Author Archives: thehistoryinterpreter

Forget Peru – meet the hazards of the West Country

by thehistoryinterpreter

Ok, so I have abandoned the writing news in favour of more travel escapades. The intrepid two brave the mini ‘beast from the east’ and head to Bristol, complete with caravan. Despite snow earlier, the road is now clear and the journey is uneventful. We near our destination. Cue a lengthy game of ‘hunt the camp site’, amidst dire warnings of ‘do not follow the sat-nav’. We’ve been told that, at some point, we will need to ignore a road closed sign. I am usually serially law-abiding but we do as we have been bid – just a bit of a shame it was the wrong road closed sign. Permanent bollards are strung across the road. We are now up a dead end, in a very narrow, car-lined street. The exquisite caravan-reversing skills of my travelling companion are duly exercised and we continue our site hunting. Eventually, site located, we set up for the night, with not a flake of snow in sight, although it is pretty darned chilly.

Day dawns. Ah. There is steadily falling snow and about three inches on the ground. Nonetheless, the decision is made (not by me) that we should proceed. The car starts first time. We’ve left the caravan attached overnight, so no problem there. We attempt to leave the field. We attempt this again. We attempt it several more times. Back and forth we slide. I am not normally encouraged to drive this vehicle, let alone in falling snow, with a caravan in tow. It may be a measure of our desperation that the steering wheel is entrusted to me, whilst my companion gives a hearty shove, to no avail. We are now stuck irretrievably between the gate to the field and the pitch where, potentially, we could sit it out until spring. If we stay where we are, our electric cable is too short to reach the hook up.

The site owners, suitably clad in many layers, appear, probably concerned for the state of their grass, which we have effectively ploughed beyond repair. But no. Bless them, they’ve come to our aid with land rover and tow rope. They offer to tow us to their drive, where we can reconnect to the electricity supply. ‘No,’ says our brave driver, ‘the show must go on.’ They now think we are certifiable; they may not be wrong in this assessment. They agree to tow us ‘up the hill’ to something resembling civilisation. Half way up what is indeed a steep hill, our way is blocked by another stranded idiot. It is now 7.30am and they have been stuck for two hours. They appear to be two fit and healthy thirty-something men but have been unable to push their car to the side of the road. One seventy-something and the site owner who is certainly more than thirty-something, if not yet seventy-something, come to the rescue. They are pulled clear and then our tow to the main road resumes. It has taken us 1½ hours to travel a mile; only 160 to go!

DSCF4389The upside of the conditions is that there is very little traffic on the road. The downside is that those who are stupid enough to venture out are reckless types who zoom along in excess of 70mph. After this the prospect of ‘feeling like I am having a heart attack’ as I tackle Peruvian altitude seems positively calming.

In the Footsteps of Paddington Bear?

by thehistoryinterpreter

Image used under Creative Commons, via Wikimedia Commons – in the public domain

As promised, here is the sorry tale of my attempts to survive my forthcoming trip in search of Paddington Bear. Firstly, I should point out that a trip to Peru has long been on my bucket list. I blame those distant days of standing on a table in the school drama studio declaiming Atahuallpa’s lines from Shaffer’s Royal Hunt of the Sun. There was also an inflatable green rabbit involved in this performance somewhere but that’s another story. Regardless, Peru was a destination of choice. Not so for my hapless travelling companion but he somehow got bludgeoned into the plans. Then our intrepid Australian friends got in on the act and we agreed to meet them there to share the trip.

This trip involved heights, considerable heights. I had already run the gamut of the travel insurance, a feat in itself and paid heavily to ensure that I would be recovered regardless of how many metres above sea level I was. The received wisdom was that we needed medication to ward off the likelihood of altitude sickness. Several weeks ago we set off in pursuit of the recommended drugs. It didn’t seem to warrant taking up an appointment with our hard-pressed GPs so we began by telephoning the surgery. ‘Put your request in writing.’ That was the easy bit. A few days later, the receptionist calls. ‘You will need a telephone appointment with your GP.’ She offers a date ten days hence. ‘Oh and make an appointment with the travel nurse.’ At this point I should say that my travelling companion received his medication after the telephone call. We are of an age to qualify for free medication but this counts as a private prescription so he needed to part with money but no suggestions of travel nurses for him. To be fair, I am glad my GP is cautious but each appointment was a few more days down the line and what started as being ‘in plenty of time’, was now less so.

