>Tamburello’s on streetview

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>The reprimand for playing cards

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>Mr Ratcliffe Ratcliffe I presume

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I’ve been doing a fair amount of family tree research since I’ve been at home with the twins. Sometimes its just easier to not move when they get off for a nap and use one arm to soothe them and surf with the other.

I’ve been looking into my family tree for about 7 or 8 years now but it kind of goes to bursts of activity. Either because of some genealogical brick wall or because of a lack of free trials on the family tree sites.

Recently I have had two big breakthroughs though. the first was a very fortuitous discovery. Last year I wrote to a lady who had written a booklet of the village of Bradenstoke in Wiltshire where my nanna was born and raised. It’s right next to RAF Lyneham and Wooten Bassett (where all the war dead come back into the country). She had collected lots of memories as part of a Millennium Project. As it happens there were a few passing references to a few relatives. So through a long route I tried to contact her to see if there was any further editions in the pipeline.

Months past until just before Christmas I received and email asking whether I knew that she had been to visit my great auntie Lucy many times before she died, recording her memories of her childhood in the village.

I got the tape just before Christmas and surprised my family with it. I had only just got into all this stuff before Auntie Lucy died so only managed to ask her a few basic questions so to now have an hour and a half of her talking was amazing. More striking was to hear her and Wilf’s voices after all this time. You could imagine them move around their little flat as they were talking. Auntie Lucy was quite an amazing woman. She worked for the Salvation Army all her life and got married for the first time when she 77! They were married for 13 years before they both died within a month of each other.

My other breakthrough was looking into Lisa (and the twins side of the family). One visit to Lisa’s grandfather’s grave open up the whole tree back to 1696. From the dates I was able to make the leap back to the 1911 census and from there a managed to get in contact with a distant cousin who had already done a lot of research into the tree. Strange to see old photos of strangers that actually remind you of people you know. Oh we also found out that there are apparently lots of twins on the Ratcliffe side of the family. So that could be where that all came from. Oh and a couple of people called Ratcliffe Ratcliffe back in the 1800′s. so good they named him twice. Not quite sure what they were thinking but not a mistake, they named his nephew Ratcliffe as well. well someone has got to carry the name i suppose.

This was all courtesy of a free trial on ancestry.co.uk where I also pulled the document pictured at the top. It’s the war records for my great grandfathers brother, George Iles. Really interesting details once you decipher the writing, like a reprimand in 1919 for playing cards on the stairs.

One of the reasons I love family tree stuff is that it is such a good leveller. Everybody has a story of where they come from that can so quickly get lost in the present everyday lives. Yet every-bodies story is interesting in its own way whether they be rich and privileged or working class folk.

>Twenty ten

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I remember this day twenty years ago watching the year click over from ’89 to ’90 on my world time/temperature casio watch. I thought that was so cool. Can you believe they based a watches’ selling point around being to add on 2 hours to see what time it was in some part of eastern Europe. As I wasn’t travelling too much when I was 11 the need to know the time in Tokyo was purely academic.
Zip forward 20 years and i’m now updating this blog on a little machine about the size of the Horace goes skiing tape I was waiting to load for most of 1989 on our dragon 64.

There are quite a few things I wouldn’t have guessed 10 years ago at the turn of the last decade. Obviously 2 kids would be a bit surprising for my millenium self. One maybe but twins no. In 2000 I didn’t even own a mobile phone, now I’m carrying around some futuristic gadgetry.

I probably wouldn’t have guessed that my uni house mates friends band that he kept talking about would go on to be one of the biggest bands in the western world. What are they called again dave? Cold play?

I would’ve thought I might have finished reading the wheel of time series by now. The latest and 12th book just arrived in the post this morning. A recap of the last 13 years of Reading might be in order before I embark on that one.
All in all it’s been a good decade. 2000 seems like yesterday when you say it but then you realise how much has happened in those 10 years. Ok I still my be only living a semi adult life (a house and a reliable career are just a couple of the social milestones I lack) but I’d say a beautiful wife and 2 amazing little people we created is pretty good going. Add to that about 6 years of digging some astounding (and some mundane) archaeology and I think i would be quite happy if I had a glimpse into the future 10 years ago.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

>And it’s not even halloween yet

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It’s only the 30th october but already i’ve prob had my fill of skulls,open coffins and crypts… And that’s just day job. this month i’ve gone from mancunian slums to prehistoric landscapes and now to the inside of a medieval church. The architects didn’t really take into consideration just how many people wanted to be buried inside the church in years gone by. This week has mainly been spent dealing with the numerous remains that were tossed aside into a shallow pit to make way for a nice little private crypt for one. Perhaps we will be able to redress the balance a little when we eventually re-inter them go the crypt.

>Graham is the reason archaeology is going down the pan

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>I went up in a crane today…

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>Hope we can finally clear up the confusion…

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>angel meadows

>So as I mentioned yesterday i’m digging in the Angel Meadows area of Manchester. a place full of thieves, fighters, alcoholics and drug takers. and it was pretty bad back in the 1830′s as well.

this morning on my walk to work i passed by the back of the Printworks at about 8.01am. perhaps 1 minute before the sirens came wailing around the corner to deal with the guy that was laying barechested in the doorway of an apartment block, bleeding from the stab wound he had just received up in one of the apartments. you might have seen it on the news today.

This was all about 100 metres from the place i saw a guy last week collapsed in shudehill bus station receiving cpr and mouth to mouth. and not far from piccadilly station where i attempted last week to stop a shop lifter in boots (only with clever words mind you, which didn’t really work)

this is all before i actually get to work. this morning we found a fence panel torn down and expected to find lots more new discarded syringes in our trenches ( we’ve found about 50 so far not including the ones that appeared and then disappeared). eventually we worked out that someone had been in to cut all the lead pipes out of our bulidings and had taken their pick of finds from the site.

so actually the area probably hasn’t changed that much. instead of gangs of scuttlers there are gangs of young guys getting arested for violent conduct after the stabbing, instead of people out of it on Gin it’s homeless guys drinking strong lager, we have modern beer bottles mixed with 100 year old beer bottles and the only difference with the drug abuse is that the heroin and cocaine were all legal back then.

a grim post but some grim sights. i haven’t quite got the sight of that poor guy fighting for his life in that doorway this morning.

>Binge drinking c.1909

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In am attempt to satisfy the few remaining blog followers out there i have decided to use the lonely and long 11pm feed to share some thoughts. The length depends on how much my phone will allow. 
There are of course not the selection of bottles finn and evan get to choose from of a night. Rather the remains of a 100 year stash from the cellar of a victorian mancunian slum dwelling. One of many that i have the pleasure of uncovering on the site where the coop will be placing their new glassy hq.
Quite the shift from just a few months ago when i was trying to explain what there cholera ridden houses would have been like to a bunch of year 8′s. I’d take the rubbish heaps any day of the year. Even the rainy ones but especially there sunny days.