Week 11 - Book of Me - Military

This week's prompt in the Book of Me series of blogs is Military.  The Book of Me is a fifteen month project organised by Julie Goucher of the Angler's Rest blog to help us blogging historians and genealogists to write about ourselves for a change.

Each week Julie sets us a theme or a series of questions to answer.  

Did you join the military? Were you encouraged or discouraged?

I attempted to join the RAF when I was eighteen after I had failed my A levels.  I failed that as well.  I can't remember whether my parents showed any interest.
 

Did a family member join the miltary?  Regular or for a particular incident?

My father did his national service in the RAF (but that wasn't linked to my motives for the above).  He did not enjoy it and often used to say he wished he'd joined the army instead as with his grammar school education he'd have probably been made a tutor.  As it was they discovered he was colour blind so he was unable to be a pilot - he spent two years as a fitter.  He did serve some of that time in Germany - my mum and he were courting at that time and she may have more stories.


Outside billet RAF Bruggen 1953 - my dad is second from the right
holding his cap and posing from the looks of it!

My father's sister was in the ATS during the Second World War - some of her story is here.
My paternal grandfather was in the Seaforth Highlanders pre WW2 and rejoined during the Second World War - I have a post about him here.
My maternal grandfather was in the Home Guard during WW2 - there's a great picture of him in this post.

Did you or your family serve overseas in the line of service either during a war or as a posting?

My paternal grandfather, Edward Lawrence Hall, served in India from December 1926 to December 1932 (info from his Certificate of Service).  His medals include the India General Service Medal with a bar that says "North West Frontier 1930 to 31".

War Medal, 1939-45 Star, Defence Medal and India General Service Medal 1930-31

 

Any thoughts, photographs, memories relevant

Coming from a North-Eastern coal mining and shipbuilding background my family history is fairly short on soldiers (or even sailors) so the ones that I find usually via the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's site, are usually diligently researched. 

There is a whole page (work in progress) of links to various soldiers' stories from my family and my husband's (the OH), accessible via the World War One Soldiers' Stories tab at the top of this page. 

And to conclude:
Yesterday I received an email directing me to a page in an American newspaper concerning a relative of mine  - Gabriel Davison Harle - he's my second cousin twice removed and he died in WW1.  A fascinating story about finding his letters home from the war in an attic!  I wish I had that kind of luck in my researches.  So a huge thank you to the gentleman who brought this to my attention!

P.S. if you are wondering what happened to Week 10 of Book of Me - I'm thinking about it - the prompt was Unexplained Memories and as I seem to remember everything with great clarity (I may be fooling myself but it feels that way) I can't honestly put my finger on anything unexplained to write about.

Book of Me - Falling Behind due to Lack of Inspiration - Deeds and Daft telly

Unfortunately the last two weeks Book of Me prompts have not inspired me to write.  Julie Goucher of the Angler's Rest Blog started us off nine weeks ago with a good few interesting and thought provoking prompts.  Week 1 was describe yourself in 20 different ways and we've done Childhood Homes and Grandparents since then, both of which I could have written reams about, but just recently I've been finding it far too easy just to let the weeks slip by without writing anything in a timely fashion.  Playing catch up somehow seems to defeat the object of a weekly project - and I did so want to do this properly - the purpose being to help us to write stuff about ourselves to leave for our families, as many of the participants being family historians, we often spend ages researching other people and writing it up, but rarely spend anytime on ourselves.

 

Last week, Week 8, was all about creating (or virtually creating) a Time Capsule.  I gave this some thought - I remember putting a coin in the studwork when my dad built a wardrobe at one of our houses.  I wonder if anyone has found that yet? I was thrilled when we moved into our new house to find, in the coal shed (this house is a doer upper that we can't afford to do up unless we sell the old one and two years later we are still waiting!) an incinerator bin full of old newspapers, postcards, ephemera to do with the previous owner's long dead husband and various other interesting bits and pieces.  My theory is, judging by the date on the newspapers that the widow was going to have a bonfire with the various papers, put it off (maybe it rained!) and somehow never got around to it - for 34 years!

