Busy Afternoon

Spot of rain this afternoon.

I spent some time sorting out items I downloaded from 'Find my Past,' the people given the 1921 census to offer to the world.  Cynic that I am, I almost wrote '..given the 1921 census to rip off as many people as possible and feed the cash to the grasping government.'  But I didn't.  

Once you have paid the fee to join, you then seek out the person/street you wish and then, when offered, splash out £2:50 just for a look at the record.  A copy can be obtained if you pay £3:50!  No chance.  My copy cannot be 'cut & pasted,' it can be downloaded only by use of the 'screenshot' on my laptop, but it does not come out well.  Even then it cannot be 'cut & pasted,' so making use of the info you paid for is not easy.  All this to grab cash.

So after a struggle, and I mean struggle, I printed things off, have got the info I want, and spent some time sorting it out.   By 'sorting it out' I mean 'getting confused.'  I have worked out who is where on the street I am looking at for 1921, however, the 1911 census (obtained for no cost other than the registration fee) is a wee bit harder as almost no-one has a number, some have names on the house, and according to my guess two families live in the one house.  I later realised that he lived at No 21 until she moved out of No 9, but this is not clear on the forms.  Tsk!  Census people are very confusing.  

This town was recorded well, except the streets do not always run on one page, some are covered in several places, and the copperplate writing so loved by Victorians (my father was writing like this well into the 1960's) is not that easy to read, especially with an ink pen that has a wide nib.

How interesting however, it is to look at the information and try to assemble in the mind the people of the day, the attitudes, the outlook, and wonder how they saw themselves and their future.  Looking back gives one idea of their lives, but for them it must have been strange to look forward into an unknown future.  We do not look forward like that these days.

Wednesday Grump!

 

Yesterday morning I looked through my grubby window at the sun glinting on the rusting leaves opposite.  A short individual hastened by supermarket shopping in mind, dog walkers appeared, the dogs once unleashed racing to meet their friends, tails wagging happily, slowly behind them the owners gossipped about the same gossip as the day before.  Children meanwhile were being dragged unwillingly to school, some ensuring they kicked every fallen leaf, others annoying mum by asking the question "Why?"  As the sun broke through the gray clouds the world appeared a happy place.

This morning no sun appears, instead rain continues to fall, as it has done all night, drenching the park leaves scattered across the paths.  Mums, hidden under umbrellas to protect their hair, urge the children on as they walk to school, concerned less with their education, more with avoiding spoiling the new haircut.  Dogs meet happily, owners less keen.  The 'moderate' breeze (The language used by weathermen requires improvement I say) shakes the raindrops from the branches and takes the loosened leaves with it across the faces of those passing by.  Even the traffic appears slower, rain does not usually slow these drivers down, yet less traffic is heard and that less keen on racing than normal.

Wind and rain, the one condition that postmen fear.  I look forward to paper mache being deposited through the door later today.  

 

                                            Gaurdian
 

 The sulk has done it again.  His bully boy ways, well known in Eton, has seen him offer £60 million - he says - to Manchester to do what he tells them.  The Manchester mayor has told him what he really wants and so Boris has sulked, remember he was roundly abused the last time he went there, and held back nearly £40 million of that as punishment for disobedience.  The inefective pandemic policy that has failed throughout the nation, especially in England, continues with a mixed lockdown in various places, none of which are required by local NHS operators.  Once again Dominics view, supported by mixed scientific advice, encouragement from money men whom no-one knows, and Boris's sheer incompetence rules the day.  Manchester standing up and disagreeing with Boris has sent him into a sulk, this man is Prime Minister!  It must be remembered that Manchester supported Boris in the last election, many up north turned away from the Labour party and voted Tory!  This was to support Brexit and remove the black immigrant from the country, but we are not supposed to say that.  Here we see how much regard Boris has for those voters.

 

Afternoon, the rain still rains, only those who must go out do so.  I remain inside wasting my life.  So far I have downloaded the census returns for the town from 1841 - 1911, we are in fact two towns and the other one's census will be downloaded soon.  Doing this I was struck by the confused manner of census operation and how the town has grown every ten years.  People talk as if in the past the townhad always been the same, they are ignoring the constant changes that have occurred, no town stands still, no town has 'always been like this' until now.  Growth throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, all this ended after the last war when items made here were being produced cheaper in the far east, the town slowly faded at that time.  People here consider life was better when they were young in the 50's and in many ways they are correct, however much of that lies in their personal memories and forgets the many fears and woes of youth.  Those pictures in old photographs looked back to a better day while grumbling that kids today do not know how lucky they are.  It was ever thus, these are the 'Good old days.'

 

 

 

Census Fun Among the Books

As I made my way towards the museum yesterday I came upon a thousand schoolchildren plus teachers heading my way.  These it appeared were happy excited kids going into the museum for a day of fun and learning, I joined them much worrying for the teacher in front who had not realised I was working there.  
Soon after they had trooped through the door a woman followed with a query re her house.  She wanted to know its history, people etc, and foolishly I offered to search for her after showing several sites she needs to investigate.  This has left me with a few hours of staring at maps, census returns which provided some answers, searching through books was less successful but one answer did arise.  It appears the web is better than books at some things.

