The Way of the Wombat

Today's date is an anniversary. Two years ago today my daughter and her fiancé were due to marry.

Over the 2 or 3 weeks preceding the wedding day the pandemic began to be more than a tiny blip on the horizon and they had seen their plans change and change and change, almost daily. They had to cancel their honeymoon in Tahiti, then the new honeymoon in England had to be cancelled, and eventually a third one in a local hotel, too. The reception could no longer happen as planned, their caterers offered to host a smaller one in their café, then the rules changed again and they had to cancel; the wedding venue could now only take 30 people, but we could have a champagne toast, then they could only take 10, then it could only be the registrar with the bride, groom, and their two fathers as witnesses... and on the 26th of March even that was cancelled as the island went into strict lockdown.

I look back in my journal and on the afternoon of the 26th my daughter said "Ah well, we gave it our best shot!" and I took a photo of my spare bedroom -



An unworn wedding dress and bridesmaid's dress.

On the 28th March 2020 both daughter and fiancé posted this message on their Facebook pages;

Today was supposed to be our wedding day 😭 We have planned so many weddings and honeymoons over the last fortnight to overcome each setback again and again and again. We are thoroughly exhausted. Thank you to everyone who sent us messages and kind wishes throughout, it really means a lot ❤

We have encountered so many people whose lives are being affected by this virus, and whilst each plan b, c and d for us gave empty hope that we could still tie the knot on an increasingly less 'big' day, at least we still have jobs and know that at the end of all this we can get what we want just later than planned. But for the beauticians 💅 hairdressers 💇‍♀️ caterers 🥖 catteries 😿 guesthouses 🏩florists 💐and so many more this is their livelihoods in the balance. Each of their plan b, c and d was a means for survival that with each daily press conference was taken from them. I am sure they are just as exhausted and with an awful lot more at stake.

When we do get married perhaps the best gifts we could ask for would be those that support local businesses - we are big fans of eating and drinking...

I cried. It was such a thoughtful message rather than a 'poor us' one.

And then we hunkered down to lockdown, fearful of what might come.

But, of course, we managed to make our island covid-free for almost 8 months from May 2020 and they had a wonderful, memorable, wedding on the 28th of August 2020 which, whilst not the same as the original one would have been, and a honeymoon of 3 days spent only 5 miles from home, was so much 'them' that none of us can imagine the original could have been as personal or as joyous.



And, despite further lockdowns and setbacks, the beautician, hairdresser, caterers, florist, and so on who were part of the original plan, were there for the actual wedding - and are all still in business - more than we could all have hoped for 2 years ago today.

I have been deeply entrenched in social history over the past few days - primarily involving the periods of the two World Wars.
Since my last entry I have actually read the book of 'letters, diaries and memories of the Great War', that I wrote about, and I found it fascinating - and not just because one of my great uncles is in there!

( Read more... )

But as well as reading This Terrible Ordeal, I have been doing a task for Church for which I happily volunteered.

Historically we have kept a Cradle Roll of the babies christened in church. Some time ago we decided to frame all the old ones, which are historic documents, separately, rather than them all being piled on top of each other in one frame. And I offered to copy over some of the faded names on the first one. But there were big problems - which I wrote about, with a couple of examples, here.

We then had more problems - not only did we have a lot of names that couldn't be read, and names stuck on top of other names, but it was actually very difficult to source new Cradle Rolls now, too! Then our Baptism Record book had been taken to Ramsey by our 'interim minister' and he kept forgetting to give it back - and so on.

But this week I got the new rolls, and the baptism book, where two other members of the congregation had spent an afternoon marking all the 'missing' children. And I filled in the last empty spaces on that old roll, and began to write new ones for those whose names had been obliterated on it.

I think I now understand what had been going on - the children whose names had been stuck on top of other names, three and four deep in places, were actually all baptised between 1939 and 1952. I think the person responsible may have either just been saving money or, even more likely, couldn't actually get a new blank roll...

The baptism record is, however, a fascinating piece of social history in itself... ( Read more... )

All in all, I really have been steeped in social history over the past few days.

And I have promised D-d, who flies home for the weekend coming, that I will hang onto the Baptism Record until after she goes back as she, too, wants to spend time studying it.

Like so many others I have taken time to pause today, and remember those killed in all the conflicts of the last 100 years or so.

Both my family and S2C's were fortunate; his grandfathers both survived the 14-18 war - although one of his grandfathers fought at Gallipoli, and then lost a leg in the trenches in Europe, despite actually having enlisted in the navy, not the army.

My grandfathers also both survived that war; my maternal grandfather was called up whilst ill with Scarlet Fever, and had to go over to England despite this or be declared a deserter; he went, was so ill they thought he would die, and they discharged him as unfit within a couple of weeks. My paternal grandfather fought, as a bugler, in the Second Boer War but was in a reserved occupation in WW1 as a docker in Liverpool.

S2C's father is too young to have fought in the 39-45 war, and my father, and my uncle, both fought in it and survived, although my father was wounded and this contributed to his very early death at age 52.

However, we are still a fortunate family.

Last year, for the act of remembrance in church, I told the story of Walter. This year my sister read out the story of another young man whose name is on our church memorial. ( Read more... )

When I attended the family wedding last week I was talking to someone whose uncle married my great-aunt. I mentioned that I had a picture showing the great-aunt, and this gentleman asked if I could possibly send him a copy.