 

And yet, despite this wonderful example, my mind remains stubbornly blank.  The best thing I could come up with was to make copies of the deeds of the two houses we have and leave them with the houses - our solicitor doesn't want them anymore and if I hadn't have taken them they would have been thrown away - I am now deeply sad that we didn't keep the deeds for the OH's first house which he sold when we bought our first house together ten years ago.  They are probably long gone by now and that house was over a hundred years old ... such a waste of history.

 

My parents always lived in new houses - their deeds don't amount to much at all, so I don't have much experience with this kind of old document.  After being given our first set when we paid the mortgage off I did scan them as best I could (hey, there's a thought - I could do a better job now with my FlipPal Scanner) and learnt useful information such as when actually the various extensions were built and what happened to the toilet and coal store at the bottom of the garden (the back road and a strip of our land was compulsorily purchased when the field behind was sold by the council to a Housing Association).  I was even inspired to try to get the Cudworth Group to start a project encouraging people to ask to see their deeds before their solicitors throw them away - we might even get some useful history out of them too!

 

I might write a blog about deeds one day - but of course I don't want to write one about ours - we still live here and there's a limit to how close to home I want my blog posts to be!

 

This week, Week 9, is about Halloween - very topical (as next Thursday will be the 31st October), but not a particularly important calendar event in England unless you have small children, to whom the American Trick or Treat thing seems to have unfortunately spread.  I say unfortunately because it necessitates buying a box or tin of sweets to keep handy by the door, just in case.  Even though we usually only get the OH's little nephews coming calling you never know, we have been here two years now - people might be getting used to us and feel that it's safe to knock on our door with their little children - or not!

 

Have you been to Halloween event?  Or dressed up?  asks Julie in her extra prompt questions.  Well, no.  For Children in Need, which is in a few weeks time, yes - but not ever that I recall for Halloween.  I remember getting my son dressed up for a school event once - I was particularly proud of his cape, such a lovely big pointy collar - all homemade.  And I'm sure my daughter, with all those student years of working in pubs and clubs has dressed up every year ... but it somehow doesn't seem to fit the CAMRA real ale socialising circles I have been part of for the past twenty years or so. 

 

I vaguely remember a party which had a Halloween theme, mainly because the hostess had a lovely little girl and I think we were playing along - and we watched lots of episodes of some children's cartoon or puppet thing - something about a Trapdoor?  Hang on, I'll Google that ....

 

Yep, that's the right programme! 

 

It was an odd way for half a dozen young grown-ups to spend an evening, but we had plenty of beer and food - and I suppose the young mum couldn't have come out to the pub with us as she had the little girl to look after.

 

Sorry, but that's all I can come up with at the moment. 

Week 7 - Book of Me - Grandparents

This week's prompt for the Book of Me (an online writing project promoted by Julie Goucher of the Angler's Rest blog) is 'Grandparents'. 

We are now into Week 7 and despite looking forward to writing this post I've been putting it off until I had posted something for last week's tricky 'Journals and Diaries' prompt.  As I have never really kept a diary it was a bit difficult to find something to write about ... until my daughter came last weekend to have a poke around in my loft to reclaim some of her old books and DVDs.

The pictures I posted for Week 6 are of badges that I collected over an eight or nine year span from various rock concerts I attended.  It is noticeable that once I married and the children came along this stopped!  We found the strip of material on which I had saved the badges in a box with an old fringed suede jacket and some really fancy black leather and concho'd belts.  Mmm, yummmm! I don't think they fit me any more but it was nice to remember wearing them and having fun!

For the week 7 prompt Julie gave us some further additional questions:

Grandparents

What were their names?

Where were they from?

Were they related? – Cousins perhaps

Where were they born, another Country or state/area

Photos

What did they do?

Did you know them?

What was your relationship with them?

If you didn't know them have you researched about them?

  

My paternal grandparents were Edward Lawrence Hall and Janet Bunn.  If I remember aright my dad used to say his father was called Barney - he didn't know why.  My dad was Edward Lawrence as well and he was called Laurie ... rebelling against awkward family names must just run in the family as I am also known by my middle name!

