Family trees are wierd. Until you decide to investigate you do not realize where they will lead or how they can disprove everything that you knew to be true about your heritage. It's like playing Chinese Whispers backwards. You start with the message [as delivered to you] and then try to figure out what the original message might have been.

It all began some time ago,before Clyde made the scene. When he arrived things were never the same again and there seemed to be a new brand of mayhem to deal with almost daily and he was usually at the root of it. I suppose that is what its all about,roots. I had decided to trace my ancestry,it was not as straight forward as I imagined and it has taken a long time to uncover all of the "Runners and Riders" involved in the plot.
One thing you learn very quickly is "Expect the unexpected" and never give creedence to anything you think you know because you were "Told that by your mother or father".This is how the Chinese Whispers gain a foothold and in two or three generations someone who died of Syphilis after World War One in the epidemic of that time becomes a war hero who died from bayonet wounds by 2010.

With the advent of "Halloween" thoughts turn to ghosts and things scary.Ghosts are those spectres of imagination that "Walk though solid walls" or "Rattle chains in cellars" or the more normal of them just appear and disappear at times of unconnected concern. They don't really exist do they? Well,I have to say that I think I found one; at least on paper.

In finding my family I had assumed that they were English and had always been but this was not the case, my Great Grandfather was not English but Syrian.He was Naturalized in 1869.
The first myth "Bit the dust".I knew my Granfather was a Catholic but it transpired that the family was only Catholic after my Great Grandfather married my Great Grandmother who was of Irish Descent. The second myth joined the first in the dust. Together they had eleven children of which only seven survived puberty.Of those seven only one married and he did it twice otherwise I would not be writing this.
Halloween brought one of the unmarried sons of the seven to the fore. He was called George and he was my Great Uncle. Between his birth in 1876 and 1920 I could account for his every move but after that he made a ghostly exit and disappeared. In 1908 he opened a school teaching shorthand notation and typing and it was listed in directories up to 1920 but then vanished and so,for that matter did he. He did serve in the army but not until 1918 and he was discharged as unfit for Hypertension[high blood pressure] but after that he ceased to exist as far as documentation is concerned.

Last week,whilst Clyde was out scavenging the local orchards for illicit apples and anything else he could lay hands on I had some quiet time[a rarity since he came]. Then as a "Bolt from the blue" I found George.

It seems that he went to live in a quiet market town noted for producing fishing tackle,
needles and pins. He lived with his sister who was also unmarried.She was a devout Catholic given to the regular habit of confession which she did every week on Friday evening.
On Friday November 18th 1955 before she left for her appointment with the Parish Priest she made sure that the fire burning in the grate in the living room was burning well. As she closed the front door she might have said "I'll be back by eight" leaving George settled by the warm fire to read his newspaper.
When she returned it was misty outside and as she trod the path to her door a smell filled the air,it was an odour with which her 75 years was unfamiliar. At her door the smell seemed stronger,it was a smell of something burning.
Thinking that George had left something on the stove she made for the kitchen but all was as it should be. She might have called out to Geoge "I'm Back" but did not hear a reply.
The smell was now overpowering as she went to find her brother. On opening the door to the living room the source of the smell became apparent, George was lying prostrate on the floor after what was obviously one of his Hypertesive attacks but his head was in the remnants of what had been a roaring fire. The charred remains of a newspaper mingled through his fingers. One can only imagine the mixture of terror,concern and sorrow that filled the room.
The Inquest into his death was perhaps ironic in its location as the town had no Coroner's Court as such and the Inquest was held in the taproom of a local Public House.Ironic because George was teatotal and had been for at least 30 years. The Coroner had to decide whether the death was "Accidental" or as a result of Misadventure. Basically was he alive or dead when his head went into the fire? His sister was called to give evidence though her testimony could only be "After the Fact". It was, most likely her presence at the court that determined the virdict of "Accidental death". Surely a kindness allowed by The Coroner to avoid further distress. How could he have known for sure?

Trying to explain Christmas to Clyde is a tough job but when you think where he came from maybe its not hard to understand why the concept is so alien to him. In his world no one gives anything to anyone,everything is simply taken because it can be taken. The idea that a guy in a red suit will land his sleigh on your roof at the dead of night then shimmy down a chimney,creep about in your house leaving presents for you to find in the morning must seem wierd. When I told him that it happens all over the world but only on one night of the year he said nothing for a very long time. See, he was working it out.The logistics. By his reckoning Santa Clause would have to eat more than 500 tons of mince pies and drink over a 1000 gallons of sherry not to mention travelling more than 24,000 miles around the world in a single night. He says its impossible and does not believe it, in fact tonight he will not even discuss the matter further.
I suppose it is a leap of faith but then is that not what it is all about? The belief that against everything you know to be the case that something good will happen and all yoiu have to do is believe that it will.