I arrive for my appointment armed with a not very detailed map of where we are scheduled to go. I had already read the NHS advice, which mentions Hepatitis A (tick – had that to go to Russia), rabies, yellow fever and the altitude thing. So first rabies.
‘I promise not to go close to any animals that are foaming at the mouth.’
‘Ah,’ replies the nurse ‘but they may go close to you.’ It seems that, as long as I am within 24 hours of a hospital I will be fine(ish), so rabies is not needed.

Yellow fever is up for debate. There is conflicting advice as to whether where we are going is risky. The doctor is of the opinion that I should have the vaccination anyway. Forewarned is forearmed or some such.
Nurse: ‘You are on the borderline of the yellow fever area on this trip.’
Me: ‘Ok but there’s a vaccination.’
Nurse: ‘We caution people over sixty against having the injection.’
Me: *smiles winningly* ‘I am barely over sixty.’
Nurse: ‘It is a live vaccine, there are side effects.’
Me: (thinking, ok so I get a bit of a temperature) ‘What are they?’
Nurse: nonchalantly ‘Paralysis, inflammation of the brain and death.’
We resolve to forget the Yellow Fever vaccine.

Cue doctor to discuss the advisability of altitude with my slight heart issues
‘It is like everyone else is going at 50 in the slow lane of the motorway but for you it is 90 in the fast lane.’
Arggghhhh. I don’t even drive on motorways, not in any lane, not at any speed, well once by accident but no. I have to confess that I have spent the past few weeks seriously weighing up whether to abandon the whole thing. I have so many exciting things lined up for later in the year, should I be content with those? Oh and erm, well, staying alive a bit longer would be good. Next minute, I’d be chiding myself for being such a woose. Thousands of people do this trip and survive. Ok, most of them are twenty-somethings on gap years but hey. What happened to my ‘grasp every opportunity’ philosophy? I rather think it has been subsumed by my risk adverse gene.

An appointment with a private travel clinic is advised. A 90 mile round trip and the best part of a day is involved but as yet, I have no medication, as my GP feels he lacks the necessary information to prescribe. It turns out that the nurse I am scheduled to meet is local, he knows people I know and more to the point, numerous people of my travelling companion’s acquaintance. While all the ‘Do you know x, y and z?’ chit chat is going on, I am looking at the eclectic range of books on the mantlepiece. An ancient tome A History of the British Nation, probably left behind by the previous occupants of the office, think I. I am somewhat disconcerted by the presence of The Fatal Shore, a excellent book, I have a copy but I hope it is not prophetic. Eventually we get to the purpose of my visit. To be fair, I am now as reassured as I am ever likely to be (not very). No need for Yellow Fever, hurrah, one risk down. I am prepared to ‘feel like I am having a heart attack.’ Immediately, my mind is thinking, ‘But what if I AM having a heart attack?’ As for, ‘You will probably stop breathing at night’, slightly more scary. I have my prescription, which cost five times that of my travelling companion (not allowing for the petrol and parking to visit the clinic). Now to try to look forward positively to what everyone assures me will be a trip of a lifetime. I just need it not to be THE trip of a lifetime.

 

I will be blogging the adventure, should I survive, so stand by!

And in the next installment, exciting writing news.

