Everything has gone a bit quiet around here, since the excitement last week of Charles Reuben Hutton's parentage being proved to my satisfaction I've been catching up on the rest of his life and family. For a chap who only had three children he has rather a lot of grandchildren and over thirty great-grandchildren I am sure about.
I also have an Open Uni essay to write this week - compare and contrast a war memorial in Singapore with a memorial in Malaysia - tongue in cheek for a minute for the quick comparison - one is a classy towering obelisk style group of four pillars and the other is a pastiche of the American Iwo Jima memorial by a culture that is supposed to shun representations of the human form. Well that's done then - only another 1965 words to go!
It's cold here in Barnsley - minus three degrees last night apparently. The snow, which was 'proper' snow for once - nearly a foot deep on our street and drifting six to ten feet high on the country roads - hasn't gone yet. Today I go to the Town Hall to carry on helping digitise the card files for the Barnsley Archives - the date for the re-opening was announced last week - the 27th June - so moved back another month since the the Archives closed above the library in November. We'll have been without our fix of parish records and old newspapers for over seven months - it's a good job there's still Ancestry and Find My Past to keep us going.
Things to look forward to - Dr Who series 7 carries on from this Saturday and Game of Thrones returns with series 3. Why on earth does it take the Americans sooooooo long to release their box sets? We don't all have fancy channels on our tvs. I've started re-reading the books, I'll know what is happening before they do - ha!
The OH's new book - the Barnsley Real Ale and Cider Guide is out now - official launch date this Wednesday. There's a preview, Amazon style, on the Barnsley CAMRA website and you can buy the book direct from the online shop. It's not just a guide to all the pubs in Barnsley (every single pub is included - although only the ones selling real ale get a photo and a write up of course), it is a historical document. In the twenty odd years since the last guide over 100 Barnsley pubs have closed, many demolished and gone for ever - in the three weeks since the OH sent the last proof back to the printers we've lost another one. The book contains a list of the lost pubs and their fate, an article by yours truly - an adaptation of my Mystery of the Nelson Street Pubs blog post, a directory of all the breweries within twenty miles of Barnsley pubs - the LocAle scheme - and other articles about cider and beer styles plus a forward by the Barnsley writer and journalist Ian Harley.
Buy a copy today, online or from one of the many pubs in Barnsley stocking copies behind the bar (also available from Old Barnsley in the market hall) - it's a pub census! And you know how much value we historians can get out of one of those.
That's about it for excitement today ... off to the Town Hall soon - I hope they've got the heating on!
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