I saw him talking to Jimmy the kid next door a while back,I could not hear what was being said but there was a lot of nodding and head shaking going on and he did go to bed very early tonight. When I checked on him before I turned in there was a long red sock on the end of his bed. He did not believe me when I told him but the kid from next door,no problem!
So how could I let him down? He could peel an orange inside his pocket but yet he believes.
The thing is I only filled the stocking with bananas,apples and oranges. Things he eats every day but somehow those same fruits acquired a magic of their own tonight. He was up at 4am to see if his faith was justified.

JP.

For sheer terror there can be no other event that can befall a householder than the discovery of a fire. It is the one thing that everyone fears. It has happened to me twice.
The first time was almost thirty five years ago when I lived in a Mobile home[a very large Trailer/Caravan]. I had left for work that morning as usual and it was cold. At around 9.30 am my boss called me to the phone and seemed a little agitated which was unusual for him as he was the sort to put the ingredients of a cocktail into a glass and wait for an earthquake. When I picked up the receiver a familiar voice said "Come home the place is on fire". I left for home at a speed approaching the velocity of light.

When I arrived at the scene the tragedy was well under way and outside there were two fire engines. One from a city some seven miles to the north and one from a town some eight miles to the south. It transpired that where my trailer was fell into a disputed "Black Hole" it was on the border between two catchment areas and where it stood belonged to neither area. It was to be the first lesson I learned about living in the "Wythall triangle" Things happen here that happen no where else. It made little difference to the firemen,a fire is a fire and they put it out. It was in the job descrition and though the rules were unclear they made them fit.
The aftermath of carnage was devastating,everything was lost. Oh it was insured but the second lesson was "Everyone is underinsured" when it comes to dealing with a disaster.
The fire report identified the cause as electrical failure as the cause of the fire. It was a major setback and it took a long time to recover from it but looking upon the positive side lightning can't strike in the same place twice can it? Oh yes it can and it did last week.

It was a night like any other,no different in any way except that the doorbell rang unexpectedly. The ringer was a passing gypsy[yes they do exist, this is after all the "Wythall Triangle"]. His opening gambit was "Sorry for your trouble mister but did you know your chimney is on fire?" It was a total surprise,everything inside the house seemed normal and as the gipsy took his leave I looked up at the chimney. There were flames coming out of it and agaist the night sky it looked like a huge bunsen burner belching red hot cinders and ash into the night but there was little or no discernable smoke,this was pure fire. Clearly the chimney draught was drawing the fire and the oxygen was fueling it.
The first step was obvious,douse the fire in the wood burning stove and close off all of its dampers.The fire in the stove was now out but the chimney was still on fire? Where was it coming from?
Inside the house the back of the wood burning stove had changed from matt black to cherry red,the fire was now inside the flue pipe to the chimney and it was getting hotter. Somehow water had to be introduced into the chimney but how?and from where?
There was a skylight in the roof which I installed many years ago and it was little more than 6 feet from the raging chimney. I had a garden hose long enough but how do I reach the chimney? The answer came to me when I thought "how do I make a flexible hose rigid enough to reach the chimney"? A garden hoe,thats it! I quickly taped the hose to the hoe and fed the nozzle through its blade setting the hose on fan-spray. Standing on a box it just reached and the water mist began to do its work. It took nearly an hour to bring it under control but the fire was out. Inside the house the cherry red fire flue began to dull to deep red though it was still not cold.

The fire was no more and the blessing of a lucky escape came to mind. It could have been very different. So why did I not simply call the fire brigade? Well, the two fire stations that sent engines the last time that I had a fire are now closed and egines would have been dispatched from further affield so they would have taken longer to attend by which time the result could have been far more serious.
All that remained was to clear up the mess and sweep the chimney. I swept the chimney the following day and discovered the probable cause of the fire. The charred remnants of two magpies nests in the throat of the chimney flue. Clyde, however was unphased by the discovery and said "I told you those magpies were trouble when I saw them on the roof!"
I thanked him for all of his help during the crisis of which there was very little. All he said was "I don't do fires"

JP.

Yesterday it was one of those milestones that occur in one's life if the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune can be survived, My Sixtieth birthday!

Looking back over those sixty years I have to marvel at how far man has travelled and the advaces that have been made. I was born in 1948 at the dawn of the "Jet age" not that there was much evidence of it then. Air travel was in its infancy and all of the civillian planes still had propellers. It cost around £5000 to fly to New York from what was then Great Britain.
India/Pakistan/Burma/Thailand and Ceylon were taking their leave of colonial rule and the state of Israel had just begun its first desparate war of survival. Food rationing was still a factor of daily life in England and the NHS was about to make the claim that it would care for everyone "From the Cradle to the grave". The NHS made the claim that it would be "free at the point of delivery" but that was not the case as I remember clearly having to pay a "consultation fee of "Five Shillings" just to speak to a doctor. The money was put into a dish on his desk.