 

They were born just a few miles away from each other and my grandmother was a smidgit older than my grandad.  He was born in 1904 in Witton Gilbert, Co Durham and she in 1903 in Langley Park, Co Durham 1.3 miles away according to Google Maps.  They were not related but my grandmother's cousin had married my grandfather's brother three years before my grandparents' married which might have something to do with them meeting - I really don't know.

 

Grandfather Hall was a coal miner, but the story goes that he left home to join the army after a bit of bother involving my grandmother - I will not go into the details in a public blog.  You can read more about his army career on a previous blog post.  There is also a nice picture of them with their youngest child, my aunt, on that post.

Back row: Arthur Bunn, Vera Bunn, Linda Bunn, Henry Bunn
Middle: Henry and Linda's son Peter
Seated: Clementina Bunn, Janet Hall (nee Bunn), E L Hall

I understand that my grandmother Janet or Jessie as she was known was in domestic service before she married.  She picked up a lot of tips about the 'proper' way of doing things that she tried to pass on to her family and children.  She came from a large family, her brothers and their wives and her mum Clementina appear in the picture above.  Grandfather and Jessie married in 1926.

She died before I was born, but my mum says that she knew I was 'on the way' so that's a nice thought.  Despite my grandfather not passing away until I was in my late teens I didn't really know him.  We had moved away when I was only a small child and we did not visit.  He stayed close to his daughter's family and my cousins and they have some fond memories of him which they passed on at a family gathering earlier this year.

 

My maternal grandparents were William Satchell Hutton and Doris Gibson.  I have written a couple of blog posts about my grandad, one about some of the treasures I found in an old tin box and one about his Home Guard service during the Second World War.   He was born in 1905 in Crook, Co Durham - I visited Crook with the OH some years ago now and walked from there to Witton le Wear searching out family history - you can find those posts here, here and here.  We also visited again this year as I had realised I had been looking in the wrong place for many years for his birth place and now I needed new photos.

My grandma Hutton was born in 1907 in Wallsend, Northumberland (now part of Tyne and Wear).  She hadn't worked - or maybe just a 'little job' in a local shop - I'm not sure about this.  She was the youngest of a large family and her next oldest sister had died in the flu epidemic in 1918, my mum thinks grandma was a bit spoilt by her parents as a result of this.  She met my grandfather when he moved to Wallsend to work in the late 1920s.  I remember her telling me that they used to go to the same tennis club, and I think they may have attended the same church too.  They married in 1931.

Doris and William's Wedding Day
Back row: Jim Hutton, Doris Hutton (nee Gibson), William Hutton
Front row: Jean Hutton, little Irene Nelson, her mum Lily Nelson (nee Gibson)

I knew my Hutton grandparents very well, we actually lived with them for a few months when my father changed jobs - I wrote about their last house, one of my childhood homes, a few weeks ago.  Even after we moved away from the North East we visited them regularly and usually spent Christmas with them and my mum's brother, sister and their families.  I am convinced families are usually matriarchies, with husbands joining their wives families and socialising more with them than their own relatives after marriage.  Note I did say 'usually' I'm not claiming this as an unbreakable rule of course!

Doris and William Hutton enjoying their retirement

Grandad passed away in 1983 - he died of 'Chronic obstructive airway disease', a legacy of his lifelong career down the pits.  Grandma moved to live near my mum and enjoyed another 20 years with her grandchildren and great grandchildren visiting, gadding about on foreign holidays with my parents and generally being everything you might expect of a great grandma!  Their ashes are buried together in the cemetery in the village where my mum still lives.



Week 6 - Book of Me - Wordless Wednesday - Journals and Diaries

Week 5 - Book of Me - Your Childhood Home(s)

This week's prompt for the Book of Me (an online writing project promoted by Julie Goucher of the Angler's Rest blog) is 'Your Childhood Home'. 

This was a lot easier for me than last week's rather difficult to pin down suggestion that we write about our favourite season. By the time I was eighteen I had lived in four different houses - admittedly one for only a month or so.  I can remember them all quite clearly and have on occasions gone back to visit them, one obviously when we visited my grandparents and the others just to look to see how the area had changed in the intervening years.  

When my parents married my grandfather allowed them to rent a bungalow that he had bought for his retirement.  As he'd been a colliery manager he'd always lived in the company houses so buying this bungalow was planning ahead for when he had to leave work.

