find a particularly elusive ancestor and finally being able to prove that you are related. I suppose it’s a natural extension to my Google Fu. It’s also fascinating to uncover family stories that would otherwise have been forgotten and to feel that you have a place in a wider narrative that is still being told.

I’m very lucky that I have an uncle, cousin and mother-in-law who also have an interest in family research, so I’ve been able to cadge a huge amount of data from them with minimal effort. As a result, I’m enjoying focussing on the detail – trying to find photos of old residences, getting certificates together, looking up where people lived on a birds-eye view map – and finding out about the people that don’t overlap with their previous research.

Anyway, I thought I’d post a bit about what tools I’m using – nothing new to experienced geneologists, I’m sure, but might be useful to someone starting out:

• The software I’m using on the computer is Synium’s Mac Family Tree – it’s not the most recommended out there (most seem to rate Reunion for Mac – an all singing/all dancing and highly expensive piece of software) but after downloading the trials for several packages, Mac Family Tree was the one I found most intuitive, working in a very visual way that I found easy to pick up and makes it a pleasure to use.
• I’m registered with Genes Reunited but only so I can connect easily with the data my other family members have already researched. I bit the bullet and paid for Ancestry.co.uk, mainly because I found using their search facilities much easier and more likely to find matches.
• If you’re trying to keep costs down though, I can recommend FreeBMD (a free service to search birth, marriage and death records), FreeCEN (free census records) and FreeREG (free parish records). There are two important things to be aware of these sites: 1) don’t confuse the ancestry.co.uk advert at the top of the site which looks like it’s part of the search – it’ll take you to a registration page for a free trial to a different site which is very confusing; 2) not all the records have been transcribed yet.
• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission site is also very useful if you suspect any of your ancestors died in one of the World Wars – again, a free search.
• Finally, the 1911 census is now available on the official site in association with the National Archives. Am rather annoyed that this hasn’t found its way over to Ancestry.co.uk yet and you have to pay per view any census records. I can only assume that it’ll find its way over there eventually.

When I was a little girl (that sentence start makes me sound ancient), we used to have one of those Swedish Angel Chimes as our central table decoration at Christmas. You know the type? Brass with a candle-powered turbine driving three trumpeting angels around and around, striking bells as they went making a magical (to a 7 year old) tinkling sound. Pretty tacky, but an essential part of the Christmas Kitsch all the same.

I hadn’t thought about it in a while until this weekend while we were putting up our decorations. I had a vague memory of my mother giving them to me a couple of years back and I was sure that I’d packed it carefully away with the rest of the Christmas things, but it wasn’t in the box. Maybe at some point part of it had snapped off (it was pretty old and fragile, after all) and had got thrown away during our last clear out.

Then today, I found this teeny filigree angel chime at Hawkins Bazaar and fell in love.

It’s silver-coloured rather than brass, powered by a single tealight instead of four slim candles, and there are no bells (however, as an adult I’ve learned to appreciate silence far more!).

Even so, I think it’s rather special and after all, tackiness is what Christmas is all about…

Well, apart from the winter solstice/big party thing…

and the God thing…

and peace, goodwill to all mankind thing…

but we all know that kitsch and the inner-child is the most important part of Christmas.

I’m going to have to admit defeat and make an appointment with the damn doctor aren’t I?

I wonder how many different kinds of antibiotics I can be given on this visit…

Oh, I forgot. You lot don’t know about my last experience as it was during my blog sabbatical last November.

Anyway, I’d been ill for about 11 days and during the last couple had a fever controlled by ibuprofen and paracetamol. Then one night I noticed that my tonsils were swollen and spotty and by the morning it was agony. Off I trot to the doctor’s surgery.

Doc calls up my medical records: “Oh, you’re allergic to penicillin and erythromycin?”

I always get a comment when they notice both. I didn’t realise it was such a shocking scenario, but I usually get “oh my god, what are you normally prescribed then?!” or “that makes life interesting” or somesuch. I suppose I’m lucky that it’s very rare I have ever needed antibiotics that 99.9% of the time it’s never an issue. I had some back when I had mastitis with Akra Jr (forget the type now, wish I’d written it down) about 4 years ago, and the only time i remember having antibiotics before then was erythromycin when I was 19 and I had HORRENDOUS stomach cramps with it – not being melodramatic but at the time I really was very scared it was killing me – was told at the time it was an allergic reaction and to avoid.

ANYWAY, so the doctor asks me about my experience of erythromycin, I tell him. He kind of pooh poohs it and says, well try these – it’s the same family but has less history of stomach side effects. Okay, I go home feeling a little nervous, but he’s the doc right, he knows what he’s doing?

Less than half an hour after the first tablet I’m feeling VIOLENTLY sick and pretty much immobile by the toilet as waves of nausea crash through me again and again. Akra calls the surgery and I manage to speak to doctor in a lull between the waves…

“Oh, that’s interesting, that’s an extremely unusual reaction … right, have you tried x?” At this point, I really don’t care (WHY can’t they just read your notes to check what you had before?!) and said I didn’t know. Send dh out to get the prescription.

