Category Archives: ramblings

personal, ramblings, thoughts

Thoughts on Family History

4 Comments

In doing my family history I, like most, keep my records in a piece of software designed for the purpose. In my case this is Family Tree Maker (FTM), which (is no longer owned by but) syncs with Ancestry [https://www.ancestry.com]. I looked quite hard at the options many years ago and found that FTM was the most useable of the many family tree applications available.
And then a couple of years ago, when Ancestry announced they were ceasing support and development of FTM, and before it was acquired by Mackiev, I looked again at the market and still found nothing I thought came up to FTM for either functionality or usability. So like many others I was very happy when Mackiev took on FTM and have worked with Ancestry to maintain the FTM-Ancestry integration.
What all family tree software allows you to do is plot not just your direct line, but also the branches by adding the laterals (siblings etc.) for each person. I know many don’t bother with this but concentrate only of their father’s father’s father’s … line, or at least their direct lines. To me this is not a good approach for two reasons.
First of all, adding in all those laterals (siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, half- and step-siblings, and more, going ever backwards) provides more information. And hunting around them can often provide key evidence to verify (or at least suggest) one’s actual ancestral line. Nefarious family members are often witnesses at marriages, the person registering a death, or shown on a census as sharing a house.
Secondly, this provides a huge amount of rich interest, and often the odd skeleton in the wardrobe. Ah, so great-grandmother was actually a tailor with her own business and not just any old seamstress. GGGG-uncle Bulgaria did serve at Waterloo, as Grandma always said. And no-one in the family knew great-grandfather had a bastard child after he left great-grandmother in 1910, and in the process he told fibs to either the registrar of births or the 1911 census. [This latter actually happened in my family: my mother had a half-aunt who she was totally unaware of until I found her.]
But in amongst all this it is often quite hard to remember where the gaps in your research are, and how good is the quality of the data you have. This is important if, like Noreen and I, you believe in being forensic in proving linkages. I’m never really happy until I can be pretty sure my evidence would stand the “beyond reasonable doubt” test of a criminal court. However, as Clarenceux King of Arms has reminded me more than once, you do occasionally have to fall back to the civil court standard of “on the balance of probabilities” – which does still require substantial evidence which would be allowable in court but not quite as rigorously as in a criminal court. There’s far too much guesswork and wishful thinking amongst family historians, and that won’t do, nor will copying other people’s research without checking it. Remember also the plural of anecdote is not data.
All the software packages I’ve looked at do allow you to reference and source your information, as any good researcher should. But what I have never found is a package which allows you to set, for each piece of information, a Red/Amber/Green traffic light style flag to indicate the quality of the data with a quick visual check. For instance a birth registration might be GREEN if you have the birth certificate or have seen the baptismal register; AMBER if it is information which is known in the family but not well documented, like Great-grandma’s birthday; but RED if is a date you’ve back-calculated from the age given on a death certificate or census (both of which are notoriously unreliable, albeit useful). To me this is a major failing and any family tree software application which includes RAG flags will have a significant selling point.
One thing I have found useful, and which provides some part of a way round the omission of RAG flags is a “family table”. Many sources provide pretty charts which allow you to plot out you, your parents, their parents, and their parents, and so on; ie. just your direct ancestors. This can be in circular form or in the more usual form of a tree. And they are mostly large cumbersome wallcharts with room for little more than the name; dates of birth and death if you’re lucky.
I’ve found it better to make my own using a simple table structure in MS Word (any word processing or spreadsheet software should do) – I stole the original idea from my wife and have since adapted it. I have three sheets, which takes me back to my GGGG-grandparents (so 250 or so years). It is designed to be printed on normal A4 paper; and carrying two or three sheets of paper in a pocket or handbag isn’t unreasonable – and very useful if you get into family conversations with relatives or friends. OK, so it isn’t as pretty as many of the commercial offerings, but that’s not important; it’s much more convenient.
Here are the first couple of pages of my table (click on the images for a larger view):