House 1 - West Rainton, Durham

This is the house I lived in from my earliest years until I was about seven years old.  It was in a small village called West Rainton a few miles from Durham City.  There was an attic room, reached by pulling down a set of steps from a hatch in the ceiling with a long pole with a hook on the end.  I remember sitting up there reading my dad's Eagle comics.  So that must have been not long before we left in 1968.  

The large bay window in the photo is the front room, it had a tiled fireplace and there was room for a dining table as well as a suite.  My parents had a record player, the kind where you could put 45rpm records on in a stack and the mechanism played them one after another, dropping the next one down on the turntable as each one finished.  We didn't have a television straight away, but I remember one later, black and white of course.  I think, though I'm not sure, that I remember BBC2 starting, but as that was in 1964 (according to Wikipedia) I'd only be three years old.

The kitchen was behind the living room, there was a coal fire with a back boiler for hot water.  I remember a larder with a sliding door - my parents kept my asthma inhaler on the top shelf so I couldn't reach it.  In those days inhalers were new and dangerous - I was told that if I took too many 'puffs' I would die from a heart attack.  I can tell you that when I had an asthma attack the chance of some relief far outweighed the possible danger of dying ... but that's a whole 'nother story.   I remember my mum had a zig zag washing line and it was my job to pair up the socks which had been hung on the lower rungs when they were dry.  I used to sit on the hearth rug (a proddy rug my mum had made from fabric scraps) in front of the fire to do this.  There was smaller formica topped table in the kitchen and I can remember eating fish fingers with tomato ketchup sat at this table. 

There were two bedrooms.  The one at the front was my parents' - they had a Stagg bedroom set, light oak veneered wood, a bedhead, chest of drawers, and two wardrobes.  I think my son took the last remaining piece of this set when he set up home by himself nearly ten years ago now, so it lasted well.  The back bedroom was mine and later shared with my brother who came along in 1964.  We had the 'yellow' beds, huge old fashioned beds that my mum and her sister had slept in as children.  My mum still tells me that when family came to visit the children would be put to sleep with so many heads at one end and so many at the other, feet together in the middle.  There was a matching dressing table and I still have the stool from this set in my house now.  

The garden at the back was huge, or at least it looked so to a small child.  My mum has always gardened.  I remember her growing strawberries.  My dad always wanted a garage and we had a big foundation hole dug which gradually filled with stones from the garden.  It came in handy on Bonfire Night - 5th November - as a safe place for letting off firecrackers and other more dangerous fireworks.

The house backed onto fields where we used to go to pick rosehips for syrup.  Looking on Google maps there's a big house there now although the fields still start just one house further on.  There are also houses across the road from the bungalow now, where I remember them building a bypass for the village not long before we left.  We have some pictures in the album of mum, dad my brother and myself walking along the empty new road before it was opened.  Fast, modern living coming to a sleepy village!

House 2 - Whitley Bay, Northumberland

My dad got a job in the Midlands so we had to move in with my grandparents while he looked for a house for us near his new place of work.  My grandparents lived in Whitley Bay in Northumberland by then and were retired.  Dad wrote letters to mum all the time and enclosed notes with little cartoons on them for us.  I don't think we were there very long, but I did have to go to school there for a while.  Whitley Bay is a seaside place, but it was at the beginning of the year and I don't remember going to the beach very much - it was quite a long walk from the house.

The house was huge - or so I thought.  I suppose it was compared to the bungalow.  There were four bedrooms, two very large and two small ones.  All the furniture was large and old fashioned.  My parent's furniture had to go into storage during this period - it must have been difficult for my mum to have to live with her parents again, especially with two little children to keep occupied and out of the way of her father who was one of those 'children should be seen and not heard' types.  His domain was the front sitting room, he would stay in there all day reading - as I was capable of being quiet and I did like reading I would sometimes sit in there with him.  There was an upright piano and some bookshelves in that room and a china cabinet with some very fancy old china tea sets that we never used. The suite was very heavy and covered in floral loose covers.  The curtains in the bay were silver with a kind of leafy fern pattern, they went from floor to ceiling.  

