Now that I've caught up with Iplayer, and Charmed and, oh everything else time wasting I could remember, I've decided to have another look at the family tree my granddad sent me. I must admit, I was quite overwhelmed at first with the sheer number of people that he and and my Granny Ann have put on there. Going back through my mams paternal ancesters, I soon found lots of cases of what I can only assume are family marrying family, or marrying out of the family and their children marrying back in^^
All I can say is it doesn't seem to have done any damage. Plenty of Age-at-deaths of 85+, but it really brought home the differences in culture, at least my culture and that of my parents and grandparents, I guess that is just about the age of mass transport, when it was available and really for the first time, in the case of my grands and great-grands, widely available as well. With all the world to see, why look in your own backyard?
So really, my mother's side of the tree is (heavily) populated, so I decided to turn to my fathers side. Now I never knew my granddad, he died at the start of the 80s and I was born at the end. I do know he had tightly curled red hair as a boy though, and that it lost only a little of the curl when he grew up - much like my father, in fact. And I know that he was tall. 6 foot 6. With my nana being at the (very) short end of 5 foot, I've had to smile at the pictures of them both. I can't help but wonder what he was like, this tall military man. I wish I'd known him.
I guess in a way doing this, and listening to the stories of my granddad, and finding his family, is a way of getting to know him, and it gets me talking to my nana about her parents as well. That's nice. And well worth it just for that.
