The day stolen from heaven

Listen, it's half-term, so I hardly have a minute to myself - and when I do, it's all I can do to sink into an armchair with a bottle of wine after the children have gone to bed.

My dear friend Trac has asked me to do something for her; and I hereby promise to deal with this on my next post. Because it needs a post of its own.

But first I need to relate the story of my visit on Friday to Cheslyn Hay to meet my distant cousins Margaret and Gavin. Gavin got in touch with me just over a month ago to tell me that he too was a descendant of Cyprian Shorter, my great great great great grandfather. We resolved to visit Cheslyn Hay in Staffordshire, which was the birthplace of Cyprian, a cordwainer, in 1803.

How can I describe this village? Well, it's probably the smallest place on earth to have adopted a one-way road system. Described as 'picturesque' in some quarters, Cheslyn is a mixture of c.1901 terraced red-brick houses, a handful of eclectic shops, and 1970's housing development. If you look along the main High Street to either side you can see blue scrubby hills, mottled with distant industry: a working landscape. You could completely imagine the great black wheel turning in the sky above the shaft, and the men coming home, blackened, to the neat little smoking houses.

Since I was early, I drove round and round the one-way system about six times, and since I began to be increasingly stared at on each lap by a class of schoolchildren who had come to study at the Salem Chapel, I had no choice but to retire to the rendezvous point and await the arrival of my cousins.

At last they arrived and I met them for the first time. Gavin and I flung our arms around each other with joy, even though we had only ever met on-line. When I first looked at his mother Margaret, I was stunned to see my grandfather's eyes looking straight back at me. There was no compromise, no mistake - I felt like I was looking at my grandfather for the first time in eight years. And I felt so warmly towards her: such is blood, such is kin. We discovered that we shared the same unusual dental peculiarity and we hugged each other. It was fantastic.

We wandered around Cheslyn for some time, exploring the strangely empty and shoe-soaking graveyard - then stalked up and down the quiet roads, finding only a couple of buildings that would have been built when Cyprian was there. Everything else was frustratingly new. We did find a Jack Shorter on the village monument who had been killed in action, but apart from that we had to content ourselves with simply knowing that we were there.

After a lunch at the Collier's Arms that would have been considered cheap even by even the most miserly standards (£6.40 for three people), we had an appointment to meet Trevor from the Cheslyn Historical Society. Unfortunately it was also time for me to go back to Warwickshire to pick the children up from school, so I greeted Trevor and bade him farewell simultaneously.

"Just before you go," he said, "Have you seen the Shorters' shoe shop?"

Gavin and I looked at each other with expressions of restrained hysteria. Trevor led us down the road to the small and unassuming building that we'd passed a dozen times already that day. This was a revelation: we were so excited. Trevor took our picture and then it was time for me to go, all too soon.



It was a really wonderful, memorable, beautiful day, and you can read about Gavin's account of it here. My dearest (new) cousin, I dedicate this post to you. I couldn't wish for anyone better!!

Dear Adrian

Adrian, I so wish I could have been there for you today.



I'm surrounded by the airy descent of yellow leaves that were vibrant green when you were still here, and huddled against the chill of the autumn that you knew you would never live to see. I still can't read your words to me, although I will always treasure them. I hope you know that you made so much difference to me, and that I'll do everything I can, to help your vision become a reality.

It's my promise.

Amanda, Kenilworth

Get me the Lemsip: and skeleton update

It's finally got to me. Here I sit on a dull Tuesday afternoon with broken glass in my throat, lungs on fire and a tissue up each nostril to stem the flow. It's not a pleasant sensation or sight. Who gave it to me? Was it my OH, the children, my friends or my enemies? Because just about everyone I know has already had a cold this autumn.

Succumbing to a cold is a bit like childbirth - although considerably less painful. I mean that in between colds you forget how completely bloody miserable it is, only to remember in succinct and technicolour style when the virus strikes.

Anyway we have had an important update on the skeleton!

Trevor emailed me back to say that although he hadn't got the actual date for the newspaper clipping that he sent me last week - see previous post - but, he believed that it dated from 1907 (incredible: over one hundred years ago). At the time, Norah was still married to her first husband Charles Russell, who was not to leave her a widow for another two years.

So: one part of the puzzle is complete - Sidney Arthur was not unfaithful to his wife. But we still must determine how the case panned out.

Other side of the tree: I believe I have found more about Cyprian Shorter's wife, Mary Lloyd Jones, whose 1822 marriage can be found at the LDS site. She is listed in the 1951 and 1961 censuses as being born in Audley, Staffordshire in c.1797.

LDS gives a Mary Jones born in Audley in this year to an Alexander and Ann Jones. In the preceding ten years before 1797, LDS lists a 1790 marriage between an Alexander LLOYD Jones and an Anne Meredith. But in Bromfield in Shropshire, which is some 60 miles from Audley.