Sample Family Table 1 Sample Family Table 1

[I’ve redacted a few details, just to make it a bit harder for the criminally minded, but even if I hadn’t all the information is in the public domain, although it might cost a few quid and a lot of time to get at it.]
For me the other way this table wins is because I’ve used colour-coding. That means I have a very quick visual check on where I have holes and information I need to prove. The more black there is on the table the better the data. And as one might imagine by the time one reaches page 3 there are a lot of gaps and a lot of red – it’s all work in progress.
If anyone would like a blank copy of the table you can download the MS Word version here. If you do use it, let me know – just so I can wallow in feeling slightly useful! 🙂
Meanwhile happy ancestor hunting.

medical, personal, ramblings

Ten Things

Having just had my second knee transplant (sorry, total prosthetic knee replacement) I thought that for this month’s Ten Things I should maybe write a few of the important things I’ve learnt about knee replacement operations.
Ten Things I’ve Learnt about Knee Replacement
I’m taking as read all the usual stuff about operations, general anaesthetics, etc. (like anti-DVT stockings, morphine causing constipation). This is knee replacement specific things. First of all it is important to realise that no two knee operations are the same, so what follows is based on my experiences; yours may be different.

  1. There are three key people in a good outcome: a good surgeon, a good physiotherapist and you! Yes, you! A good surgeon and good physio are critical, but it is equally critical that you put in the work at rehab!
  2. If you can find out who your surgeon will be, check him (or her) out. If you have a choice, ensure you get someone who specialises in knee replacements rather than a generalist. What’s their track record? How many have they done? The more experienced they are the better.
  3. Anything you can do before your operation to strengthen your legs muscles, specifically the quads at the front of the thigh, is going to be helpful in rehab.
  4. Before you go into hospital ensure everything is ready at home, especially think about trip hazards: gangways are clear, rugs are stuck down or removed.
  5. Get a urinal (maybe two) with a lid – something to pee into in the middle of the night. (They’re cheap and many come with a “female funnel attachment”.) Even with a light on, you do not want to be staggering to the bathroom, on crutches, maybe in pain, barely half-awake, in the wee small hours and while trying to avoid the lurking cats and dogs.
  6. Unless you have a “slave” (aka. a partner) to fetch and carry for you, get a good bag (shopping bag size) which you can put over your shoulder or round your neck to carry things around when you’re using crutches.


    7. A typical before and after x-ray; note the realignment of the femur and tibia

  7. Post-op your enemy is infection. Ensure no-one (and I mean no-one) touches your operated leg without having visibly washed their hands and are preferably wearing disposable gloves.
  8. Do as much as possible to ensure you get a good physiotherapist. Poor, or no, physio is the fastest way to ensure you don’t recover your mobility. Rehab physio will start in hospital; they’ll likely have you standing with a frame and walking a few gentle paces just 12 or so hours after your operation. You will be given exercises to do. Do them – as much as you can through the pain (but stop when it gets too painful). And keep doing them. Make sure you get as much post-op out-patient physio as you can and that your first session is within 7-10 days of leaving hospital; these sessions will help monitor your progress and adjust the exercises to your needs. The physios are not there to be sadistic (though sometimes it feels like it!) but to get you doing the right exercises, the right way, and at the right time, to ensure the best possible outcome.
  9. Recovery is painful! Think about what has been done – someone has done around 90 minutes serious carpentry to remove the degraded bone and replace it, very accurately, with some highly engineered metalwork; and that’s all on one of the most complex joints in the body. Discuss pain control with your clinicians; they will prescribe the right analgesics. Although the pain will recede over time, do not expect to be pain-free for several weeks. But a good outcome is well worth the pain.
  10. You should be provided with elbow crutches and taught to use them in the day or so after your operation. You will need them for several weeks. Go carefully and don’t get over-confident as this will lead to accidents. On the other hand you should be encouraged to dispense with the crutches as soon as you safely can.