In the dining room there was a large table, with leaves that could be pulled out to make it longer when more of the family came for Sunday lunch.  There was a black bordered white screen painted on the end wall so that my granddad could show his holiday slides to us.  I remember dark wood furniture, my granddad sat in a dining chair with arms at one of the table.  There was an Ercol suite in that room too, it later came with my grandma to her bungalow after my granddad died so I remember it from later years.  

The kitchen had another table and more chairs. The window looked out sideways onto the neighbouring house - there wasn't much of a view when you were using the sink.  The door to the cupboard under the stairs was opposite the kitchen door - I remember making poppies from orange tissue paper and wire, we kept the makings in that cupboard.  It must have been one of the things mum came up with to keep us busy and out of granddad's way.  In the downstairs passage there was a shelf over the radiator - and on the end was a little brass bell.  Very tempting for a child - I remember wanting to ring it - I expect I did - probably once too often!   The stairs turned on back on themselves to get to the first floor, and on the first little landing, just a couple of stairs up there was a small bookcase - with a set of books by Charles Dickens - a bit too hard for me at age seven, but I read some of them in later years.

House 3 - Cannock, Staffordshire

Eventually Dad wrote to say he'd found a house and we travelled down by train to meet him.  It was dark when we arrived and it had been a long journey so I don't remember arriving at the new house.

This house was a standard three bedroomed semi-detached on a large 1960s estate.  The street it was on only had houses on one side, numbered one to ten, and we faced the sides of a small street of bungalows separated from us by two big patches of grass - perfect for children to play on. I think nearly every house on that street had children all around the same age.  There could be groups of ten or more of us 'playing out' in the summer.

There were two larger bedrooms and a small one over the front door, that was my brother's.  He was only about four when we moved in there, by the time we left my parents joked that they had to move house as he was getting too big for the room!  I still had one of the 'yellow' beds and it was far too big for the smaller rooms in a modern house.  There was central heating, but I don't remember it being very warm, though that might have been during the 3-day week in the 1970s ... I even remember my mum having to boil an egg over the coal fire in the sitting room as the electricity was off.  We had to go to bed with candles and even bath by candle light.  Not as nice as it sounds, the bath water might have been warm but the rest of the house was freezing.

Lucie Mabel Attwell picture - Please Remember

On the landing between my bedroom and the bathroom was an airing cupboard - there was a hot water tank and shelves above where mum put the clothes after they'd been out on the washing line, but before she put them away in the drawers and cupboards.  In that cupboard lived the "Please remember" picture.  It's a kind of family tradition now, I have one of these in my bathroom and so does my daughter.  Mum has a newer version still hung on her bathroom wall, the one I remember as a child flaked and crumbled years ago.  

The toilet was a separate room at the top of the stairs - dad tiled it and the bathroom with yellow 'Crystal' tiles.  I always thought they looked like a sketch drawing of chickens ...

Crystal Tile - very 1970s

Can you see it yet?

Whenever I see tiles like these now it always brings back memories of that house.

The living room had an exposed brickwork chimney breast - mum and dad hung brass plates that they brought back from holidays abroad on it and one of my jobs was to polish them with Brasso.  My mum still has the plates - although she hasn't asked me to clean them for her recently!  The furniture as the new 'in thing', Ladderax,  sectional furniture that you built up in whatever way you wanted with metal or wooden ladders supporting shelves, drawers, cupboards or even small wardrobes.  Mum still has all this too!

The dining room was separated from the living room with double doors, so you could open the rooms out to make one big space.  With the huge floor to ceiling windows at either end it made for a large airy feeling space.  My brother and I used to make 'camps' under the dining table and pretend we were in a space ship.  My dad would draw us maps of the solar system with all the planets so we could sail off somewhere mysterious where there were green men and monsters!

House 4 - Cannock, Staffordshire

When I was fourteen we moved to a larger house about a mile away.  It was a big wrench leaving the street where we had grown up.  However we both had bicycles so it wasn't too difficult to go back to meet up with people in the holidays and at weekends.  The picture is from Google Maps - I can't find a picture of the house whilst we lived there, but that is probably because I've only scanned my parents' photograph albums up to the early 1970s so far.  