Never Work with Children or Animals, oh, or Technology – Especially Technology

by thehistoryinterpreter

Last night I was booked to give a talk to a small, discerning audience in my home village. Regardless of whether I am speaking to a handful of people locally or an international cast of hundreds, I like to think that I do an equally professional job and devote just as much time to the preparation. This was a talk I hadn’t done for a while, so there was a bit of revamping to be done and several run throughs. For reasons best known to myself, I recently upgraded to a more recent version of the software that allows me to create digital presentations (see how careful I am being not to advertise). I’ve been caught on previous occasions by different versions doing weird things to my formatting but no, all looked well as I looked at the slides on my laptop. I was chuffed that this upgrade allows me to see what’s coming on the next slide and also to view some notes. I don’t normally use notes unless I am reading quotations but as this was a presentation with which I was less familiar, I did take time to jot a few key words in the appropriate boxes. Another run through – great.

I head to the hall and set up my projector. It is a little low, so I balance a table on a table and move the projector on to the top table. My first mistake. I know from bitter experience that even breathing on the projector sends it into a hissy fit and clearly I did not move it cautiously enough. It duly switches itself off and stubbornly refuses to turn itself back on until it is good and ready (about ten minutes). I am still in good time and I plug the sulky but now working, projector into the laptop. It connects but my audience can see exactly what I can see current slide, next slide and notes. I bash away at the F this that and the other keys to no avail. Finally and just in time, I press I know not what and it seems to work from the audience’s point of view, whilst I can see the current slide and ribbon of future slides underneath. Hurrah! I start the talk. I then find that neither remote control nor keyboard will move on to the next slide.

Ch 12 Presentation

© Roberta Boreham

A slight hiatus ensues whilst my audience decide to have their tea break. I abandon the idea of being able to see the next slide and my carefully crafted notes and open the presentation in the old version of the programme. All is looking good, I can see the presentation, I can move the slides on BUT all my audience can see is my smiling family on my desktop. Arggghhh. Give me a child and an animal to work with any day.

Fortunately I always have a plan B. There is a reason, of course, that this is plan B; if it were better than plan A, it wouldn’t be plan B. So I reverted to ‘the old days’ and delivered a talk unvisually aided that really did need the explanatory family trees on the invisible slides. My audience were very understanding and reputedly enjoyed the session anyway but I felt decidedly unprofessional. I guess it happens to the best of us.

In the next installment – the saga of my holiday preparations continues – it will mostly be about my attempts to get medication – after last night I feel I need it.

More about Madness and other Happenings

by thehistoryinterpreter

First, a warning that this post has been written with the aid of medication. I have contracted the dreaded winter lurgy, so have been overdosing on proprietary medication. Today I feel slightly better than yesterday, which is saying not a great deal but at least I seem to be able keep my eyes open. It has been a few days of madness and mayhem. Friday, before I became germ-ridden, I premiered my talk about the history of mental health at one of my favourite venues. It has been fascinating to work on; I hope it was thought provoking. It was very difficult to decide which of the many interesting case studies I have come across to include. Somehow I can’t seem to stop collecting more. Then my article on the same topic appeared on the front cover of British Connections magazine. Today, it was time to finish the penultimate chapter of Barefoot on the Cobbles; even that involved madness. I’ve vicariously given birth, nursed a sick child and then I left Aunt Matilda dangling by her nightdress from the railings of Exminster asylum, in the depths of December. No wonder I am exhausted.

Plenty of preparation too for various upcoming overseas presentations. Aside from the two (or possibly three) events this year, there are two more potential live appearances outside the UK in 2019 that I am considering and then a webinar for Australia, on researching the domestic context for our ancestors’ lives coming up shortly. The downside of overseas webinars is the time difference. I have been caught out by this before. I was greatly relieved when the scheduling of the forthcoming one was altered from 11pm to 6am. Fortunately it is sound only, so I don’t even have to look respectable. In addition, my latest cohort of Pharos Writing and Telling your Family History students have just begun the course. It is always great fun to watch their stories unfold.

Church Graeme's editWhat about the snow? I hear you cry – not a flake. Although I did venture out to break the inch thick ice on what I laughingly call the pond and there was settled snow just five miles away. Not that I am really in the market for snowperson building or hurtling down slopes on a sledge but with everyone avidly sharing seasonal snaps on social media, I feel quite deprived. I shall have to settle for one from a previous year.