There is a lot more I can say, and I do intend to try to write all this up for the benefit of others. But that will do for now!

books, ramblings, words

Written Rules

If you think that good, clear, written English is irrelevant, pedantic or elitist you really need to think again and read this from the Guardian …

Don’t press send … The new rules for good writing in the 21st century


Regardless of style (which needs to vary with context) good, clear, factually correct writing which is correct in grammar and spelling, helps engage the reader. And after all, that is what you want, isn’t it!?
And yes, NHS and HMRC, I’m looking especially at you!

beliefs, nudism, ramblings

Just One Person

Following on from my post of yesterday, British Naturism (BN) are challenging those of us who are nudists/naturists to talk about it.
Their campaign is called “Just One Person” and we are being challenged to tell one person about our naturism. As their press release says

We hope to inspire those who do not talk about their Naturist lifestyle choice outside to tell just one person.
Many people don’t even know they know a Naturist and assume that we are still that fringe minority on the far edges of society. In fact, we are their next-door neighbours, their work colleagues, the people on the next table in the pub, in the aeroplane seats in the row in front, in the car hire queue behind them at the airport … everywhere.
We completely understand the individual fears and possible complications … but do want to encourage you to help Naturism in the UK to grow and to become normal. While it remains hidden, misguided and incorrect views of Naturism will continue … We want to escape from the association that nudity means sex, or even worse, perversion.
[The aims] are to:
– Improve the public understanding of Naturism by engaging people in conversation about it.
– Encourage more people to become involved in Naturism.
– Help increase people’s confidence in themselves (by having the conversation) and their bodies through experiencing non-judgemental social nudity.

So if you’re a naturist – even, like me, a solitary naturist (largely through force of circumstance) – or just someone who is not afraid of naturism and social nudity, go out and tell people. Help break down those unnecessary taboos – taboos about keeping naturism to yourself; taboos about not talking to people about naturism; taboos about the fear that naturism will deprave and corrupt. Even just a blog post or something on Facebook will help; but better to talk to people face-to-face and have an open conversation.


What? You’re still scared of nudity? Remember two things. First, we all know what’s underneath this t-shirt and jeans. And second, nude bodies are not sexual per se; it’s the context that makes them sexual. So really, why is there a problem?

beliefs, ramblings, sexuality

Pornography vs Obscenity

I’ve just finished reading Brooke Magnanti’s The Sex Myth: Why Everything We’re Told is Wrong (review later) and she makes a useful point about pornography and obscenity.

The word ‘pornography’ comes from Greek roots: porno-, related to prostitution; graphos, to write. Stories about hookers, in other words … People in the nineteenth century became more worried about drawing a line between what was art and what was obscene. Those worries helped shape the view of what today is labelled ‘pornography’ versus what is labelled ‘erotica’ – even though few people, if any, can give a clear idea of the difference.
‘Obscenity’, meanwhile, comes from the Latin obscenus, meaning repulsive or detestable. Something obscene is something that is offensive to the morality of the time, something taboo. The definition of obscenity is different in different cultures, and even people in the same culture can disagree about what is obscene. Many laws have tried to define obscenity. While erotic imagery can be defined as obscene, it isn’t always considered so, and some laws recognise this

To which I would like to add the word ‘prostitute’: one who engages in sexual activity in exchange for money (payment).
Put that lot together and it means my world view goes something like this …
Technically pornography is stories about those who engage in sex for money. To me this means that any video (or other medium) which portrays a sexual act, where one can reasonably expect that (some of) the participants have been paid is pornography and (depending on one’s predilections) may also be erotic. Mere photographs of vulvas or penises may also be erotic, but are not a sexual act so are not (at least in my world view) pornographic; they aren’t ipso facto a sex act.
Whether one defines the pornographic, or the erotic, as obscene depends very much on one’s personal morality. We each have our own moral code, which may or may not align with that of society at large, and an act (image, description) doesn’t become obscene until it offends our morals and transgresses the line into being taboo. And that act doesn’t have to be sexual.
To use my own views as an example, I have no problem with the depiction of sexual acts, let alone the depiction of breasts, vulvas or penises. Pornography (as defined above) for me only becomes obscene when it crosses the boundary into being violent, non-consensual or involving minors or animals. There are sexual acts I greatly dislike (eg. male homosexuality), but that doesn’t per se make them obscene. But I do find many other things in this world obscene, amongst them the gratuitous killing of people and animals, blatant disregard for human rights, FGM, rape (of people and the environment), corporate greed and bankers mega-bonuses. YMMV.
So pornography is essentially, technically, amenable to definition. Obscenity is not readily definable so easily in anything other that one’s personal world view. Pornography is (should be) a largely objective measure. Obscenity can only ever be subjective. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that legislation cannot prohibit certain acts because the moral view of the majority of the legislature is that they are obscene for them – that’s how our collective, social, morality works and it is only by iconoclasts like me pushing the boundaries that such collective views are shifted.

