Tag Archives: family history courses

Dinosaur Poo, Milking Pigs and Being Me

by thehistoryinterpreter

I apologise for yet another post with poo in the title. This stems from the great discussions I’ve been having with my current cohort of Pharos students on the Discovering more about your Agricultural Labourering Ancestors course. They are a brilliant bunch and our chats range far and wide, including, yesterday, investigations into the use of coprolite (that’s the dinosaur poo) for fertilizer and whether it is possible to milk a pig. The jury is kind of out on that one. Obviously pigs do produce milk but milking them is not generally advised, although there are some ‘interesting’ YouTube videos. Don’t be distracted by the possibilities of milking Minecraft pigs however, that’s another thing entirely.

So someone has decided they’d like to be me. Well, I know I am pretty cool and all that but seriously, although I enjoy being me, it is a bit of an acquired taste. What appears to be (and hopefully is) a very restricted portion of my friends and colleagues have received emails from a spurious email address that does not include my name but is signed with by me with the title of one of my volunteer roles. After a full investigation it has been confirmed that this is not hacking or a virus but identity theft and there’s not a lot I can do. If you get one of these weird emails, check with me on an email address you know is mine and then, if it isn’t me, forward the offending message to report @ phishing.gov.uk. On the upside, as I am now two people, I will race through the to do list at the speed of light. The other me is a little tardy doing the washing-up though.

Excitingly, the first proofs of Marginalised Ancestors have arrived. Less excitingly, that means the dreading black hole that is indexing is looming. Hey, maybe the other me could do that part.

And in an Historical Household this Week….

by thehistoryinterpreter

Just to prove that my family have been busy training up the next generation and putting my booklet Harnessing the Facebook Generation: ideas for involving young people in family history and heritage into practice, Edward, aged nearly 3, has been investigating social history. He told his mother very seriously, ‘In the olden days they ate porridge.’ In the world according to Edward we now live in ‘newen days’ – got to love the logic.

I spent a lovely morning with my authors’ group, chatting about choosing titles and other book related gossip. We hope that we will soon be able to announce an exciting ‘writers in residence’ event for our group, in a stunning and inspirational location. All we can say at present is, if you would like to come and chat to us about our work, keep part of 29 April – 1 May free. Edward again, ‘Where have you been Granny?’. Me: ‘I’ve been talking to my friends who write books’. ‘I’d reeeely reeeely like to read those Granny’! That’s my boy! His cousins are just as keen on books, although, to be fair, the youngest tends to regard them as a dietary supplement.

#Daisy is actually making progress. You have no idea how long it takes to work out the state of the tide in relation to a newspaper account of a shipwreck. You’ve no idea but I can tell you that the answer is all afternoon, even with the expertise of a fisherman of my acquaintance. At 4.30am one morning inspiration struck and the blurb for #Daisy popped into my head almost fully formed. Even I am not up at 4.30am so I scrabbled for something upon which to write these beautifully crafted sentences before they slipped into oblivion. It is surprising how much you can scribble in the margins of a TV paper. As a bonus I could even read most of it afterwards, no mean feat with my handwriting.

ivy-and-gwenFamily history has led to fun tracing World War 1 Red Cross volunteers, oh and spending a small fortune on an online auction site acquiring a related medal. I’ve also enjoyed immersing myself in plague and pestilence, partly to revamp our Swords and Spindles history of medicine revision session and also to work on my new Pharos course In Sickness and in Death: researching the ill-health and deaths of our ancestors. I am looking forward to the start of Discovering your British Family and Local Community in the Early Twentieth Century on Tuesday – still time to sign up if you are interested. It is an online course so no excuses. In celebration this post includes one of my favourite family photos from the time.

The weather is taking a chilly turn so the garden bird feeding regime has been stepped up a notch. I am also still ploughing my way through the post-Christmas visitor laundry pile. My only method of drying laundry is to hang it on a washing line outside. Well fed birds and a line full of washing are not the greatest combination methinks, as I scrub away at the after effects of a very large flock of starlings.