Akra comes back with Cefalexin. The patient notes online have a warning to be used in caution with penicillin allergy. So I phone the surgery back up. Yes, yes, that’s quite alright, that’s what you’re supposed to be having.

So there I was, sitting in front of the packet, feeling not unlike an interesting lab rat, knowing that I have a 10% chance of being allergic to these as well. Wonder if he had a nice little chat to his colleagues and making bets on what reaction I’ll have with that lot.

In the end I chickened out and requested to see another doctor at the surgery. She thought it was rare to have a reaction on Cefalexin, but appreciated why I was reluctant to take it. She prescribed me something in the tetracycline family of antibiotics (I must remember to ask for that in future) – Doxycyline, but in the event I was feeling much better (I was taking homeopathy as well in the end) and never cashed the prescription in.

And they wonder why I have issues with doctors…

In a recent blog entry, the Complimenting Complimenter asks: “Which teacher growing up would you compliment now that you’re grown up?” I was going to reply directly on his site, but the more I remembered the more I realised it justified a blog entry in its own right, rather than clogging up CC’s comment box.

English was never a strong subject of mine. In the final year of primary school I was consistently vying for top position in maths, but while I was reading at an incredible rate, I struggled to write coherently and it was predicted I would fail entrance to the local girls’ school due to my weakness in English.

Somehow I scraped through (presumably my maths score was good enough to override the english score) but the pattern continued – I consistently got Cs and Ds for English. Despite living in my own dreamworld most of the time, I just couldn’t summon the imagination to make up stories on paper, let alone express them in an interesting way. I think what I hated the most was that in English there was never one right answer – at least in maths or science classes you were either wrong or you were right with no ambiguity.

Then in my second or third year (my memory is hazy) we were put into sets and as a result were allocated a new english teacher – Mr Wright. We were all a bit afraid of him – he had a reputation for being very strict and short tempered (indeed, he’d supervised us once when a teacher was off sick and we all had to go through worksheets in strict silence – he put the fear of God into us). Who’d have thought he’d have ended up such a huge influence on my life?

I can’t remember specifically how he inspired me. I know my attitude towards english as a subject didn’t improve much at the time, although steadily my work started getting As and B+s. He once told me that my writing style was “terse and pithy” – my mother laughed cynically and told me that was teacher code for I didn’t write enough. I wish I hadn’t believed her. I confess that I still tend to struggle with any areas of writing that require a long wordy description -and always err on the succinct side (this long, rambly post notwithstanding).

Most of my lessons that I remember from those years were his class: the day our task was to hunt out typos in the Guardian (was the first time I’d ever heard the alternative title of Grauniad); the day at the start of the first Gulf War when he cancelled the lesson and let us all watch the news on TV (it was a private school where a large proportion of students were forces children); the day when he read out the last scenes of Romeo and Julliet and cried because he was so moved (this from one of the strictest teachers in school!); the day he asked how many of us wanted to become teachers – no hands went up…. his response was “if none of you want to be teachers, ask yourself this: who will teach your children?”

I decided not to do English for A-level – my destiny lay in the sciences, or so I thought. I got the impression Mr Wright was disappointed in me for not continuing English. I was bemused why that would be as it was patently not a subject I enjoyed or had any aptitude for. It wasn’t until much later that I realised that my interest in science was primarily because I was attracted to the excellent science writing out there – at university level when much of it was dry and mathematical, my interest was lost. I wonder if he had some foreshadowing of that, even then?

I have no way of contacting him now as much as I would like to. I don’t even know his first name, Wright is a fairly common surname and he’s long since left my old school. But even if I could, what would I say? “Mr Wright, I now write a little known weblog daily because of you”… or perhaps “Mr Wright, I occasionally get paid writing work for copywriting/search engine optimizing work for property websites”… or even “Mr Wright, I’m planning my first novel … but oh, it’s a Mills and Boon, not high literature.” None of them sound particularly impressive or reflect the huge changes in my life and outlook since that 16-year-old girl took the wrong educational path.

Perhaps, “Mr Wright, the written word is now a huge part of my life, it compels me and I don’t think I could live without it. You introduced me to that world, your words still inspire me now and whatever I say will sound completely inadequate, but I shall try anyway. Thank you. Thank you with all my heart and soul.”

Would that do?

Edit: one thing he obviously didn’t teach me was proof-reading. About six billion typos fixed…

Yesterday’s post on eating had me thinking about the little rituals I had around food as a child, and probably explains why I’m happy for Akra Jr to treat dinner time as a bit of a game.

I would sometimes pretend that I was a huge giant and each of the items on my plate were something on a larger scale. Broccoli was trees, obviously… brussel sprouts were “really” huge cabbages, gravy was a small lake and new potatoes giant boulders. I went on to pretend this well into the age where you would die rather than admit it. Not that this was particularly imaginative, I’m sure the idea was heavily influenced from that giant scene in the Mr Greedy book.