It was a four bedroom house and the garden was much bigger.  My mum grew all kinds of fruit and vegetables and it was a wrench for her to leave it after only a few years.  I have some bad memories of this house - well those were my teenage years.  I will write about some of them in my private blog post - but not on here.

The big move was when I was eighteen - my dad got a job in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.  But as I was 'of age' by then I think that might be another story!

Week 4 - Book of Me - Favourite Season(s)

This post is part of an ongoing project, the Book of Me, Written by You, started by Julie Goucher of the Angler's Rest blog supported by Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers.

This week's prompt for the Book of Me is 'Your Favourite Season(s)'.  There's not much difference between this week's post and the longer version in my private blog, I couldn't think of a lot to say that was personal or needed keeping private.  The prompt didn't really speak to me or evoke particular memories, just general vague feelings.

I must be a 'glass half empty' sort of person as I can think of lots of reasons for NOT liking particular seasons.  Winter is cold and I am usually ill.  When it snows the buses stop and you can't go anywhere. Winter has Christmas in it and that's NOT a good thing, just too complicated. 

Spring is better, but still cold and wet - and I've got the worry of planting stuff now in my new(ish) big garden.  Plus it's the busiest time for CAMRA meetings so we hardly have any free weekends.  I am allergic to grass pollen and that always seems bad early on in the year - although anti-histamines are good these days. 

Autumn is OK, but that's the new term for school, which wouldn't have been a favourite for many years.  There are new programmes on the TV in the autumn, but that feels like a relatively new thing and certainly not a good enough reason to like the season. I don't like fallen leaves (not in my garden anyway, though walking through them before they go mushy is nice), you just have to sweep them up, and tidying up the garden is damp and scratchy.  There's the work of picking and preparing, drying, freezing, and so on.  It's nice to have free food, but there's a lot of work in the autumn with it.  You have to put the heating on and worry about how much that is going to cost this year.  You worry about having enough jumpers and are your boots still waterproof?  And then you get back to Winter.

So my least not favourite is summer.  Shall we say from May to August?  I know that's four months, but I seem to come alive in May and by beginning of September I'm worn out and worried about the winter to come.

 

Hot days at school, escaping out of and back into (probably illegally) the back of our classroom (4th and 5th form) at break and lunchtime by the window onto the grass of the playing field, 'cos the door is a block and a corridor away (one of those schools with blocks 'hanging off' a longitudinal corridor that stretched for (what felt like) miles.  Lounging on the grass at home, 'playing out' for hours and hours because it didn't get dark until after 9pm.  Yes, long days, I like them. 

Not having to go to school was always a plus - summer holidays, the seaside.  Time with my parents and my brother without other people getting in the way.  We used to live on the edge of an estate, near fields and a large wooded area - Cannock Chase.  We (the local kids) spent hours in those fields and that wood, making camps, running about, playing the make believe games that are important when you are little.  I expect people don't let their children play unsupervised in those woods anymore *sad*.

Being able to go for long walks (when I still could), sitting in the pub beer gardens on a Sunday with the children (they weren't allowed IN pubs in those days) and my Sheffield real ale drinking friends.  Being warm.  Being able to hang the washing out, not having it draped all over the house damp all week, even though I used to have to watch it all the time as I lived in a really dire place in those days - I don't have to worry about that now, I live in a much nicer neck of the woods now.

My back garden

 

For the last twenty one years the summer has meant my pilgrimage to the Great British Beer Festival in London for two weeks, by myself initially, then with my children, with my beloved OH in recent years.  Meeting up with good friends, better friends maybe for only seeing them once or twice a year and now via Facebook.  This year was the last time for me, as it's a volunteer thing I can't risk committing to go and then letting people down by being ill.  But I had a nice send off this summer.  It's been a good twenty-one years down there every August.

 

In the summer the garden, my garden at least, just coasts.  You have to water and weed, but the rest is as it is and it's too late to change now.  Winter is the time for big moves and lots of digging.  I am a lazy gardener I'm afraid - I would like to just sit out and read a book in the sun and stare at the produce growing thinking about the free food to come.  I enjoy seeing the first strawberry, the multitude of pods on the bean wigwams, the leeks getting fat.  Butterflies and bees, the cat trying to find the best place to sunbathe and then getting too hot and looking for a cool patch of earth to roll in. 

