The Internet and Lost Relatives

I started doing family history research about 15 years ago as when internet research was just blooming. Initially I got all the information together I could about my immediate family and worked backwards from there, as you should.

Of course then Genes Reunited took off and more people became interested with the advent of the Who Do You Think You Are? series. At the time this put me in touch with a few third cousins doing research as well and my tree expanded through collaboration with this people. I am especially grateful to a couple in Derby called the Brown’s who had done a massive amount of research on the Brown family from Ilkeston before internet research made things quicker to reference. I went to visit them and they had all their evidence collected and would gladly share it with me. With a name in my past like Brown I was very grateful.

The more unreal things that have happened are as follows;

I have met my wife’s 7^th cousin several times at work and they live not a mile away from me. Our common ancestor being from about 300 years earlier.

Myself and my father-in-law met up one New Years Eve with his 3^rd cousin who came all the way from New Zealand researching his family.

I have been in contact with my wife’s 10^th cousin whose connected relation was from about 1650.

I moved on from Genes Reunited as I started to get weary of their website and some of the people using it and started using Ancestry.co.uk instead. I put my research out there to find living people who might be connected to our family and in an exchange of information I was after getting so images out of them of their ancestors to add to my collection. Names, dates and occupation of ancestors are great but nothing can beat a picture of someone’s face which you can insert in your tree and their image won’t be forgotten.

Doing all these things have been fun but not my greatest thrill.

The best time I have had is quite recently. My father-in-law lost touch with the two sisters of his dad as they moved away from Nottingham and over time contact faded. I found this happens when the parents pass away and direct common link is there no more.

Well, finding living people can be sometimes difficult but after a bit of persistence I managed to find father-in-law’s cousins from Hull to find one had moved back to Nottingham and worked in a shop that my wife goes in all the time. The two sisters from this family hadn’t seen each other for a while either so I arranged a family get together back in Hull so we could all meet up and all say hello again.

My father-in-law’s other aunt (Annie) was a little more difficult as they had moved to Australia in the 1950’s, had stayed in touch with Annie’s mother but this contact reduced when her mother died. I think there was something more about this but not quite sure. Anyway, their names were Atkinson so finding the family was going to be impossible.

Janet was a daughter of Annie and in the earlier 1970’s decided that Australia wasn’t for her so did some travelling around Europe and then stayed with my parents-in-law in Nottingham for a while before moving on to Canada. Well, after 40 years Janet decided to do some family history research as well and because I’d put my information on Ancestry she emailed me to ask a question not realising that she was so closely related to us.

It’s brought back a lot of memories for Janet and she also gave me the information that Annie at the grand old age of 97 is still alive and, although bedridden, has all her facilities. She also remembers my wife, although the last time she saw her was at 2 years old so she has changed somewhat since then.

Although sometimes computers can be a pain and a thing someone of Janet’s age can be reluctant to learn from scratch recently like she has I am so glad she did.

Quiet as a Church Mouse - Speaking in Public

Having been to our local Lib Dem AGM mini-conference today I was asked to give a little report about the recent Autumn Conference with a couple other of my fellow Nottingham Lib Demmers.

A few years ago I was at a induction session for Junior Doctors with a few Consultants present. I used to get extremely nervous talking to a group of people until one particular session when someone spoke before me who came across very poorly because of her extreme nervousness. I felt sorry for her as when not in these inductions she didn't come across this way. Having heard this though I was grateful that suddenly after thinking to myself "I'm not like that am I when I talk?" my "bad" nerves about speaking in front of these people disappeared.

I couldn't beleive it and I've not felt that nervous since.

My BIG problem is that I have been told repeatedly that I talk very quietly.

I think this stems from the fact that my eye sight is poor so, as they say, my hearing has compensated and my hearing is very acute. This makes my speech sound very loud to me but to everyone else barely audible.

Fortunately today I think people heard me as they at least laughed in the right places but I do have a tendancy to slip back to my normal volume after trying to talk louder at the beginning.

