but I am prompted today by the weekend that I've had. Some of it was good and some of it was bad....it's sort of a tale about people I don't see very often, but who I love very much...I'll start with the good...
On Saturday I met up with a friend that I don't see very often....still had her Christmas present to give her! We went to Olympia for the "Who Do You Think You Are" show. Now bearing in mind that both of us work full time, and have other things going on in our lives neither of us devotes much time to Genealogy....in fact I don't think I've done anything on mine since we went to the show last year! I probably had a spurt of energy when I returned and then it went by the board again. I guess this could be considered another one of my UFOs although it's an ongoing thing as you acquire more information.
Anyway, we had a lovely day...as we don't see each other very often, and she lives in Berkshire and I live in London, it's a good excuse to meet up and chat, have coffee, chat, have lunch, chat, have more coffee....are you getting the picture? But we also gleaned some more information about our ancestors, my friend in particular was looking for great grandfather who wasn't appearing on the census for a particular year, she knew he was a soldier, but couldn't figure out why he wasn't on the census even so. She found out that he was in the Gordon Highlanders and now knows where to look for more information. She has traced some of her tree back to the 1700s, but mine is a little more problematic as my family were immigrants around the turn of the 20th Century, and I don't have very much information about where they originated other the country. Much of the problems stemming from the spelling of their surnames. For example I have four documents with 4 different spellings, none of which give me very much information when I search for them. However I also managed to find some info on where to search that I hadn't thought of before so that's another avenue to explore.
Quite a long day...hard on the feet, and all talked out when we left!
Then yesterday, I had to go to the funeral of my favourite cousin. Such a shame, she was 2 years younger than me and had breast cancer about 5 years ago, had a double mastectomy and had been getting on really well then about 6 or 8 months ago it came back elsewhere in her body and last week she lost the fight. So I just wanted to say a few words about the lovely person....she studied and trained as a civil engineer back in the 70s when as you can imagine there were very few women in that industry. She took a lot of stick from builders on the sites that she worked on, but this always turned to admiration. She had a thirst for knowledge, and spoke several languages fluently, and we had something in common in that she was into arts and crafts in a big way. When she took an early retirement from engineering and surveying she really came into her own. She studed interior design, did mosaics among other things and evetually came to stained glass. First at evening classes and then most recently she did a years diploma course at Central St Martins (a very prestigious art college) in Glass and Architecture.
She was also someone I didn't see very often, but at family gatherings she was always the one I was most pleased to see arrive. and she would always make a point to let me know what she was getting up to or to visit any exhibition where there was some of her work showing. The last of these was the end of year show at St Martins last sumnmer.
RIP Jacquie Harris....I shall miss you very much>