However, I could do better - I have a copy of their wedding picture and, having scoured the house looking for it, finally remembered where it was this evening, and scanned it and e-mailed it to him. (And how amazing would that idea have been to the people in this picture back in 1920 or so?)

I thought it worth posting here - the glamorous lady sitting to the left is the bride's sister, my great-aunt Emily (who sadly died when I was an infant), the rather handsome young man standing at the left is their young brother - John, about 20 years old here. I don't know who the other bridesmaid is, but the gentleman sitting on the right, with his waxed moustache and spats, is the bride's cousin Charles Augustus, brought up by her parents and so more like a brother. He was a fascinating person - I must gather his whole history together some day.

But in the meantime - Aunty Nellie and Uncle Bobbie's wedding picture for your edification...

It has been a hectic past few days. I am involved with the small Christian Bookshop on the island, as a member of the multi-church committee that supports it. It survives, from month to month, making just enough to pay for the one paid, part-time, member of staff; a small (very small) haven in the town centre. And this month it celebrated its 40th anniversary, when so many similar shops have closed in recent years. Of course it is also the 400th birthday of the King James translation of the Bible - although these days the shop sells more copies of more up to date translations.

Both seemed reason to celebrate - and so we had a party. A party to which everyone was invited. In fact we had an 'all-day coffee morning' on Saturday in The Promenade Methodist Church.

For my part this meant baking cookies and flapjack (British stuff, not American which is a form of pancake, I have discovered), donating some family Bibles to the display of KJVs (King James Versions), and being one of the 24 people who read from the Bible during the day.

Along the way I made some fascinating discoveries and links - and took a few pictures... oh, and ended up on local radio.

( cut for length )

Just a few pictures today - some of the farm that our Christmas goose comes from and a couple of attempts to show brambles, so that Julia and I can compare the versions found here and in Washington State.

There are definitely signs of spring around - I had thought to go out with the camera this afternoon - but it is grey and wet today, so I didn't bother!

( click for the pictures )

I mentioned yesterday that my first vehicles were motorbikes. Not all that odd for someone from the Isle of Man, really, and not for our family where my mother never learnt to drive a car and rode a motorbike well into her sixties.

I've been looking for photos and, sadly, I seem to have lost quite a lot of pictures. However I have found the pictures of two of my bikes, even if not of me on them!

They are not very good snaps, which have faded a bit over the years, and have produced only small scans, but I have put them under a cut anyway - ( click for the pics )

Tonight I have uploaded a few more of D-d's pictures of Florence onto Flickr to share. Again they reminded me of my own visit there so many years ago, although she also saw things that I didn't... including what is now my favourite ceiling of all time and the world's most distracting place to hold a conference...

( pictures under here )

Totally unrelated; today is my sister's 50th birthday. I can remember, as a small child, spending the summer with my grandparents and there being a phone call one Sunday morning from my Dad to say that I had a baby sister. I was sent to tell my grandfather, who was in his office 'doing the books', a walk of about half a mile - it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing for a five year old to do, here, 50 years ago.

We are going out for a big family lunch tomorrow - I do love a meal I don't have to cook!

I have been watching the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation on TV over the past few days.

The most famous aspect of this is, of course, the flotilla of small ships that set off to cross the channel with crews not only of naval personnel, but mainly of old men, young boys, middle-aged mothers, and so on.

As has been mentioned a number of times, the role of these little ships was not to go over, take on board 20 men and return to England - it was more dangerous than that; they were to ferry men from the beaches out to bigger vessels in deeper water, backwards and forwards for hours under enemy fire.

As an island nation reliant on the sea for almost all transport in the first half of the twentieth century, Manx passenger vessels, although not part of the flotilla of small ships, were a large part of that fleet of larger ships.

In fact it is estimated that 1 in 14 of the men who were brought back to Britain were carried on an Isle-of-man Steam Packet ship.

It is good to see this story then - the anchor of one of our ships lost at Dunkirk (she hit a mine) has been retrieved and will form a permanent memorial here to all those who took part.

At least 40 Manxmen were lost at Dunkirk - most were the crew of Mona's Queen, others were crew members of other Manx ships or soldiers. This meant that more than 1 in ever 1,000 of the island's population were killed over a three day period.

To put this in context; the equivalent would be if 310,000 American personnel were killed in Afghanistan over this weekend.

My uncle Eric was one of those soldiers who made it back (although not on a Manx boat!). I wrote about his experiences here - his is the bit under the cut, complete with a rather good photo of him at the time.

.........................................................

Changing the subject totally - tonight is Eurovision! I don't think it's going to be a vintage year - but with a couple off glasses of wine and some nibbles and it will be fun anyway. D-d is having a Eurovision party, I'm hoping maddeinin is going to be on line to snark along with me...

When I was in the churchyard at Patrick I noticed some military graves. The military graves in the churchyards at Andreas and Jurby are those of airmen as there were WW2 airports in both villages (must go to Jurby and take some pictures sometime), and I thought these might be those of airmen whose plane had crashed on the west of the island, or possibly seamen; except that there were more than might be expected for either scenario.

When I went and looked more closely there was something very, very odd about them - the ages of those buried under the headstones and the lay out.

( cut for pictures, and a little WW1 history - oh, and a link to a music-hall star! )

So a curiosity about the headstones led me into a couple of bits of Manx history that I was aware of, but had never really thought about.

ETA - I nearly forgot - whilst I was reading old documents about Knockaloe I discovered that Archibald Knox (famous designer for Liberty of London of in the Art Nouveau style and local Manxman) was the camp censor! How weird is that?