I fell into a family tree shaped hole today, picking up my notes from a year ago to see if I can make sense of them. what I really need to do, I suspect is to go old-school and lay things out over the floor with bits of thread linking them or something. I know I can do that with software, but there’s something about having it laid out in front of you that’s helpful.
The focus is on my mum’s side of the family which has some knotty growth to untangle. I suggested to my sister that, if I can get enough information (and photographs) I’ll try and put something together that I could circulate in draft then maybe self-publish. I think that will take a while, though. All of these projects depend on the quality of the records and indices and the willingness of ancestors to play ball. To make it work, it helps to be able to build pen-portraits of people. That one of my C19 ancestors on Dad’s side was invalided out of the Dragoons because he got too fat to sit on a horse is far more engaging than the dull facts of his birth, christening, marriage and death.
Having said that, I wonder what the cut-off date is for stories; at what point does the privacy of the subject fade sufficiently into the past to remove inhibitions from what I might write?
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I took a walk earlier, ostensibly to buy some stamps and post a letter, but it extended somewhat. It was nice to be out in the sun, but the wind was bitter. I didn’t check in on twitter or the news headlines, but I did spot this, which is the most significant story of the day:
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Music : I was listening to a playlist and this popped up, much to my delight. The great Syd Barrett : The Effervescing Elephant
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