environment, ramblings

How to be Green

Noreen and I have always maintained that we’ve done two of the most important things one ever can in terms of being green and preventing global warming. We don’t have children and we don’t run a car.
It turns out that we’re right, as this article outlines.

Any of [the top] lifestyle changes drastically reduces carbon emissions compared to more common practices like recycling, using energy-efficient light bulbs and line-drying clothes.

  • having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 metric ton CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year;
  • living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year);
  • avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per round trip trans-Atlantic flight);
  • eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year).

In fact, according to this list, we should also count the third item.
As always though there is a “but” …
Yes we’ve chosen not to have children. So far, really good. However we are not totally car-free. It’s true that neither of us drives and we’ve never owned a car, but we do use taxis a fair amount. I calculated many years ago that, when one looks at the total (money) cost of ownership, using taxis was much cheaper than running a car. Nevertheless, using taxis can’t count as totally car-free, although I’d maintain it is pretty damn good: on the 2-3 times a week we need car transport, by using a taxi for maybe 20 minutes, we share that car with tens of other people that day. And having to get a cab, makes us think about what we’re doing and where we’re going, as we can’t just jump in the car at any slight provocation, several times a day.
In addition we avoid air travel wherever possible. We’ve only ever done one long-haul trip (Washington DC) and even then we made a special effort to offset the carbon emissions. I don’t see us doing long-haul again; but one never knows. Although over the years I did a couple of dozen internal or European flights for work, we’ve only ever done a handful of short-haul flights for leisure purposes – and again I don’t see that changing significantly. Yes, of course we would love to go and see all these fancy places – but we don’t need to, it’s expensive (in so many ways) and we can live without it.
So while we may not be able to count a full 3 out of the 4, I reckon we’re entitled to 2½. Which is probably 2 more than the average person. No reason to gloat, but a reason to be sad that others are perhaps less compassionate, and a reason for some small contentment.
Ultimately it is all down to one’s ethical compass, how one views the world, and making lifestyle choices.
How well do you do?

personal, photography, ramblings

Extra Cat

Yesterday we acquired another kitten – a boy kitten. Well we can’t have a household of just two girlie cats! Again he came from our local animal rescue charity Guardian Angels and was being fostered by the lovely Kat in Isleworth. Kat said she hadn’t named him but was referring to him as “Boy”. By the time we got him home, it had stuck. He’s about 9 weeks old, mostly white with some tabby splotches. He’s also got noticeably, and strikingly, curly whiskers, a very triangular head and big ears – which makes us wonder if he doesn’t have some Devon Rex (or similar) in his make up; maybe a Devon Rex grandfather?
So here are the first couple of decent photos, taken at lunchtime yesterday, within an hour or so of him arriving. In the first he is offering to help with lunch. Well what self-respecting cat wouldn’t when there’s cold roast salmon on offer?


