history, personal, ramblings

Families

Yesterday I ended up spending a large part of the day immersed in my family history. It all started because Noreen (who has done at least as much work on my family as her own) noticed that one of the files we had from my mother had a birth certificate in it.

We have three crates of stuff from my mother, much of which is organised as a family timeline and history in ring binders, all of which has been refiled. But we realised we hadn’t been through the miscellaneous files for certificates, which I prefer to file separately. We started on the crate of miscellaneous files thinking we’d find a couple of certificates. We found a couple of dozen!

In entering all the certificate data into my family tree app I came across a death certificate for my g-g-g-grandfather, one James Gambridge (born ca.1789, died 1857) which records his occupation as “Cook on Her Majesty’s Ship Victory”. No this is too good to be true! He would have been about 16 at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar (in 1805). Is it possible he served under Nelson at Trafalgar?


Answer: No.

The crew (an incredible 850 officers and men) on HMS Victory at Trafalgar is well documented. And James Gambridge isn’t amongst them. (Nor is there a James Cambridge, the ‘G’ often being mis-transcribed as a ‘C’.) Now one shouldn’t always believe what is given even on certificates, and this rang alarm bells.

Yet I knew James Gambridge’s occupation was given as “Gunner” on his daughter Sarah Ann’s (my maternal g-g-grandmother) marriage certificate (in 1848). So maybe he was an enlisted sailor. Hmmm … more work required.

Then, talking over dinner, Noreen made an almost throw-away comment: “Of course there’s also Leading Seaman Albert Edward T Hicks of Dover who on the 1901 census is shown as serving on HMS Victory at Portsmouth”. What?

Now the Hickses are my father’s mother’s family and, yes, they come from Dover. “Oh yes”, says Noreen, “he’s one of yours”.

Now my g-g-grandfather was a certain Jabez Hicks of Dover, sometime mariner. And we know his son James Albert (1847-1888; not in my direct line) was also a mariner. Noreen is even more fascinated by this family than I am and has established that James Albert had a son Albert Edward Thomas (b. 1875). Both James Albert and his wife died quite young and it seems that the five surviving children were parcelled out around their aunts and uncles (who were likely also their god-parents).

Young Albert Edward was sent to live with his uncle Edward Israel Hicks and on the 1891 census is at the Royal Naval School at Greenwich. So much can be established from census records etc. (Albert Edward Hicks is quite common as names go, but Albert Edward T Hicks isn’t.) And hence Noreen’s discovery of Albert Edward T Hicks on HMS Victory at Portsmouth on the 1901 census.

This I now start to think I don’t believe.

So let’s see what, if anything, the National Archives come up with. God bless this new-fangled internet thingy ‘cos I can do this from home on a Saturday evening!

So after a bit of grubbing around — and much swearing at the awful slowness of the National Archives’ website — lo and behold I can find a Naval service record for Albert Edward Thomas Hicks of Dover. And the document is available for download (for the cost of a pint of beer).

He joined up for 12 years on his 18th birthday in December 1893 as a ship’s boy. He eventually retired from the Navy in October 1919 as a Petty Officer on HMS Lupin (almost 26 years service). He served several tours on HMS Victory (as well as, inter alia, HMS Hood (1891) and HMS Pembroke) and throughout the First World War. Absolutely amazing.

But following the same pattern I cannot find any service record for James Gambridge — and all the records are supposed to be there. One last desperate effort: let’s just do a general search for him, forget about targeting naval records. Wow! And there is a James Gambridge who served in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines between 1804 and 1839. Now this doesn’t quite fit as quoted ages etc. don’t properly match and I don’t yet have the full document (it isn’t one that’s online) to check it all. But yes, it may be a possible fit.

I never knew I had forebears in the Navy, let alone dreamt that they may have served on HMS Victory (albeit not at Trafalgar). And now I find I may had had two such. And both sides of the family. Wow!

Now I need to find more about my paternal grandfather’s service in WWI and WWII, which isn’t proving easy. I know he served as RAF barrage balloon ground crew in WWII. And in WWI he was a conscientious objector but volunteered to serve in the RAMC as a stretcher bearer at the front. How brave is that!

personal

Reasons to be Grateful: 10

Experiment, week 10. This week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.

