I haven't been using myspace much as facebook is rather more socialbel and interactive. However, myspace is great for hearing people's music - have just been listening to Anne Lister who I know through Facebook - isn't the computer a wonderful tool!  And I can listen to lots of my other friends from the folk world etc.  I know Facebook has the facility to add You Tube clips but not everyone has their stuff on You Tube, whereas lots of people can upload their music to myspace.

Steve, Roger and I have got a good list of songs now but I can't sing at the  moment cos of a sore throat and very croaky voice which is really frustrating  But Time that great healer will get me back to normal eventually!

 

Had a great time at Grove at White Horse Festival, and especially apreciated the hospitality of Hilary and Richard on Friday night till the early hours, along with the kindness of Johnny Morris and his "sons".   It was also great to catch up with Les & Carys, Brian and Jackie, Den and Pete etc.   Pint & Dale did the saddest song I've heard for a long while - the Mary Stanford of the Rye by Alkan Maslen- which brought tears to my eyes. 

Dick's guest appearance at Tudor went well and I also went along to the 2nd Henley Fok Club which was most enjoyable, and lovely to meet Brian & M.. from Kent and Plum and Steve from Northampton.  Plum amnd I felt we'd met before but couldn't work out where, though we discovered we both knew Don and Rene.   Which reminds me of a phone call I had a few days ago - a man asking if Jennifer Zabl had lived here - not that I knew of - she was a writer in Marlow.  After the call I felt I had recognised the man's voice & manner of speaking, so searched the web with his phone number and eventually found he was Phil Allcock who I'd met in around 1992-4 when he spoke at the Chiltern Writers Group and later chatted with at his flat in Marlow Bottom.  I even remembered he told me that his books had been destroyed in a warehouse fire resulting in a new book cover which sold his books better!  But what a weird coincidence!  And how fantastic is our brain, that recognises voices all those years on!  So I rang him back and told him and we had a catching-up chat after all those years.

Which reminds me of another unlikely coincidence - I was at the reading record office doing some research for someone in the 1980s.  In the signing-in book was a Mr & Mrs Dell and their address was Mellin Griffith, Cardiff.  Now Mellin Griffith, Whitchurch parish, Glamorgan, was where my Gt Gt Grand father George Llewellyn was born, in Rose Cottage, New Houses.  So I sought out the Dells, an elderly couple, and enquired about the whereabouts of Rose Cottage.  Apparently there were only about 3 old cottages left, Ivy , Rose and another, and they thought that their cottage was Rose Cottage!   They told me to call in if I was in the area.  How unlikely is that - to meet someone in Berks living where my ancestor was born in Wales!. 

Last year when I was at Miskin festival I went to visit Mellin Griffith and had a pleasant walk along the river and looked for New Houses & Rose Cottage.  Eventually I found someone who identified a little row of terraced cottages as New Houses and I was then invited into one of the cottages which contained a goat (!)and dogs etc, and a pony in a stable outside.  A very kind family indeed, who made me most welcome and chatted to me and who had known the Dells.  He had died and she was in a nursing home and their cottage was the end one, now occupied by a lady (sadly on holiday) who was writing a history of the area.  So I took photos of Rose Cottage, and the well across the road which they must have used. 

One day I must find out if the lady's book has been published, though I have got a history of Mellin Griffith which grew up around the tin works - now demolished and new housing going up on the old site.  George Llewellyn was proudly Welsh.  He was born on St David's day and always wore a daffodil in his button hole on his birthday.  But my Aunty Margaret says the familly used to rag him about it, saying, what did the Welsh ever do for you, because George and his wife Ellen left Wales, partly for work I'm sure, but also because people in Wales were unkind to Ellen because she'd worked in a pub - which I also visited when in Whitchurch last year.   I'm afraid religion has a lot to answer for.  She was born in the little village of Peterstone Wentloog about 1845 - I also went there on my day out from Miskin.  It is on the Bristol Channel and I had a great walk along the sea wall there.  The church is now a private home but the owner told me hardly anyone is buried there because the high water table caused the bodies to float!  Ellen had a daughter named Cordelia, who sadly died young and no-one in the family seemed to know about her, but she most have been named after her sister Cordelia who lived in the valleys with her Scottish landlord husband.  I wonder if they kept in touch, and I think how much harder it must have been then, with transport and communication so much more difficult than today with our instant emails, phone calls etc. 

 

Well, little update on George since yesterday''s blog ... on 18 Nov 1843 convict George Dorling applied for permission to marry Catherine Connolly, a convict who arrived on the ship Mary Anne in 1841 from Dublin.  Whether he was given permission is not known (yet) but in 1846 Catherine applied for permission to marry convict Richard Cuddihy.  In January 1852 George left Hobart for Melbourne as a steerage passenger on the Victoria.  I wonder if he was going gold prospecting.  So the search now moves to Australia.

I have now put most of my CDs onto my computer and I now have 7958 songs to choose from !!

