Family

Posts about both sides of my family

Thursday’s Child Has Far to Go

Does anyone still recite the nursery rhyme “Monday’s child”? I believe it was written to help children learn the days of the week. It goes:           Monday’s child is fair of face           Tuesday’s child is full of grace           Wednesday’s child is full of woe           Thursday’s child has

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Fake news and family history; finding the facts

In another century what will historians, anthropologists and researchers make of the wealth of material we are producing today? Will they speculate at the news stories and marvel at the immaculate Instagram images? Will our emails and text messages stand the test of time? What will social media say about

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The Woman Carrying Two Giant Easter Eggs

Among the many postcards my mother and grandparents collected over the years is one which definitely speaks of Easter (pictured above). It is of a lady dressed colourfully, with a small red hat on her dark brown hair, an upturned collar and what looks like a green scarf tied around

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What will the world be like when all this is over?

As that virus plays havoc with hospitals and health workers the world over, I am guessing its impact on the world’s economy will be felt long after a vaccine is discovered. I often try to find similarities between current world events and those which took place in the history of

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Sick and Desperate: no hospital would admit her

Surrounded by panic about the spread of Covid-19, what better way to spend an afternoon than researching my grandmother’s experience with disease during the Russian Revolution. I turned to her book, Upheaval, to find out how she was affected. She is not the best at recording dates, but I can

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Looking through more than one window

There is a Chinese proverb about learning languages which goes: “To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world”. For a few years now I have been learning German. Although I stopped formal lessons some time ago, I have a couple of

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