Hardback or not Hardback that is the Question? With Additional Travel Updates

by thehistoryinterpreter

With the end of Barefoot on the Cobbles almost within touching distance, I’ve been thrashing out details of print runs, prices and other such mundanities. I need to make a decision about a hardback edition. Now, personally, I am not a great fan of hardbacks. They are, after all, just that, hard. I read in bed, lying down. It is how I get to sleep. This means that, when I do doze off, whatever I am reading inevitably falls on my nose. This makes hardbacks somewhat of a health hazard. I am aware that there are those who read in a more conventional manner, sitting in chairs for example – how radical. Perhaps these folk would appreciate a hard back version? Can I canvas the opinion of one or two of you who are eagerly anticipating the publication of my magnum opus? Would you pay perhaps an additional £5 for a hardback version? There will be a ebook option for those who prefer reading on an electronic device. Publication and launch day is set for 17 November and the opportunity for pre-publication orders will be available shortly. I am not prepared to commit to how shortly but I am aiming for the end of March. Anyway, please let me know if you are a hardback lover, so I can judge if a hardback run is viable.

Some of you will know that this year is set to be a whirlwind of overseas travel. Planning these trips has been beset with irritations and anxieties and at one point I was heard to exclaim that I was going no further than Cornwall in 2019. So much for that idea. It looks possible that I will be working overseas twice next year as well. With all this trans-continental travel, you would think I could get myself to and from a rural village about fifteen miles away without incident wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t? – Ah, you know me so well. I set off in thick fog yesterday morning, fog that became ever thicker, to the extent of being impenetrable. By some quirk of fate the powers that be have got it wrong. They have inexplicably decided to shut the main holiday route at a time when tourists are not in evidence. This is a radical policy change but I digress. I was thus obliged to go ‘the back way’. ‘The back way’ gave me an opportunity to post a parcel. When our village post office was arbitrarily closed we were reassured that we could use the next nearest post office (in a village 6 miles away, which you wouldn’t want to go to for any other purpose – perfectly pleasant village and all that, just not much reason to go there). Inevitably that post office is now also shut. Never fear, we have a post van that visits our village daily, except when it doesn’t, due to there being a mechanical failure/operator illness/lack of internet access/two flakes of snow/an ‘R’ in the month. So the non-appearance of said van on Friday meant I had a parcel to post yesterday. I visit a fog bedecked post office, what can go wrong? I kid you not, the post office was closed for a computer upgrade. Onwards through the fog to my destination, parcel unposted. I arrive unscathed.

LucetteI spin away for a few hours. Well, actually I was plying and lucetting but I don’t want to get too technical. I set off home, deciding on a slightly different ‘back way’, in order to avoid having to execute a three point turn in a road barely wider than a car, at a time when several other cars are also manoeuvring. The fog had lifted, this should have been fine. Except that the other ‘back way’ was also closed for repair. The council are obviously using up their meagre road mending budget before the end of the financial year. I use a combination of common sense and sign posts before realising that I have no clue where I am, I haven’t seen another vehicle since I set off, the last building was two miles back and that was a barn. Do I have my ‘emergency’ phone? Well, no – how did I know there might be an emergency? I do however have a sat-nav. I unplug my cosy seat heater in favour of the sat-nav and follow the directions. Now I am more than comfortable with narrow, winding muddy road but I do like them to actually be roads. I bounce along muddy tracks that could not with any stretch of the imagination be described as roads, even by rural Devon, pothole laden, grass-in-the-middle-of-the-road terms. I idly wonder what would happen should I get a puncture. Even the emergency phone would be useless as I would be incapable of describing where to find me. Fortunately, I eventually arrive home. Forget going to Cornwall, I don’t even want to leave the house.