This followed on from a similar check on some info given re a dead soldier, I had failed to realise there were ten children in his family not eight, I would suggest his mother knew how many there were right enough.  Another census check, another ''Ancestry' search, and another amendment to the site.
It never fails to amaze me how many people look for dead soldiers.  Whether out of interest, family research, military interest or just simply wandering what it is all about I every so often get comments, requests or interesting info on the men who marched away.  I find them more interesting than those around me.  One thing becomes more clear, they are no different to those around me,  culture changes but human nature does not, in fact I am convinced now that meeting the grandsons and great grandsons of men who died gives a decent idea of what kind of men they were, this I am sorry to say is not always pleasant.  These 'heroes,' these 'brave boys,' were men just like the rest, if only we regarded them as such instead of cutting them down to our image.

 
There is a lot of talk about Pankhurst's terrorist women these days, I wonder if it is possible to chain today's version to railings throughout the nation, for the good of the nation...?

Much fuss has been made today re 'Cheddar Man,'  Apparently this chap, who died around 10,000 years ago, is thought to have been kind of black.   "This is what Britons looked like just after the last ice age," is what is sort of said.  Hmmm.  An examination along with professional guesswork reaches this conclusion, this of course may be right, and this may indicate that living in the cold north we lost our pigmentation and became white.  However some indicate the chap fund in the Alps dating to 5000 BC was indeed white, unless they will soon discover different, and it is doubtful pigmentation would change so soon.
There are so many intelligent guesses in such work.  Conclusions on limited and often difficult evidence may lead to thoughtful and possibly correct understandings but on the other hand may be wildly erroneous.  For myself I would love it to be true that the members of the 'English Defence League' are indeed descended from an African.  The UKIP faction stopping foreign Joghnny's at the border may be better asking "Are you my long lost brother?"  I doubt they will however and the 'Daily Mail' reader is having a fit as he reads.   
We are after all 'All Jock Tamson's bairns.

Census Returns Return

When you rise and find the clock reads 8:45am you begin to wonder what makes the day arrive before you are ready for it.  Stumbling into the day I finished breakfast so late it was lunchtime before I got started.  The word 'started' is a misnomer here as I didn't actually start anything though I thought about what I could do then didn't do it.
Once begun I cleaned things, exercised things, and got on with things until foolishly I needed to check the census returns.  Everything stopped while I searched these for a man and his family.  Thus taken back into the lives of men who's only option was farm work or joining the army was not enthralling.  Just imagine the long hard days, the weather, the low pay and little opportunity for advancement.  One man joined the army in 1915 and it was noticeable that on his attestation for his name is singed by the sergeant and he leaves his 'mark.'  He was 41 and working as a 'grocer' at the time it appears.  Incidentally he was dead by 44.  
All this occurs while the banging and crashing continues at two nearby building sites with lorries blocking the road and annoying the traffic.  The larger of the two sites began later than the first and while it is larger it has moved much faster, most must have been sold by now I expect.  The smaller, containing only four quite small units, has had may troubles and the man in charge may just wish to dump it on another.  Meanwhile we just sit back and wonder if the infrastructure has been inserted to enable this to work without collapsing and somehow we doubt it.

On the Firefox toolbar all the avatars for the important links sit proudly.  At the far left happily sits the Google avatar.  This is not news to many of you as it appears there on many toolbars however the other day after I had been perusing the papers for something to get irked about I noticed this avatar had become a 'Daily Mail' avatar!  Ironic that this now sits at the 'far left!'  
Why did this happen?  How to remove it?  Is it a sign Google sponsor the 'Daily Mail?'  Could it be DM 'workies' forced to amend avatars across the nation to pretend people support the paper?  Is this the work of this treacherous government I wonder or one of their Russian 'bots?
I am in turmoil here.

 Daily Mail readers!

Adverts, Census, Maps and Research

BTSport featured an appalling mushy advert the other day featuring a black girl and her mother preparing for her wedding.  The items required, the dress, the weeping mother all were used to sell whatever the product was.  Sadly I had my head over a bucket while watching this but did manage to note that as mum (no dad I notice was this an attack on the descendants of those West Indian men who live in London) as mum walked daughter down the aisle and presented her there the camera changed position to reveal the husband, a handsome white male!  
Have you noticed that in the UK adverts may feature black males with white wives or white males with black girls but never do we see two blacks together, why is this?  An advert for some food product some years ago featured a very happy black family and ran for a while, and I have a faint memory of an Asian family of some sort featuring also but these are rare.  I know that nobody uses gays to sell products because this stops people buying the product but surely black couples do not have the same effect do they?  

