Creative Commons
Happy New Year everyone!
Whilst I was stirring the gravy to the appropriate thickness on Christmas Day, I began thinking of my childhood, family, my late Mum and maternal Grandparents and the influence they each had on me, and how in some ways that influence carried on into adulthood, and then how it has evolved.
I pondered on my working career and how that evolved and morphed into something that I had not intended. After a time it evolved further and I eventually moved to a 50/50 split, effectively half of what I do now and half of the original day job. I maintained a foot in both camps up for a number of years, then migrated through a 60/40 split and varying guises. Another change is imminent, which only affects the original day job.
The days between Christmas and New years are odd ones, Christmas has been and gone, yet lingering are the decorations, remaining foods and a degree of lethargy. I like to get my tree down before new year, but this year things were different. My husband had surgery in those days between Christmas and New Year, and will be laid up for about eight weeks, and can only get around using crutches, and cannot bear any weight on one leg which has been challenging. So far we are 3 days down and just under 8 weeks to go!
I feel that is important to review our lives and also for us to recognise when we need changes, good and bad. Also for us not to be afraid of looming changes, to say “no” or to invoke change.
My outlet has always been journaling. It has always been where I could poor out my frustrations, anger, notes and much more besides. A new year means a new diary/planner and as luck would have it, I finished my latest notebook too – I began it on 27 September and finished it this afternoon, 300 glorious pages in ivory. As luck would have it, Santa’s helper bought me another one, by the same creator, but a different cover.
I was asked by a frequent reader to share any changes to my notetaking and planning arrangements and I am more than happy to do so, so stay tuned for that in the coming week. I am sure that I am in the middle of several posts, either not reviewed or posted, or written/typed and then saved, I must get those posts finalised, so expect a flurry of activity…that is, in between playing housekeeper, nurse and waitress -:)
Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest 
Wishing you all the best for the coming year and its challenges. I hope your husband recovers well, as much for your sake as for his.
As you know, I am not really into family history but I’ve just had an unwelcome surprise. My husband was recently contacted by an ex RAF gentleman in hope of acquiring a wartime photograph of a mutual acquaintance, and I decided to contact him to see if he had any advice for how I might acquire a wartime photo of the uncle that died before I was born. (I have a photo of him as a boy, but not as an adult.)
Long story short, it turns out that my uncle died ‘on active service’ in the Hebrides in 1947. Family lore always had it that he died aged 20 from Bovine TB contracted from drinking infected milk in the Hebrides. It now seems much more likely that his death — along with an unusual cluster of RAF deaths in the Hebrides ‘from pneumonia’ — was associated with the anthrax germ warfare testing that took place in 1942.
I have always felt philosophical that the tragic death so young of my father’s only living relation occurred: I felt that in the chaos of war, perhaps there were good reasons why the cattle weren’t inoculated — a shortage of vaccine, or vets, or experienced farmhands to deliver the vaccination program in remote places. But now I feel cheated: I might have had an uncle, an aunt, and some cousins.
I am undecided now about whether I’d rather not have known this. I’m glad that neither his parents nor my father had any idea…
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