In a Spin with Adverbs, Idioms and Procrastinations

by thehistoryinterpreter

This week I have discovered that it is not only possible to waste time counting how many words you have, or perhaps that should be have not, written; there is a refinement to this. There are some nifty websites that will tell you how many unique words you have used. In other words (there’s a pun in there somewhere) how many of your words are different from any other. It also counts the number of times you have used a particular word. So, I have already used ‘words’ four times in this post, not that I needed a website to tell me that. So now I know that my 75,394 words contain 9273 different ones and that 7% of my book is ‘the’ – only 1563 ‘and’s though but I do have a weird writing style that tends to dispense with ‘and’.

I have also been doing some market research aka wasting time on writers’ forums (fora ?). This is encouraging and depressing in equal measure. Having spent my infant years in a decidedly antiquated educational establishment, the words ‘lots’, ‘nice’ and ‘got’ were frowned upon. Now it seems that ‘just’ and ‘seems’ are equally taboo. Cue a swift search through my manuscript to identify these gremlins and decide if they need an equally swift eradication. Then there are adverbs, the gratuitous use of which is high up there on the list of cardinal sins. Now, I am a great fan of the adverb; blame the antiquated educational establishment. Don’t get me wrong, I get the ‘lazy verb’ school of thought. Yes, it is preferable to write ‘he hurried’, rather than ‘he walked quickly’ but there are cases when the more descriptive verb is not enough. What is wrong with ‘he hurried anxiously’? (Not the best example perhaps but give me a break, it’s 6am). Again, I can see that the anxiety can and in many cases should, be conveyed by the context but I do believe adverbs have their role. If you don’t like adverbs please don’t read my work in progress, it won’t be for you.

As part of my one woman mission to eradicate anachronisms (now their use really is a cardinal sin) I have been checking on my use of idiom. Are the phrases I’ve used, often through the mouths of my characters, appropriate to the period I am writing about? It turns out they are and for example, I can tell you that the expression ‘good riddance’ was used in the late eighteenth century and to ‘lord it over’ someone is fine for the late sixteenth century onwards.

Spinning WheelJust as I thought my confidence in my own ability could not get any lower, I go spinning. This is not the extreme gym activity, that really would be depressing but the crafting variety. I manage a business called Swords and Spindles for heaven’s sake (sorry can’t find a date for that one). I live in the seventeenth century. I need to be able to spin. So, having been given a spinning wheel for Christmas, off I go to an unbelievably friendly and helpful local group to learn how to use it. I should at this point explain that the kind of co-ordination that spinning requires, is not really my thing. I can’t even control an electric sewing machine. Then there is the perennial problem with my feet, which are square. This means my shoes are at least two sizes larger than my foot. Add to this my double-jointed toes and the point at which I have any control over what I am pressing on, is relegated to half way down my shoe. This makes controlling the pedal difficult. If you’ve tried patting your head and rubbing your stomach, spinning is more complicated. You have two hands and one leg all doing different things at the same time. Well, I don’t but that’s the principle. My very patient instructor made minor adjustments to my wheel and coped admirably with my incompetence. Despite going too fast, serious over-spinning and trouble with my backward drawing, I did manage to complete a whole bobbin of what is kindly described as ‘designer’ single ply. For ‘designer’ read full of lumps. I even started a second bobbin and did seem to actually be sort of getting the hang of it (mid nineteenth century) a bit by that point. I was already suffering from wool carders’ arms in preparation for the spinning. It is incredibly hard work, now I have added ‘spinners’ back’. Appropriate then that I am off to deliver a talk on ‘occupational hazards’ tonight.

More Writing – by me and by Others

by thehistoryinterpreter

My students on the Pharos Writing and Telling your Family History online course have begun submitting their assignments this week. The option to request feedback on a portion of their story is a new initiative and about half the students on the course took this up. It is a real pleasure to read these and to feel that I have had a very small part in their creation. Some of them are even signing up to do the course again, to motivate them for chapter two! It you want to join the party, there are one or two spaces left on the presentation of this course that starts in three weeks. Definite warm fuzzy feeling time and some great comments on the course to add to my testimonials page. Not that anyone ever reads my testimonials page and understandably so. After all, I could have made them all up. I haven’t, I hasten to add but I do wonder sometimes why I have that particular page lurking unread on my website. I suppose it does serve a purpose, in that I could look at it in moments of self-doubt and be reassured that people do enjoy and benefit from what I do. I don’t actually do this but the option is there!