I also used to HAVE to eat a mouthful of each thing on my plate in turn, ending with my very last mouthful being my favourite thing. The idea of ending the meal with a mouthful of something I didn’t like was completely abhorent. As an extension of this, I would make deals with myself like “eat two mouthfuls of the thing I hate, then I’ll allow myself one mouthful of the thing I love”. I confess, I still have that particular little ritual now.

So not much of a stretch in imagination to reach Akra Jr’s dice game (he ate a bowl of strawberries and cream the other night – previously would only take the tiniest bite to try then leave them. He’s now decided he *loves* strawberries after all … yay!).

What food rituals did you have as a child and do they still affect the way that you eat today?

Had a bit of a blast from the past, today. I only popped into Tescos for some milk and a pot of cream to go with the apple turnover I intend to make this afternoon, when something caught my eye during a detour down the sweet aisle. It was a Wham Bar!

Major flash back to primary school, buying one of these (then) huge bars from the school tuck shop for 10p, losing half your teeth in the extremely hard but chewy strawberry stuff and having your head explode from the fizzy bits. These are truly the most memorable childhood sweet EVER!

Of course I bought one, what do you take me for?!

Verdict: disappointing, I’m afraid. Apart from the obvious reduction in size and increase in price (20p in our local Tescos), the manufacturers seem rather cautious of dental lawsuits and made it much more chewy and maleable than its predecessor. This means you’re hard pressed to catch a bite before the whole bar droops downwards into a perfect mimic of an advert for a certain male pharmaceutical we all keep getting spam comments for. The fizzy bits are just … well … not as fizzy as I remember and exist in a far fewer concentration. You’re lucky if you get more than one fizzy bit per bite.

So, I recommend buying one for a bit of tuck shop nostalgia, but buy yourself a pack of fizzy cola bottles to go with them…

I was opening a new bottle of Daddies Brown Sauce last night (see how exciting my life is?!) and marvelled at how thickly it poured out compared to the old bottle which had got quite runny towards the end. I don’t know what it is about this sauce that makes it change consistency so drastically after only a short period of time, but it probably indicates something good, like less additives and preservatives or something.

Of course, it’ll never be like the sauce I remember from childhood. No, they didn’t change recipe (as far as I know, anyway) and it’s not just the miopic memory of youth distorting the past.

My parents were always rather blasé about use by dates, which was probably just as well all things considered. My father, at one time in his chequered career, worked as a buyer in a cash & carry and was always bringing home crates of various bizarre things for my mother to a) find a use for and b) find somewhere to store in the meantime. One time he brought home a huge crate of the aforementioned brown sauce.

Now, at least this was a novelty in that it was something we actually used, which is always a bonus, but really… how much sauce *do* a family of three get through in a year?! We weren’t vast consumers even then – at best estimate … two maybe three bottles a year?

We did get through the whole crate eventually after many many years. It was nice sauce, it was a shame to get rid of it even if it was a few years out of date. It wasn’t until we finally got around to buying a whole new bottle that we realised just how different the flavour was in an in-date bottle of Daddies Brown. Our best guess was that the old bottles after a year or two past best were actually fermenting in the bottles and becoming alcoholic…

… it did taste damn nice though.

Free fragrance samples – I love them, which is odd because I’m not big on wearing scent and very rarely remember to use any. I just love the little bottles.

Only, they don’t come in decent bottles anymore, do they? They’re those silly little stoppered vials where by the time you’ve got the lid off, most of the perfume is scattered across the carpet.

The bottles I used to love were the ones I had as a kid. When I was little, my mother had a cleaner come around who was also an Avon lady in her spare time. She was a great cleaner – very patient of the precocious little me – stopping her work to watch my latest dance or see my newest painting (hey, give me a break, I was only 6 or 7). Then again, she probably got paid by the hour so had the last laugh.

The major perk of her coming around for me (obviously, my mum got a clean house out of it) was the free samples. I presume mum must have been a good customer or she just took pity on me, I’m not sure which. I never got any lipstick samples or anything like that (perhaps she didn’t think it was appropriate little girls wearing makeup? or maybe my mum swiped them first) but that didn’t matter as I had my eye on the scent bottles.

They were glorious shapes, beautifully made various sized glass containers that I could carefully line up on my bedroom table. None of these silly stoppers, they all had proper screw lids and some even had little tiny rollerball applicators – so much more sensible. I felt terribly grown up having perfumes with exotic names such as “foxfire” – the smell was probably dire but six year olds aren’t well known for their taste in fine fragrances. Not that I ever WORE them… I couldn’t possibly have them run out on me – what would I line up on the dressing table otherwise?!

Of course, it’s probably not very environmentally friendly to have ornate sample bottles anymore. Far more practical to issue out the little vials which only have one use before you have to go out and spend a small fortune on a slightly bigger bottle. It’s just not the same…