Like all kittens he’s slightly scruffy, but that never stops them looking cute …

He’s still quite phased by everything. He was the last of the litter to find a home, so he’s been without his brothers’ company for a while. He hated the car journey home. And everything here is different, new and scary especially with two big cats around. But he’ll be fine. I’m confident they’ll all adjust.
If nothing else Boy will eat for England. He clearly wasn’t starving when we brought him home. Nevertheless between about 1pm and midnight yesterday he demolished two complete sachets of kitten food, several teaspoons worth of cold salmon, a piece of raw steak the size of a large almond, and several similar pieces of cooked steak. Oh and the piece of pasta I dropped on the floor. By the evening he was very round and drum-like in the middle; he looked as if he’d swallowed a basketball and was about to split a seam. But then it is every kitten’s ambition to be like that: most cat’s run by the motto “Eat now, lest hungry later”. As Garfield always said: “Eat and sleep. Eat and Sleep. There must be more to life but I do hope not!”
Meanwhile WPC Primrose sat and watched, ready to intervene in any indecorous behaviour:

Actually, apart from spending time out, and being pissed off because our bedroom is out of bounds at present, both Tilly and Rosie are being quite good.

amusements, personal, ramblings

Ten Things

Summer is here. Well at least we’ve had a few glimpses of it. So Ten Things this month has a summery theme.
Ten Summer Things To Do

  1. Eat ice-cream
  2. Watch a cricket match (in person not on TV)
  3. Eat strawberries (and cream, of course)
  4. Sit in the garden (or on the beach) drinking wine
  5. Swim nude

  6. Paddle in the sea
  7. Go to a garden and enjoy the roses
  8. Sit by the river and watch nature and the world go by
  9. Spend a day in the nude – in your garden or on the beach – and enjoy the feel of sun and breeze on your skin
  10. Visit a farm to pick your own strawberries, asparagus etc.

Of course, doing these things is not necessarily restricted to summer, but they’re all better in nice weather. So now we just need the sunshine!

books, history, ramblings, topographical

Shoes and Ships, but no Sealing Wax

The last couple of evenings I’ve been reading a small volume produced in 1965 by the Sussex Record Society. It’s by Richard F Dell and titled Rye Port Books; it documents shipping in and out of Rye in East Sussex between 1566 and 1590, ie. a large part of the reign of Elizabeth I. Rye, at this date, had a large harbour which irrevocably silted up around 1600.
While this might sound somewhat dull, they were interesting times (to say the least) when there was essentially a “cold war” between Protestant England and Catholic Europe. Understandably no-one was permitted to leave (or enter) the country without government permission, although many did and not a few were either Catholics fleeing to France or Italy or they were spies for one side or the other (or indeed both).
Rye at that time was one of the major ports for both passengers and freight between England and France and the Low Countries. Regrettably there is little detail of people movements in these records, apart from the occasional note of a boat carrying “20 passengers”. This is a shame because even at this date there were immigration officers stationed at every port such as Rye. Their job, as today, was to interrogate and determine the bona fides of all travellers and naturally to detain any they thought might be Catholic insurgents or spies. From reading elsewhere about the spy rings of Elizabethan England (masterminded by Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham) it is clear there was also a large amount of mail travelling back and forth, mostly being hand-carried by couriers. [For more on this see Stephen Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I. Review when I’ve finished reading it.]


This book is more about the trade which was happening. Although there are several vessels logged which seem to do nothing but ply back and forth between Rye and Dieppe (the preferred route to France) carrying what today would be called “stuff”, there is also a large amount of goods travelling round the coast of the country, especially between Rye and London, but also as far afield as Newcastle, Spain and Portugal. Remember these are times when the roads were poor, if they existed at all, and a journey from Rye to London by cart carrying goods would take a week or more whereas in good weather a boat could sail between Rye and London in a couple of days. None of the ships involved are of any size; the largest I saw mentioned was 70 tons and they go down to tiny boats of 10 tons; the average is probably around 25-30 tons. These really are tiny boats; the Mary Rose by contrast was rated at 500 tons.