EbeneezerOn the subject of self-doubt, as Barefoot on the Cobbles nears completion (it does, really), I am consumed with fears that everyone will hate it. I never had this crisis of confidence with my non-fiction books. Maybe it is because fiction is somehow much more personal and although none of the characters are based on me, I have invested myself in their emotions and shared their anguish for the last couple of years. It isn’t all anguish of course, although I have to say that their tragedies do outweigh their joys.

Today I have one fewer chapter left to complete than yesterday. This is not because I had some turbo burst of creativity and wrote 5000-6000 perfect words yesterday. Instead, I looked again at my planned structure and decided to axe the proposed chapter one, which weirdly I hadn’t yet written. If you’d asked me before I started this fiction journey, I would never have believed that I wouldn’t begin at the beginning and finish at the end. Anyway, the realisation that I had very little to say in the proposed first chapter, means the old chapter two is now chapter one – I hope you are following this. There is a prologue, which at one point was itself chapter one but ignore that added complication. The new arrangement means that I need to ensure that the old chapter two is robust enough to be the first full chapter. I think it is, I hope it is. I just need to run the principle by a few people. Poor Martha, who is reading it all, in the wrong order, has been sent three totally different chapter 11s during the course of her proof reading marathon. She is an ace proof reader, not just spotting errant semi-colons (oh yes, along with the plethora of adjectives and adverbs it does have that endangered piece of punctuation) but telling me that I have used a particular phrase before, often in a chapter she read six months previously; she is rarely wrong. She claims she is looking forward to starting at the prologue and reading through to the epilogue but I wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to read any of it ever again.

So, now I have a choice of chapters 3, 4 and 12 left to work on, although by the time I’ve finished with them they could have different numbers altogether!

Daisy Writing, Holding Forth to Enraptured Audiences and the Sorry Saga of my Dispute with a Well Known Electrical Goods Retailer

by thehistoryinterpreter

First let’s tackle the enraptured audiences, not literally of course, that would be counter-productive. I can’t really vouch for the ‘enraptured’ bit but I have been hither and yon regaling unsuspecting history groups, U3As and the like, with tales of the past. Great fun as ever, even if ridiculously horrendous traffic did mean that we were almost late for one booking. ‘Almost late’, in my world, means we weren’t there half an hour before the start time!

Upton RoadBarefoot on the Cobbles is now a few thousand words longer. Just as well really as my deadline looms ever closer. Since my field trip, aka writer’s retreat, to the soft south, I have been leading my heroine round the streets of Torquay. There is no way that I would have been able to write this convincingly without walking in her footsteps. I have already made good progress today. It was one of those great days when you wake up at 5.00am (normal sort of time for me) with fully formed sentences rushing round your head There’s only one thing to do, abandon all thoughts of granola and yoghurt until you have put fingers to keyboard and captured the words before they drift in to oblivion never to be retrieved. It isn’t just writing of course, or the geographical verisimilitude (yep, that dictionary was very tasty thanks), I am obsessive about portraying the historical era accurately. So, by 8am this morning, I had discovered that my heroine would not have purchased a powder compact in 1918, nor would she have bought it in Woolworths, at least not in the town I am writing about. All this to get one sentence historically correct! I have however found a suitable contemporaneous department store but I do have to come up with an alternative for the compact.