     
I had a great deal of research to do this weekend, it wasn't really a great deal but I kept putting it off and now it requires some work before Tuesday, and I have done little.  One reason was the census!  You see on ancestry it is possible to look at the census returns for the town since 1841.  Therefore numpty here began to search these, downloading lots of them for research later, in the hope of finding people who lived in this building in times past.  Naturally it failed!  
For a start the numbers either do not run as now or they do not exist at all.  This is not unusual as many houses then had names, however most people rented their homes and numbers are seen on some of the census returns, it is that these numbers are 'odd' numbers and today the numbers are 'even' numbers on this side of the street.  I wonder if some cooncil worker in the big office would have details of these?  I must ask around the people that know these things, if the do know these things that is.  
On the latest census returns the numbers go up to 96, with is interesting as I look for 98 next door.  However that does not appear and 92 - 96 does not fit with the housing as it stands just now, some building work has been undergone I note from old maps but in what way does this affect the numbers.  The next number I come to is helpfully 110, which does not exist any longer having long since become a Sainsburys petrol station.  No help to me in any way.
The older census either has no or odd numbers or is somewhat mixed up in the way it lists the homes.  Names are given which sometimes helps, 'Baptist Minister indicates the Manse that once stood up the road (Knocked down by the Luftwaffe in 1941), and 'Mount House Lodge' also indicates a house on the maps from 1875, the oldest available.  

The other problem I find is the need to check 'Old Maps' when doing this as I get involved in the maps.  It is invariably interesting to note the changes, not always noticeable at first, between the town today and how it was laid out in the past.  Obviously maps do not indicate the lack of pavements, unmade or 'rough' roads, or the state of the buildings marked on the maps, then we have to seek out old photographs to compare with what the maps reveal.  Luckily I was too lazy to start searching through photographs yesterday or today.  However just looking at the first map I bought when I came to this town twenty one years ago, then around 30,000 persons, and noting how it has grown with housing estates filling in what once was fields and offering some 40,000 persons to annoy me today.  Each week small corners are filled in and a block raised her and there to really annoy the postman who is expected to deliver there but allowed no more time in doing so.    
All in all the time spent perusing a map, and an ageing won at that, is never wasted in my view.  There is always old industrial sites to note, now housing though I suspect many living there have little idea of what lies in the ground beneath them, old railway lines, buildings that were there soon after the Normans built them and remain solid still, public houses that once filled with men from the industry and are now blocks for those 'over fifty' and oak trees that stood for several hundred years in the middle of the road that have been sacrificed for the motor car, so many interesting changes.
Of course I may just be weird...

Census

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I have just finished filling in the census online. Now I often read folk complaining about the census, their complaint appearing to be that it implies an infringement of the 'liberty' and an imposition into their 'freedom' in some way. I often wondered why this would be as it appears rational in my mind for a government to wish to know who exactly is living within the borders. I have no complaints about this and fail to see why others ought to complain. I do however object to 'civil partnerships' being regarded alongside marriage, and found myself wondering about the 'Who will be there on Sunday night with you' question. Who on earth would wish to be here with me? Not counting the 'Masochist Maidens Group' obviously, but we will not go into that! Questions regarding who is in the house on a given date appear normal census stuff to me. Indeed it can be seen by some as an intrusion, however it is always possible to ignore a question that is too nosey or just put down a lie. 


However I did find myself a bit irked at being questioned about my life in this small way. It does indeed appear an intrusion although it falls far short of an imaginary 'Big Bother' ideal. There is a thin line between 'freedom' to live your own way and the needs of the society around us. Today especially the 'spirit of the air' encourages people in the west to demand their right to be an individual. This encourages selfishness and cutting people off from others leads only to a breakdown of society and a more uncaring world at all levels. This is seen around us today, based on 'individual liberty' but in the end leaving us with only ourselves and nothing else. I do not see that as good. 'Liberalism' appears to offer 'freedom' to be yourself but in the end just allows us to put our needs before another's, and then we can justify our 'self.' It is actually in putting others first that we become more 'our self,' although this is not easy as the 'self,' that centre of our being, dies hard!


It is amazing how we can object to an intrusion by the census but rarely consider the information a supermarket has on us. All our shopping trends for years past can be located on their servers, many government departments keep records of our contact with them, individual organisations also have info stored away, all secure, we are told, under the Data Protection Act and other relevant legislation. Only you know how much information the police have on you, I couldn't possibly comment. Should we worry about this? I am not to worried at the moment, however we can so easily be taken over by a draconian government and all this information would soon fall into their hands. Ten years can see many major political changes, who knows what the situation will be ten, twenty or thirty years hence?  I must be more careful next time I buy mince!


Many who do object to such population investigation satisfy their objections by inserting daft answers, such as 'Jedi' for religion therefore making this one of the nations fastest growing religions! It speaks much about such people that they wish to join a people who can build spacecraft the size of a planet but fight with swords rather than guns!  While the census will give an overall impression of the nation it cannot include those who willingly avoid it, illegal immigrants (10 million according to some at the 'Daily Mail.') criminals on the run (3 million according to the 'Daily Mail.'), legal immigrants who believe this will be used against them and have them classed as 'dangerous, (five mill....you get the picture...) and anyone too stupid to fill the thing in properly. We all know someone like that! What you looking at me for?  Anyway I have done mine so that those looking into their history in one hundred years time can find information about me and my life. Good luck to them I say!




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