Three Minute Boy » history

Boo

Mark — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:03:04 +0000

Me Audioboo-ing about the ‘boadies’. Do I sound like Taggart?

Listen!

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Who do you think you are?

Mark — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:17:14 +0000

I’ve been inspired for the last few days, although, my wife has been more inspired than me.

Last week we watched all of the ‘My Family at War’ series on the BBC where celebrities traced their ancestors involvement in the First World War – mostly grandparents and great grandparents. After watching the programmes, we started talking about my Great Grandad, who apparently fought in the First World War at the battle of the Somme. By all accounts, he was gassed and then taken prisoner.

For a lot of people, their great grandfather is merely a historical figure who they have never met. In my case, he died when I was 20, so I had a long enough time to get to know him, so he’s not just some old dated photograph in a box.

Long life runs in my family it seems, there is a photo taken of me when I was born, with me, my Mum, my Grandad, my Great Grandmother and my Great Great Grandmother (who was around 99 at that stage). Five generations. Doing the sums now, my Grandad was 53 years old in the photo and still had his Grandmother alive. Astonishing.

Anyway, the BBC site showed us how to search for service records and off we went. Unfortunately there were an unbelieveable number of John Renwick’s in that part of the world at that time. In an attempt to narrow it down, we decided to search the Scottish archives for old birth certificates, death certificates and census entries in an attempt to ascertain if he had any middle names etc.

What we uncovered was mesmerising. It’s hard to believe you can go online and view the actual original documents. We ended up tracing the family back 6 generations. We’ve been onto Ancestry.co.uk and started to build an interactive family tree.

Since then, we’ve traced back other branches of my family, particularly on my mothers side. Great fun and at times surprising. The aim is to create a family tree for both sides of our family with Sam as the end point. It won’t be lack of enthusiasm which stops us. If anything, lack of records might be our main barrier.

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Gone to the dogs/City walls

Mark — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:34:51 +0000

Monday again. How glum. This weekend was spent amongst other things at the greyhound racing. I felt like Robbie Box from big deal. I just needed the camel hair jacket and I was there. We all clubbed in to put Â£75 on a tip we had for the last race. Disaster. It got clipped by one of the other dogs on the first bend and finished last. Should have seen it coming really.

I’m off to York tomorrow to speak at a conference. I’m more than slightly gutted that the venue is outside of the actual city. Due to train times, conference length and other such inconveniences, I am unlikely to have time to explore the beautiful city centre. York is one of my favourite cities in the world. Forget New York, the old one is a hundred times better. Whilst working out my routes to the venue, I had the opportunity to explore the city using Windows Live ‘birds eye’ view. As close as I’m going to get to seeing the tourist sights for the immediate future.

I may manage to convince the taxi driver to go via Micklegate Bar (thats a medieval gate, not a pub) though. Which would be nice.

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