Then the sad saga of my run in with the well known electrical goods chain near me. Some of you have been following my social media rants on this one. I once taught GCSE law (ok it was sort of by mistake but I did) I can quote consumer rights acts. Said rants, along the lines of, ‘if not illegal, your policy is most certainly not ethical and to the total detriment of your customers’ and ‘deplorably poor customer non-service’, did bring responses but not resolutions. In short (and believe me you don’t want the full version) here is the sorry tale. An item that I paid for in store on Boxing Day got lost between their warehouse and their store, where it was supposed to be available for me to collect from 3 January. 9 January I send my personal shopper to collect said item. He was told it had been delayed, I would get an email. Slightly irritated by the fruitless 32 mile round trip, I waited until 18 January and having heard nothing, attempted to telephone the store. If you are ever similarly tempted, make sure you have a good half hour to spare and that is just the time it takes to get a real person. ‘Can I have the direct number for the store?’ I ask. Oooooh no, the temerity of my innocent question, these are closely guarded secrets, never to be divulged to mere customers. I am put through to the store who will investigate and ring me back – so far so good. They even do ring back and Barry (I think it is was Barry) says the item has been mislaid but if I don’t mind having a different colour (I don’t) they can replace it. Although I ordered it in store it counts as an online order raised by them on my behalf. ‘All’ I have to do is ring the number I first thought of, listen to how important my call is to them (but not important enough for them to answer) for another half hour and change the order. Oh and they might try and charge me another £50 because the price has gone up now the sale is over. Like **** they won’t thinks I.

After prolonged effort to speak to a real person, drawn out by the fact that the automated system put me through to the wrong department (I definitely pressed the right number) meaning that I had to start all over again, I ask to change my order. Ah no. This is not possible. I have to wait until the mystery of the missing item has been investigated before they can replace or refund. I could write pages about this conversation, which was somewhat circular and less than amicable in nature but I will summarise. The call handler was obdurate. I was furious. He was adamant that ‘their policy’ would leave me hamstrung until their investigation was complete. I ask to speak to someone above his pay grade. Allegedly there is no one. Clearly the MD of a major retailer has nothing better to do than answer phone calls. I ask to whom I should make a formal complaint. He’s the man apparently – what a multi-tasker, give that man an employee of the year award. ‘Right,’ say I, ‘I wish to make a formal complaint.’ Ah no, I can’t do that until the magic week of investigation is up. This ‘investigation’ is clearly something big, are Interpol involved I wonder?

I scrape myself off the ceiling and take to social media. They ‘understand my frustration’. Believe me they really don’t but they toe the party like, ‘it is our policy not to refund or replace until we have investigated blah de blah.’ 20 January dawns, the sacred week is up. I can’t bear the thought of more pressing this that and the other, so I type away to the jolly types who have been responding on social media. Apparently now it takes a fortnight for these investigations. My reactions are unprintable. Finally, yesterday I get an email to say that ‘as your item is out of stock we will be posting you a gift card within the next 3-5 days.’ Another saga, which I don’t have the energy to relate but they are within their rights to refund in the form of a gift card. Due to circumstance beyond my control, that was how I was obliged to pay in the first place. Not a single word of an apology for their total incompetence, or my inconvenience. If you wish to avoid patronising this store and believe me you need to steer clear of it like the proverbial Black Death, think popular Indian dish and you have it in one. I was going to say rant really over but of course I haven’t actually got the gift card yet!

Coincidences, Conclusions and Car Parks

by thehistoryinterpreter

dscf3202This retreating writers thing seems to be a good idea. At 5am on day one I wrote a fair draft of the end of Barefoot. Although my slightly weird body clock does not regard 5am as being ridiculously early, I am not often in full writer’s flow at that hour. The words came, they needed to be captured before they evaporated. I began by scribbling on the margin of the handy TV paper until the pen ran out, then I upgraded to pencil and paper. Perhaps I should keep the TV paper; if only anyone could actually read what I wrote on the pale parts of the page, nestled between Coronation Street and the Jeremy Kyle Show, it could be worth a fortune when Barefoot turns out to be a best seller. I can but dream. This sleep inspired ending, is not the last part of the final chapter that I have been struggling with, that remains an ominous blank page but the epilogue is on its way to being done. Of course, it will still be pulled apart and put back together again, especially when I let it loose on readers but I am pleased with my initial efforts.