So - perhaps this is debatable. But then Audley is also some veritable distance - 40 miles - from Wolverhampton, where Cyprian and Mary certainly got married. So the next step on this branch of the tree is really to get the Audley church records which may be available from its History Society.

Aaaaaaaaaaaattchooooooo!!!!!

Dough skeletons

I have thought a great deal about whether to publish this post.

But in order for this blog to accomplish its original mission (ie to help my children understand where they came from), I must be honest.

I was contacted this week by a gentleman who shares a distant connection with me through the Dodford Inn family. He had been researching his family in the Bromsgrove newspaper archives when he came across the name of my great grandfather, Sidney Arthur Dales.

As Trevor put it so eloquently, it seems my family tree may be larger than I originally believed.

Possibly it would be no big deal in many families, but my family wasn't like this. That said, this very baker Sidney Arthur and his brother Bob - when young rapscallions - were admonished by a magistrate for fashioning "dough dickies" to tease the elderly ladies of the neighbourhood.

Now there are two courses of action. Firstly, I must determine the date of the clipping above to establish whether this drama occured before or after his marriage to my great grandmother; and secondly I need to find out how the case unfolded. He had, the clipping says, eight witnesses who were prepared to counter the claim - which I find fascinating. In those days, long before we had DNA testing and the Jeremy Kyle Show, we had to rely on the testimony of other people to prove paternity!

And until I find out these answers, this question will remain - is there another branch on my family tree?

The elephant and the fish

This is kind of the Second Pass of the Elephant. It's harder than the first part where you can be so free and easy: you have to start being decisive and properly laying down paint in the right places, or it won't work. The worst thing about this stage is that the painting can begin to lose its 'life' - the energy that is somehow encapsulated in the piece when it has all its promise, right at the start. The interesting bit will be when I add the colours which have to complement and reflect my brother's interior decor. Which is kind of vivid cranberry. Hmmmm!!

So, where do the fish come in? I'll tell you. Two days ago I asked my OH to put the dinner on for me. He opened the pack and gave it a suspicious sniff, and I inwardly rolled my eyes because he's so damned fussy about food. Then he checked the date on the packet.

"It's out of date!" he muttered darkly, accusingly. So we had to get something else.

The next morning, William was being really quite naughty about getting ready for school and not getting dressed - and saying, "What-ever" when I reminded him.

"I warn you!" I roared - "If you don't put that toy down and get dressed NOW I'm going to put that toy in the bin."

And the next time I looked at him he was still undressed, still playing with the toy, which I seized and threw into the kitchen bin (amid much wailing from William). "No, that's IT," I said, firmly, "-I am not getting it out and perhaps you will stop being cheeky and start to do as you're told."

At this point the wailing assumed banshee-proportions and my OH came downstairs to find out what was happening. As soon as I related events to him, he said to William: "If you say sorry to Mummy for being cheeky, and get dressed, I'm sure she'll get Wall-E out of the bin."

And William turned his massive blue liquid eyes on me and said, "I'm really, really sorry, Mummy" and I gave in and promised to retrieve the toy while he was at school.

Only I forgot.

And that afternoon, when he came home from school and asked me if I'd got Wall-E out of the bin, I had to quickly go and have a rummage for the toy which was now deep, deep in the bin and long been covered all day with the breakfast scrapings.

And which had been nestling deeply in the bosom of the out-of-date salmon from the night before.

I know I can still smell that fish even now.

Ben is three

Monday was Ben's birthday, and this year he definitely knows what it's all about. He opened his presents in less than four minutes and wanted me to put them together, but as it was a school day this was somewhat impossible.

As anyone who has anything to do with children will know, there is a corresponding and inverse relationship between the time it takes to unnwrap and build a toy and the time it takes for the child to dismantle it and distribute the components across the house.

The dismay I felt upon opening Ben's new toy farm was crushing. It was totally flatpacked and it took more time to put together than a real farm would have done. Afterwards I wrestled the farm animals free of their plastic-coated wire bondage and finally placed them into the pastoral surroundings of the wooden farm. This is the Before shot, the fruit of my entire afternoon:



And this is the After shot, the fruit of Hurrican Ben being home for less than five minutes.




To be fair, the stable remained in the same place.



Although we had no party this year (thereby reserving my sanity for a little more time at least) we did have a lovely time, and Ben looked about as thrilled as any child could possibly look when he saw his cake...





...I found it so hard to tear him away from his fun at bedtime! It was nothing to do with him needing a rest - no; the toys all needed re-gathering, re-building and rearranging again and the house pretty much needed razing to the ground to get it back to anything approaching normality.

So true, that saying on my sage fridge magnet:

Cleaning a house while the kids are still growing
Is like shovelling snow when it's still snowing.

Legend

Reader, I adored him.