If you asked Robbie he would tell you that I am pretty good at spotting clues and gathering evidence, as he has found to his cost in the past - I don't miss much! Unfortunately the detective work that I am engaged in at the moment is even more difficult than keeping tabs on Robbie, because the clues are old and there is no one left who can tell me if my conclusions are correct. It is like trying to complete a jigsaw when most of the pieces are missing. That is the 'joy' of family history research, reaching out to grasp detail that you know is there but it is tantalisingly out of reach.
Over the last few days I have been making renewed efforts to identify the people in my grandmothers photo album. There are lots of photos of my dad, poor chap, I thought I'd had some dodgy outfits in my time but you should see what my grandma dressed him in! I also recognise my grandfather, my grandma and some of her siblings but most of the other people are strangers to me. I don't know if I should be grateful to my grandma for preserving the photos or infuriated that she didn't label any of them. Even the few that have writing on the back have proved challenging. I was overjoyed when I eased a photo of a family group out of the album and found that it had writing on the back, but my pleasure was short lived. The writing wished my grandmother a happy Christmas wit love from "us all". There should be a law against such things, if I had my way people would be compelled to write first names and surnames on the back of each photo!
My advice to others is not to jump to conclusions and to ask lots of questions, however foolish they sound, because that will give you more chance of getting to the truth. Thanks to the good people on the Roots Chat forum I now know more about my great uncle Frank Buswell. He died in World War 1 and his obituary described him as 'Driver Frank Buswell of the Royal Field Artillary'. To me a driver is a person who sits in a vehicle behind a steering wheel so I wondered why his uniform included spurs and a riding crop. I assumed that it must be some sort of tradition, but today I plucked up the courage to ask why. One of the Roots Chat members patiently explained that As a driver he would have rode/Controlled teams of horses that pulled the guns and equipment of the Royal Field Artillery so he would have worn spurs etc. Another mystery solved and in the process I have gained a more accurate picture of his military service.
When it comes to family history, finding answers is only part of the problem, the most difficult thing is finding the questions. There are things we do not know we don't know!
On the whole I prefer the radio to the television - the pictures are so much better on the radio! However there are one or two detective series that I enjoy on television, I get frustrated when they are not true to the books, but I can suspend my disbelief. They took horrible liberties with Morse, the books are much better but it was worth watching just to look at John Thaw. Frost is another favourite, again the books are better and make more sense as they are set in a different era, but David Jason has made Frost believable.
Last night I was happily sitting in the lounge enjoying an episode of Frost while I got on with some household admin - I always do something else while watching television because I find it hard to sit still. Robbie (as always) was finding it hard to be quiet, he had already been 'shown the yellow card' but once again he became animated and extremely vocal. The cause of his excitement was (unsurprisingly) a train. Frost was apparently seeing someone off from Manchester, but according to Robbie he was actually waving to a train travelling on the east coast mainline, He recognised the station and anyway he was absolutely certain that that particular coaching stock in view had never worked on the west coast service. I will spare you the details, but you get the idea.
I was then treated to a monologue about the various stations on the west coast line and all the different rolling stock used. He then went on to provide similar information for the east coast, then, just for good measure, he ran through every his encyclopaedic knowledge of other service in UK! By this time I wasn't really listening, I was fantasising about the best method of causing his voice to raise by several octaves. I didn't actually 'do the deed' but I had great fun thinking about it!
As for Frost, well he had almost solved the case before I was able to concentrate on the television again. Never mind, I had seen it before anyway!