A large section of the book is a line by line summary of every ship which enters or departs Rye over this 35 year period (give or take a few gaps), all constructed from the surviving Elizabethan records in the Sussex County Archive, the National Archives and the Rye Town Records.
Most of the cargo was quite mundane, and perhaps what one might expect: grain of various sorts, wood (ship upon ship full of wood), coal, wool, cloth of various types, wine; and there were many loads which are just recorded as “mixed” so who knows what they contained. Iron appears fairly regularly, and in significant quantities too (the Sussex Downs were an iron smelting centre at this date) and there are several shipments of ordnance including the occasional iron cannon.
But there are some surprising (at least to me) things, such as: lupins, vinegar, apples (from France), oranges and lemons (yes even so; they come in from Spain and Portugal), hops (being traded in both directions), horses (strangely mostly out-bound), cony skins, wolf skins, bricks (being imported from the Low Countries; a single 40 ton ship can carry at least 10,000). And it goes on with nuts, spices, lead, paper, hosiery, cochineal, woad (presumably for use as a dyestuff), herrings (red and white), codfish, quails and scrap brass. Another ship brings in “6 asses”. All of this is, of course, taxed.
But there were several entries which really caught my eye. One cargo is documented as “Mixed inc. tennys bawles”; another contains “French playing cards”. Then there’s a mixed shipment which includes hawks (“6 Tassell hawks, 7 Falcon hawks, 3 Martin hawks, imported by Walter Libon, alien”). Lastlly, there are several shipments of old shoes to London! One can only guess that scrap leather had a value, but for what?
We think we live in interesting times, ship strange goods around in containers, using humongous amounts of oil. But all this was being done by the power of man, horse, tide and wind.
Who said history is dull!

ramblings, thoughts

On Manners, Expectations and Love

Is there a relationship between manners, our expectations of others and love?
Weaving together three articles from several years ago, I think there may be. This post is really me trying to see if this works. So you may disagree and I’m open to discussion.
First of all let’s think briefly about manners: those actions we try to instil into our children to help them survive in polite society.
According to an article in New Scientist in September 2013, “Manners maketh man: how disgust shaped human evolution” by Valerie Curtis [paywall] …

We need to better understand manners for two reasons: first, because they are a principal weapon in the war on disease, and second, because manners underpin our ability to function as a cooperative species … [M]anners are so important that they should be up there with fire and the invention of language as a prime candidate for what makes us human.
The first, and most ancient, function of manners is to solve the problem of how to be social without getting sick.
…
Those who master manners are set to reap the many benefits that come from living in a highly cooperative ultra-society. Manners are therefore a sort of proto-morality, a set of behaviours that we make “second nature” early in life so that we can avoid disgusting others with our parasites and our antisocial behaviour.

It’s the “cooperative society” part which interests me here as this seems to mesh with the idea (Business Insider; 25 March 2013) that

What one person expects of another can come to serve as a self-fulfilling prophesy.

This was tested on teachers and children. Teachers were told (randomly) a child was a star or a dunce; the children didn’t know how they’d been allocated. A while later when the child’s subsequent achievement was independently tested the stars had done significantly better than the dunces.
Thus we have a situation which reflects what I always say:

If you treat people as you would like them to be, you give then the space and incentive to grow and develop. If you treat them as they are, then they stay as they are.

If you expect manners, you’ll (hopefully) get manners; if you expect no manners, you’ll get no manners. And like it or not, manners oil the wheels of society.
So where does love come into all this?
Reflect on this comment from Candice Chung in an article “Why Chinese parents don’t say I love you” from the Sydney Morning Herald in July 2016.

From a sociological perspective, studies have also found that the phrase ‘I love you’ tends to be used less in a high context culture [eg. Asia] where “expectations are high and well documented”. While in the West (low context society), relationships are often managed with ‘I love you reminders’ to reassure someone of their importance [whereas], in high context culture, “intensely personal and intimate declarations can seem out of place and overly forceful”.

What this is saying seems to be that the Asian way, covert love, is thought to be less intense than the Western, more overt, way. In fact it seems to me the opposite is true and that the Asian way puts far more pressure on families and relationships than we do in the West. There seem to be far greater expectations of family connection, responsibility, loyalty etc. amongst Asians than amongst Westerners, and that the Western way appears to me to be more balanced and permissive of personal freedom.
And that amounts to essentially a difference of manners and expectations between cultures, so it is no real wonder that the cultures work differently.