Though the Second World War had been over for three years the aftermath of bomb damaged buildings was still common place. All manner of things were difficult if not impossible to acquire especially building materials. The first house I can remember had no door until another house nearby had been demolished and its component parts were divided up to make other houses more comfortable. Then we had a door. It was said "That you could leave your door open then and no one would steal anything" but the reaon it was safe was more to do with the fact that no one had anything worth stealing rather than a universal honesty.
The price of goods was as relative then as it is today. The average wage was around £5-£10 depending upon how long a man worked.A gallon of petrol [around 5 litres]then[if you could get it] was around 1s 3d[approx 7 new pence]. Of course that changed in the 1950's with the Suez crisis and so did the design of vehicles on the road.It was the age of the small car and the Mini along with other small cars became popular. By 1960 the fuel price had doubled.

There were not many TV sets though there was electricity a great many homes only had town gas for cooking and lighting. True there were radios but most were run on accumalators or batteries. As the older houses were cleared from the city the rehousing included electricity in every house,from that point on TV ownership mushroomed. Typical audiences for popular programs then were 17/18 million nightly, a figure modern day programers can only dream of.

Then came the 60's a time few wanted to leave behind,it was a time that the world changed.At the time no one noticed it change as the changes were subtle and not always obvious. The Profumo affar,The Lady Chatterley trial,The Cuban Missile crisis,The Berlin wall,The death of JFK,the Music scene,Fashion,Political scandals and as it drew to a close the first man walked on the Moon,Martin Luther King Died and The Civil Rights movement began to make headway against predjudice. Rhodesia ceased to exist and Zimbabwe as it was renamed began its decline from the breadbasket of Africa to breadline.

As the 1970's started Concord was almost ready to fly at more than twice the speed of sound,from here on it would be possible to fly to the USA and back in a day at 50,000 ft.
If you had the money and the inclination. This was the decade of decimalisation and entry into the EEC, England would never be the same again. Toward the end of the era the unthinkable happened England had a Prime Minister unlike any before then and it was a woman. Margaret Thatcher. In the USA Robert Nixon embroiled in the Watergate conspiracy was forced to resign.

During the 1980's the electronic age began, Computers underwent quantum leaps of technology largely driven by mans teetering steps into space. Electronic devices became smaller and more portable and personal communication lept forward with the inception of the cellphone. Compact discs began to displace vynl records and soon anything on vynl would become a collectors piece. The Russians invaded Afghanistan only to be driven out by insurgents. Whilst England engaged in two wars one in the Falkland islands and the other in Iraq. In 1989 the wall in Berlin was torn down by citizens of Berlin.

The 1990's saw the death of General Tito and the breakup of Yugoslavia along with the "Ethnic Cleasing" that followed.The reunification of East and west Germany. In 1991 the USSR imploded and communism was replaced by brand of capitalism that it swept from its door in 1917. Stories began to depict the Global Warming scenario citing the rapidly receeding ice caps at both the North and South Poles. Few believed the prediction of catastrophe but as the Millenium approached it was becoming clear that the CO2 levells were spiraling out of control.

The Millenium came and went and predictions that the worlds computers would cease to function and go into meltdown proved groundless. The twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York were destroyed by Alledged Islamic Fundementalists with a loss of life approaching 3000. Two wars ensued causing the downfall of the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Toward the third quarter of the decade a Gobal Reccession gripped the financial institutions of the world and in the middle of the ensuing chaos the USA held a Presidential Election. The new President was the product of a Kenyan father and a Hawiian mother and for the first time he was black and not white. But then the White House is not really White but Grey or at least it was until a Canadian army set fire to it in the 19th century after which it was painted white and has been called The White House ever since. The first Black President will take his seat in the oval Office in a building built by some of the first slaves,it could only happen in America.

In sixty years the technology has taken huge leaps into the future we now live in. The unthinkable can and still does happen and there is a growing belief that nothing is impossible.

JP.

I had to leave Clyde at home tonight as I had tickets for the Ballet or rather someone else had tickets and I went along. It was a company I had only heard about by reputation and the reputaion that preceeded them was well deserved. The Company was "Les ballets Trocadero" and though there were set pieces from Swan Lake,The Firebird and The Rites of Spring amongst others this was without doubt the funniest I have ever seen them performed. The cast was entirely male and even the delicacy of the female roles had the masculine treatment. The entertainment came in three parts and for good reason,the exhaustion that followed each set needed recovery time. The mirth that accompanied each interval was such that the audience when they were not delivering a standing ovation had to have time to recover their composure in order that the show could continue. At the end of the final set the curtain calls were so numerous that the cast did an encore from a modern ballet to Jazz. It is without reservation a show to be seen if the chance should arise.

Clyde was asleep when I rerturned home and in a way that was a relief because he does not understand the Ballet and maintains that it is opera for the deaf.I am dreading breakfast tomorrow as he is sure to ask. Explaining the Ballet is hard enough but how do I explain humour?

JP.