Yes, I like the summer best.

Week 3 - Book of Me - Physical Self

This post is part of an ongoing project, the Book of Me, Written by You, started by Julie Goucher of the Angler's Rest blog supported by Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers.

As a historian I spend a lot of time looking into the background of my ancestors and other family members but, as has already become apparent during the first couple of weeks of this project, hardly anytime on myself.  This week's prompt for the Book of Me is 'Describe your physical self'.  I have written a longer private piece but the following are the edited highlights that I am happy to share with the world!  You can easily access my other Book of Me posts by using the link in the Labels sorter in the left hand margin of my posts.
 

I thought it would be an interesting idea, especially as we were spending the weekend with family and friends, to see what impression I'd actually made on people the first time they met me.  However my plan for asking the other people at the birthday party we were attending what it was about my physical appearance struck them when we first met was mostly a failure. Everyone mentioned character aspects instead of physical ones, matronly or motherly, bubbly, organised, and so on. It was all very complementary but not very useful for this blog post.  Even with a starter for ten of 'short' they couldn't get much further ... one person said cuddly and another commented on my long hair (in her experience all grownup women had short hair). 

 

The OH was a bit more helpful and remembered a bit from our first proper meeting: "You were short, not old, with big glasses and bushy hair.  You were busy and stressed, and although you told me off you weren't nasty to me".  I'd reprimanded him for taking a session off from volunteering at a Sheffield Beer Festival because he had been called to go and do an unexpected presentation on behalf of CAMRA in Barnsley.  This was about fifteen or sixteen years ago now so I really shouldn't be surprised he can't remember any more details.

 

My own thoughts: I'm small, but loud!  I suppose I should be described as middle aged but I still feel 17 years old inside.  Looking at myself in a mirror as Julie suggests is always a mixture of relief it's not worse and resignation at the new signs of age.
 

My hair is greying in a distinguished - I think - wing like formation on the left hand side of my head, but not so much on the right - does that say something about the varying activity of the hemispheres of my brain?  It is quite long, but usually I wear it twisted up and fastened with a silver coloured hair slide.  As I mentioned in the last Book of Me post my eye colour is variable - green, blue or grey - it seems to depend on the weather or how I feel.

I don't like wearing short or even knee-length skirts, I'm happier in trousers/jeans in which I take a size 14.  I do have some long skirts, but mostly only wear them indoors.  My top half is quite large (for which my daughter has never forgiven me) and thus I take size 18-20 in shirts, although since I lost some weight this year I can fit comfortably in a size L t-shirt again.

I wear glasses, small squashed dark brown oval metal framed ones these days, the ones the OH remembers were 1990s huge plastic framed ones. 

 

I like to wear black, I have drawer full of black jeans and a wardrobe half full of black polo shirts, mostly beer related ones that I have been given for working at various beer festivals.  When I'm at the Archives or the Local History Group meetings I wear a 'proper' shirt - but due to my large 'attributes' I tend to buy men's shirts in Primark or Marks and Spencer's ladies shirts I've picked up in charity shops.  I don't do flowers or pink!

I wear boots - I have wobbly ankles and went though a stage of falling down and breaking them a lot before I worked out that shoes and sandals aren't for me.  This is another reason I don't do skirts.  Even when I got married I wore a pair of slightly heeled lace up boots under my dress.


My tattoo

I have a tattoo on my left arm, the armlet sized kind, high up so even a short sleeved shirt or t-shirt covers it and makes me look respectable. My mother said it looked Maori (just before she told me my arm was going to drop off as a consequence of having it done), but I think it's Celtic(ish). 

 

I usually wear dangly silver earrings, with purple stones or just plain silver Celtic knots.  I don't like gold - even our wedding rings are white gold so they don't look gold.  I wear mine on the third finger of my left hand (as is traditional) along with an eternity ring (more purple stones) the OH bought me to mark our anniversary.

 

I would normally wear an analogue watch, large men's style, with a black strap, but the strap broke before GBBF (Great British Beer Festival) so it's been travelling around in my pocket for the last three months.