Before all this muse striking lark, having established ourselves on our caravan site, we decided to drive into Torquay in the hope of buying ancient persons’ coach cards from the Tourist Information Centre here, our local one having been closed. I suppose alarm bells should have rung when I could not find the opening times anywhere online. I did establish that they were closed at weekends, hence not waiting until the following day. We paid a small fortune to purchase a plastic disc that enabled us to park. We walked to the tourist information shop. It was closed, had we arrived too late in the day? It turns out we were several months too late and the office does not reopen until February! To be honest, having been there, I can understand why the powers that be subscribe to the theory that there will be few tourists in a freezing January Torquay but I resented the wasted couple of hours and the significant investment (well, £1.50) in unnecessary parking.

As we were in south Devon, we decided to take the opportunity to support the south Devon group of Devon Family History Society. Having looked at the online programme, we were expecting a talk on the territorial army. I was surprised and delighted to find that the talk was actually about Newton Abbot workhouse and I had been looking at last year’s programme by mistake. One of my reasons for visiting the south was to investigate Daisy’s time in this very workhouse; what a coincidence, or is it something more?

Now to type up my epilogue while I can still decipher it.

Madness, Mania and Melancholia: the mental health of our ancestors

by thehistoryinterpreter

The fact that I have begun the new year researching madness says it all really. One of my new presentations for 2018 is about the mental ill-health of our ancestors; it will have its first outing next month. By co-incidence I was invited recently to submit an article on the same topic for the journal of The International Society for British Genealogy and Family History. I have really enjoyed researching this important topic, if ‘enjoyed’ is the right word. I did touch on mental illness in my booklet ’Til Death Us Do Part: causes of death 1300-1948 and it also gets a mention in my Pharos online course In Sickness and in Death – researching the ill-health and death of your ancestors but preparing the talk and article has given me the scope to investigate in more detail. As usual, what interests me most is people’s behaviour, both the reactions at the time and how we view our mentally ill ancestors now.

So what else has been happening since the season of goodwill and family gatherings was relegated to the attic for another eleven months? Pretty much it has all been about Daisy and of course mental illness threads its way through the pages of her story too.  This week has seen me focus on endings and beginnings in respect of Barefoot. I have been struggling with the final chapter. Sadly this is not the final chapter in the sense that it will be the last I write but it will be the end of the book, which is probably why I am finding finishing it so difficult. I also sent the prologue out to my lovely writers’ group and a couple of other beta readers. Well there was some good news, overall the reaction was favourable and they felt that they wanted to read more. That’s a relief. The downside is that they all suggested different minor ‘tweaks’. In each case, I can see the points that they are being made but if I take them all on board, it will be unrecognisable as the passage that I originally wrote. I am putting this passage away for a while and will come back to deciding how to deal with it later.

Torquay Town Hall HospitalShortly, I am off for what I am laughingly calling a ‘writer’s retreat’ aka three days in a caravan in the soft south of the county. Part of Daisy’s story takes place in Torquay, which is not a town I know very well, hence the need for a field visit. I spent yesterday researching the back stories of some of the minor characters she encounters during this part of her life and needless to say, found others I would like to include. A newspaper article mentioned that Daisy shared a house with six others whilst in Torquay. The identity of three of these was obvious. I had the task of pinpointing plausible candidates for the other three. I am happy to report that I have positively identified one and have come up with two others who are consistent with the information I have. Google earth suggests that the house they lived in was a three bedroom Victorian terrace and I cannot work out who might realistically have shared a bedroom with whom but perhaps, when I see the property in reality, it may look larger. A servants’ attic would be handy! I’ve also immersed myself in stories of VAD nurses and located routes I need to retrace. Hopefully this visit will enable me to write two middle chapters of the book then I really am on the home straight – yippee!

PS – three book reviews posted so far this year – get reviewing folks – help an author.