Is the solution to stick some earplugs? :-)

Do I then come across as loud and obnoxious?

I may try it one time in front of people I know.

Stupid Targets

We had a meeting this morning regarding a government issued questionnaire given to patients having certain operations and their experience before and 6 months after.

This started last April and we were told "It won't have much work involved but ask the patients if they would fill the booklet in, consent and then they would be sent another follow up form in 6 months". Yeah right.

We find out that the Trust has a return rate of 19% for these forms which isn't great but I worked out our returns at about 64% so was reasonably pleased but I'm sure we could do better. We went to the meeting to find the return rate target is 100%.

We have to try and "convince" every patient to complete the booklet. It is not an essential piece of hospital paper, and trust me there are plenty of them, and we have had patients refuse to fill them in.

This means that the 100% target for a reasonable size hospital and the volume of flow through of patients means someone is going to say no. That means we instantly fail. Where is the motivation in that. We have also been told that if a hospital doesn't obtain 100% they are financial penalised. More paper chasing, pen pusher, target driven government failure instead of treating people and valuing their choices they are data to be collected.

Constance Street, New Basford

I have just been delivering some Liberal Democrat leaflets to Constance Street in New Basford.

Last time I was there I noticed a peice of land sold with planning permission to build a 4 bedroom house that had a significant amount of fly-tipping on it. I reported this to the lady at Nottingham City Council investigating this sort of activity to which I received an email saying she had visited the site and follow it up.

She must have got in touch with the land owner and either one of them has done a good job in clearing the rubbish away and replacing the protective fence. The land looks a lot better for all around. Well done whoever did it.

Nottingham City Recycling

I bike to work every morning. Always the same way so I can usually get to work without thinking too much about the bike ride itself.

Unfortunately sometimes this leaves me time to look around at the surroundings. This morning in our area it was household general waste collection (green bin). There are four of us in our house and I'm amazed how heavy the bin is but at least the lid is always closed.

On the way to work this morning I noticed a bin overflowing with a lid almost vertical but what really gets my goat is the fact that one of the bags on top was full of drinks cans. Really annoying. As much as this City doesn't get right there are large parts that do have access to the brown/grey household collection recycling bin. What else was in the bin that could have been recycled?

Cans are perfectly acceptable in the recycle bin and you don't have to take it anywhere other than the street on collection day.

It does tend to make me seeth that this facility is there freely provided by the City Council and a few people have the arrogance not to do just the smallest little bit.

I hoping that the binmen report it to their supervisors so that these people receive the correct education material to help them mend there ways.

Hopefully printed on recycled paper. :-)

Delivering Liberal Democrat Focus Leaflets

I thought today I'd make a start on my batch of Focus leaflets with a spare couple of hours.

Oh my word it was cold. The car temparature monitor said 0 degrees. Mmm chilly.

The batch I did was part of the Sherwood Rise area of Nottingham which I've not really been to in detail before. Having travelled around a few new areas I have noticed how fantastic and interesting some of the old houses in Nottingham are. And how big some of them are when they were probably in there original format of only one house instead of flats.

It would be nice to have seen some of these areas in their original spendour but unfortunately time takes its toll and some of these properties must require significant cash to maintain.


There were even more substantial properties on another cul de sac that don't appear on Google street view which could look wonderful again but needed significant investment to bring them back to their former glory.

Hopefully I'll carry on seeing these marvels around a few of the other areas I'm due to travel.

Christmas Lunch with Work.

Today we went to Zizzi's on King Street in Nottingham at 12 midday. Possible an unusual time for a Christmas Dinner but definitely worth thinking about.

The menu on offer was the restaurant's usual menu instead of, what I feel, is the standard conveyor belt Xmas dinner that places seem to offer. I haven't found one of these in previous years to my satisfaction. A little bit rushed and generally sub-standard considering the cost.

The meal was very nice without a hint of the rush to get you out for the next sitting I think you would probably find at an evening shindig.

I hoping that next year we may consider this time again.