 

I have a scar on my right eyebrow, outer end.  It's from falling off a bicycle whilst on a Sunday ride out with the Cycling Club in the late 1970s. 

 

My complexion is ruddy - that's a polite word for saying I'm a bit red faced.  I have a lot of broken capillaries and I don't wear make up - ever. 

My favourite hat is a maroon walker's hat bought in Scotland a few years ago - I call it my Downton Abbey hat - I usually wear it when it rains as it's much easier than juggling a brolly and a bag and so on when getting on and off buses and in the local shops.  That's it in my profile picture at the top right of my blog. 

Week 2 - The Book of Me - Your Birth

This post is part of an ongoing project, the Book of Me, Written by You, started by Julie Goucher of the Angler's Rest blog supported by Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers.


I was born in 1961 in Sunderland Maternity Hospital on Chester Road, Sunderland.  This was a newer building in the ground of the older Sunderland hospital where my mum had trained as a nurse cadet from the age of sixteen.  She qualified as a nurse the same year she married my father, 1959, and I came along precisely two years after their wedding day. 

Mum can't remember very many particulars, there were just midwifery staff there when I was born, no doctor in attendance.  She had been brought into hospital to be induced as I was ten days overdue.  Mum was subjected to a dose of caster oil and enema and a hot bath and once I started coming I arrived pretty sharply.  Apparently I had a bruise on my head because of the speed I was born!  Mum can't remember what time of day it was, but probably the early hours of the morning following her admittance.

I had a shock of dark hair, but that all fell out and blue eyes, which later changed to 'many colours', but which were described as blue when I was at school.  Nowadays the OH tells me they are 'every colour' - I have a theory that they change depending on my mood or the weather or something like that!  I weighted 8lb and 1.5oz and it was a Tuesday, making me 'Full of Grace' according to the rhyme.  I was not very successful at ballet classes though as a child, but I am quite flexible these days and like doing a bit of yoga, however that might be part of my disability - over-flexible joints - so maybe I shouldn't crow about it!

Mum remembers being kept in hospital for six days after my birth, that was normal procedure for those days.  When my brother was born three years later she was only kept in for two days, whether that was because he was her second child or an general change in procedure, or just a need for the bed Mum isn't sure. 



Mum and baby me, just nine days old

In the picture I am nine days old - my birthday is just a couple of days after my Mum's so I know she was just twenty three years old here.  That seems very young to me now, my daughter, who has just begun her first teaching assistant job after University is twenty five years old!

Thanks to Julie and the Book of Me Project for giving me the push to ask my mum these questions.  I am amazed I never did before, or if I did I can't remember the answers.

And thank you Mum for answering my questions so readily on the phone just now ... sorry I've never thought to ask before. xxx

Week 1 - The Book of Me - Who Are You?

I am taking part in a sort of crowd blog thing - each week there will be a prompt and we have to write on that topic.  The idea is to build up an autobiographical record.  I think as a historian I spend a lot of time looking at other people's history and not a lot of time examining my own so I welcomed the chance to do this - however I will only be posting "edited highlights" to my blog as I'm sure you don't want to read all the details!

Information on the project can be found here.

Today's prompt - the first one - was to write twenty different answers to the question "Who am I?".  Bear in mind that my answers are a bit stream of consciousness as I thought that was the most honest way - and apparently the answers will change if you do the same exercise at a different point in your life.

 

I am a black clad middle-aged wannabe goth

I am an aspiring historian

I am a mum

I am a daughter

I am a wife

I am a techie geek
I am a heavy rock fan
I am a real ale drinker - but I like wine too
I am a science fiction fan
I am an avid reader
I am a friend
I am a trouble-maker
I am a perfectionist
I am/was a radiographer - but I've still got the certificate!
I am over 50
I am NOT vegetarian - but the OH is.
I am disabled - but I look OK about 75% of the time.
I am a gardener
I am paranoid about not upsetting the neighbours
I am skint - but not destitute

I think that has exhausted the topic for today.  Facebook is currently very busy and proving very apropos on the 'friends' front while I am playing with my new Flip Pal scanner (tech) scanning pictures of family and history which also feature in the list.  Oh and I've got a glass of wine, but I am at my mum's so I didn't buy it.