Norfolk 1845

After spending about three painstaking days cyber-stalking my dead relatives on ancestry.com, I've discovered that I've traced the wrong Samuel L Ward for five generations and that he didn't even live in the area of Norfolk I was focusing on. Although it's irritating to have to write and re-write and research and go through micro-fiche and arse about with an unresponsive program, I've discovered many things. Such as, most of the agricultural community in Norfolk in the early to mid nineteenth century were Methodist not Anglican, either Wesleyan or Primitive Methodist, so many of those folk are not in the church records. I've learned about White's Norfolk history, 1845 edition which chronicles in microscopic detail the goings-on in every Norfolk village -- who lived there, who owned the land, who the milliner was and so on. I've learned that women had many, many children because so many of them died young and from one ten year span to the next (ie from census to census) virtually all the names of their children could change. I've also discovered that my Great Great Grandmother Charlotte had my Great Grandfather George when she was 50 years old. And my lovely sister tells me that my Grandmother was about 48 when she had my uncle Bob, so there it is. Good childbearing genes on both sides.

It's grey and foggy here and the dogs have come back from their morning canyon jaunt with muddy paws and of course they're sleeping on my sofas when I come back from the school bus (which I missed so we had to chase it and hale it down like a scene out of Mission Impossible, Minks rushing towards it with her huge red Backpack flapping in the breeze) and I want to grumble at them but they are so very sorry for their appalling manners that I feel bad for even thinking that. Punish me for that long sentence. Do. June has cheered me enormously by suggesting she bring donuts for our meeting. "Should I bring donuts?" she asks innocently on an untitled email. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no" I reply as if I'm in the Vicar of Dibley. So of course I know she will.

The English map is spread out on the dining room table so that I no longer mix up Beccles and Breccles and Mitford and Mutford or even, God forbid, Norfolk and Suffolk. I am one with the census. As it is and always shall be. And I have "My Song is Love Unknown" blaring from the speakers while I get my beleagured head together.