I was so pleased to discover tonight that after 11 years as a convict in Tasmania and 3 years on ticket of leave, George Dorling was granted a Conditional Pardon in 1847-8.  This is listed in the new convict records on Ancestry dot com... the image shows George listed as sentenced to life at the Assizes in Sussex 1833 and the wording for his pardon is: "having behaved well for nearly 11 years and a half that he has been in the colony and having undergone a probation of three years as a ticket of leave holder."  I already knew George was sentenced to life in 1833 at Sussex assizes though I have yet to discover his crime.  He was just 20 year old, baptised 1813 in Hove.  Now I know he survived in Tasmania I would love to know what happened to him after that.  He is part of the Nacton, Suffolk Dorling branch.  His story always reminds me of the wonderful song about a convict in Tasmania, with the chorus:

"But Annie dear, don't wait for me.
     I fear I shall not return to thee.
     There's naught to do but endure my fate,
     And watch the moon, the lonely moon,
     Light the breakers on wild Bass Strait."

 

Set off for Southampton 8:20 but went to garage to fill up and found I couldn't open my petrol cap - my central locking was broken....I already knew this but hadn;t twigged it would affect petrol cap.  So Southampton trip abandonned and work at home instead.  Up loft - even hotter than the garden - to undo the two ariel wires conneted to the ariel as the split signal was not strong enough.  Connector screws minute so back down to find tiny screwdriver, eventually found one in a set of three that came in a cracker!  Back up, undid connections, ready to attach one of the leds to the ariel, tried one and went downstairs to se which one it was, good signal now but wanted to connect the other one, so back up loft , undo and connect other lead, almost finished  - but where was the connector?  disappeared... found 20 minutes later, by which time I was drippring with sweat and covered in bits of fibreglass pipe lagging.   But success, now have working ariel in kitchen / family room.  Next, decided to try spray paint on a cupboard door - did it outside, all going well, then spied conifer cuttings that needed to go in green bin for collection tomorrow - collected and taken out, shutting puppy behind porch door so they couldn't get out, greenery put in bin, loud bang, door blown shut.... locked out, no-one in as Hannah shopping and James taken Kirsche out.  There I was, barefoot and I my decorating clothes looking most unkept!  Had to go to neighbours to phone mu Mum to get her to bring key.  But 3 disasters was the end of it and more work on house achieved and finally sat down to dinner at 9:30, looking forward to my bed!   The day reminded me of the song John sings, It's It's Going To Be One Of Those days ... it certainly was.

My neighbour confided that her husband won't throw things out.  I am the same.  We did lots of clearing out at work in June & July, throwing away beaurocracy but history too.  2 pieces of paper held pen-portraits I'd written of pupils for an Ofsted years ago.  Out of the handful described 2 are dead and another one may be as she was a heroin addict by the age of 16.  Social services / Act of Parliament had failed her earlier in life because the Children's Act meant her mother could veto any suggestions of removing her to a safer environment.  I came away from social services meetings predicting disaster in some form.  It was awful to feel so helpless in a situation so predictable.  Her road turned out to lead to addiction.  By then she was 16 years old and there was no facility anywhere in the country for drug rehabilitation for her age group.   I don't know what has happened to her since. 

The boy who is now dead was important to me and my life.  I got to know him well and it was partly because of him that I eventually trained to assess and teach people with specific learning difficulties (dyslexia etc).  He was a lovely boy who'd had a hard time with a loving but struggling family, his inability to read and the final straw, attempted abuse from an adult in a care role.  He finally got through all that only to die in an accident when he was in his early twenties.  His funeral was heartbreaking.

So that piece of paper is true history to me and I couldn't throw it out.  We are symbolic creatures and that piece of paper symbolises and keeps real a person  I cared about deeply.  It helps me remember and it puts things in perspective.

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Totty   I remember you arriving in the back-pack of my father's bike A tiny tot of spiky fur peeped out Just asking to be cosseted.  You were my brother's age And through our childhood days we played, Chasing summer shadows and autumn leaves, And cuddled warm in winter evening laps. I remember dreaming of you recurringly, A darkness pierced by glassy eyes, like marbles Green and full of light, glaring from the homeward hedge. Quite far from home, I thought, to wait for me. I remember you creeping upwards through my sleep, Rubbing your chin on mine, an ancient feline ritual Awakening me to friendship. When you were older I remember your crying sometimes in the night A wide cat's wail, but unmistakeably my name Calling to be let in from the cold black world outside. I remember the summer of my brother's sixteenth birthday We were like adventurers, never at home. I am still ashamed we only noticed you Because you started acting strangely, walking in circles, Hungry but missing the plate.  I sat with you Remembering the years, stroking away teenage neglect, It calmed you.  Some part of your brain responded, Knew that you were cherished. They had to put you down. A stroke they said. I can still see your sad green eyes Taking courage From the love in mine As we said goodbye.

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