  1. Sleep. I like my sleep; I always have done. But for some reason my sleep pattern seems to be easily disrupted these days with too many nights when I either can’t get to sleep or, more often, when I wake up in the wee small hours and can’t get back to sleep. But this week I have had several good sleeps to make up for the bad ones, and I feel so much better for it.
  2. Central Heating. Last weekend our central heating boiler decided to stop working. Although we have a warm house, boy did it cool down quickly. But we survived; indeed it took both of us back to our childhoods in unheated houses when one heated one room and were glad to snuggle down in bed and get warm. And fortunately we have a backup immersion heater (so there was always piping hot water) and a gas fire in the front room so we could heat that room and watch TV accompanied by two cats and two laptops. Anyway the boiler got fixed during the week and it’s great to have an all-round warm house again — I was surprised how quickly the house did warm up too.
  3. Jake. Earlier in the week we went to see the Patron of the Anthony Powell Society. I knew his cat, Jake, had been under the weather recnetly but was gald to see he was back to his old self. Jake like attention. He also likes sitting on people. Not on their laps but draped across their chest and shoulders. I think I spent half the time we were there with this large tabby cat draped in vrious poses across my torso.
  4. Prof. Alice Roberts. As I posted on Friday I’m delighted that Alice Roberts has been appointed as Professor of Public Engagement in Science at University of Birmingham. Yes, OK, I’ll admit it: I think Alice is very sexy. She is also an excellent scientist and a brilliant communicator so this is a well-deserved appointment.
  5. HMS Victory and the National Archives. I’m going to write a separate post about this, so come back later for another instalment.
food+drink

Pasta with Bacon & Tomato

Here’s another quick, easy and almost infinitely adaptable teatime recipe. This makes a dry-ish pasta dish as there is nothing except the reduced tomatoes to make any sauce.

I remember my mother doing this in a frying pan when I was a kid and the only pasta available was quick cook macaroni.

Use suitable quantities for the number of people being fed and how hungry they are.

Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes

You will need …

  • Pasta, preferably fresh
  • Bacon, cut into 1cm wide strips
  • Onion
  • Garlic, more or less to taste
  • Tomatoes, one or two per person, fresh but over-ripe is fine
  • Olive Oil
  • Fresh Herbs of your choice, if available
  • Black Pepper
  • Parmesan Cheese


This is what you do …

  1. Put the pasta on to cook. When it’s done drain and put it aside to keep warm. (You can cook the pasta while the tomato/bacon cook if you like but that’s too much for my simple mind!)
  2. While the pasta cooks chop the onion, garlic, bacon, herbs and tomatoes.
  3. In one pan cook the tomato in a small amount of oil. You want it to start cooking down and beginning to fall apart; you don’t want it very wet. If it does too quickly then just take it off the heat.
  4. In another pan sauté the onion and garlic in some oil until the onion is translucent.
  5. Then add the bacon to the onion and continue frying.
  6. When the bacon is cooked to your liking add the tomato, herbs, some pepper and the pasta.
  7. Stir it all together and cook for another few minutes to allow the flavours to mingle and ensure everything is hot through.
  8. Serve with the grated/flaked Parmesan Cheese and a robust red wine.

Notes …

  1. Like most of my other recipes you can adapt this almost infinitely. For instance leave out the tomatoes and add mushrooms along with the bacon. Or you can use spinach instead of tomatoes.
  2. Bacon offcuts work well for this.
  3. You can substitute prawns, anchovies, smoked salmon, Parma ham or even kidney beans for the bacon. In fact I often do this without the tomato and with prawns and lemon instead of bacon.
  4. If using fish then you might want to add some lemon juice and/or zest.
  5. If you want this really dry then leave out the tomatoes.
  6. Short pasta works better as I find spaghetti and linguine are difficult to stir well into the mixture. Fusilli or macaroni work well.
current affairs, science

Good News Day

In its own little way today is a good news day …

First I noticed that yesterday the International Telecommunication Union have been unable to agree the change to abandon leap seconds (see my post here) and a decision has been postponed until at least 2015. Hopefully that will give some time for sense to prevail.

Then today it has been announced that the parliamentary bill to move the UK’s clocks forward an hour permanently (well for a three year trial) has run out of time and is now unlikely to happen. (See my much earlier post about GMT here.)

But perhaps best of all, courtesy of Facebook and YouTube, I learn that one of my “heroes”, the most excellent Dr Alice Roberts has just been appointed as Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. While this has to be a loss for the medical profession it is a brilliant appointment which is well deserved. There’s nothing on the news channels yet, but I’m sure there will be. Alice joins an illustrious band of UK scientists including, inter alia, (the much hated by me) Richard Dawkins, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy and physicist Jim Al-Khalili who all hold/have held Chairs in the Public Engagement or Understanding of Science.

Time to crack open … a mug of tea! 🙂

amusements, medical, science

You've Got What?!?!?!

One of my less endearing qualities is a lay-scientist’s interest in emerging infectious diseases (of plants and animals). And as such I follow ProMED which disseminates reports of these things from around the world to the scientific community.

And are there some strange and amusingly named diseases out there. So I was amused, but not surprised, this morning to see a report of Wobbly Possum Disease in New Zealand. If you wrote it in a novel, or indeed a comedy script, no-one would believe it! But what would you call a disease which makes possums, well, wobbly?

Others that always amuse me for their names are Astrakhan Spotted Fever (which affects humans), Flaccid Trunk Disease (of elephants), Lime Witches’ Broom Phytoplasma (affecting citrus trees) and O’nyong-nyong Fever (also affecting humans).

Yes, it’s a strange world we live in!

photography

January Sunrise

Sunrise yesterday, Tuesday 17 January, over west London as seen from our study window.

Sunrise 17 January, version 3
Click the image for a larger version
For those familiar with the Greenford area that’s Horsenden Hill just peeking over the houses on the right.

amusements, quotes

Keep Calm and Drink Up

One of the many contents of my Christmas Stocking was a small book called Keep Calm and Drink Up. It is a collection of quotations and aphorisms about drink — mostly alcoholic drink, of course.

Amongst the more delightfully amusing and/or thought-provoking entries were the following.

The British have a remarkable talent for keeping calm, even when there is no crisis.
[Franklin P Jones]

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
[George F Burns]

Rum, noun: generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
[Ambrose Bierce]

I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.
[WC Fields]

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.
[Galileo]

There can’t be good living where there is not good drinking.
[Benjamin Franklin]

Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.
[Arnold Schwarzenegger]

The greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer … the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
[Dave Barry]

nudism

Social Nudity: Follow-up on TV Programme


Following up on my snippet alerting people to My Daughter the Teenage Nudist there’s an interesting post by Alex, seen topless in Manchester in the film on that experience. Frankly I thought the attitude of the policeman involved was disgraceful and that a formal complaint would not have been out of order: he was arrogant, uncommunicative and inflexible specially considering that nothing illegal had taken (or was obviously about to take) place. Whatever his personal view may have been, at best he didn’t portray the police in a good light.

More power to Alex for taking the stance she did — and indeed to everyone for taking part in what was a well balanced film with personal attitudes both pro and con social nudity being expressed. More power too to Channel 4 for making and broadcasting the programme, and to British Naturism for facilitating it.

If you missed the original programme, My Daughter the Teenage Nudist is still available on 4oD.

personal

Reasons to be Grateful: 9

Experiment, week 9. This week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.

  1. Birthday Wishes. It was my birthday earlier this week. I’ve now had 61 of them. Making a big thing of birthdays is not something that’s in our family tradition. So I’m not one for getting huge bundles of birthday cards. But I was touched by how many of my friends on Facebook remembered and wished me well. Thanks, everyone!

  2. Daffodils. I’ll probably say this again several times over the coming weeks, but daffodils are one of my favourite flowers (as long as they don’t come in shades of pink!). And I noticed on Friday that our local supermarket had the first spring daffs in: small yellow and orange narcissi. Delightful. And a reminder that Spring can’t be too far away!
  3. Frosty Mornings. The weather here in west London has been unseasonably mild all winter; more like March than January. But in the last few days it has definitely gotten colder. It was very nice to go out yesterday morning in bright, clear sunny weather following a hard frost.
  4. London Taxis. The London black cab driver generally gets a bad press — but rarely from me. I’m a Londoner and although I have a reasonable knowledge, for a layman, of what’s where in central London I have to admire the London cabbie’s knowledge of everything. I know they have to work hard to learn it all, but I really don’t know how they ever manage it! An of course many never do manage to pass “the knowledge”. I appreciate their skill every time I get in a London taxi — and that was three times yesterday!
  5. Freedom Pass. For those who don’t live in London, this is the London “bus pass scheme” for geriatrics. I finally got mine a few weeks before Christmas, but it was really only yesterday that I started to appreciate what an excellent scheme it is. Not only do you get free bus travel, and (mostly) free tube travel but also much of the rail network in Greater London is also free outside peak hours. And it also covers local buses across most of the rest of the country. Brilliant!

And, for once, there’s a list with no mention of food at all.