Newsletter - 15th December 2018
In defence of
Essex Record Office
Free Christmas gifts for your DNA cousins EXCLUSIVE
Take part in the LostCousins
project
2 million new Portsmouth records online
Save up to 50% on WDYTYA?
magazine EXCLUSIVE
When maternity is in doubt: follow-up
Radio Times covers from
the 1940s go online
The 1939 Register explained - by Arthur Askey
1898 letter to Santa discovered
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous newsletter (dated 5th December)
click here;
to find earlier articles use the customised Google search between this
paragraph and the next (it searches ALL of the newsletters since February 2009,
so you don't need to keep copies):
To go to the main LostCousins
website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. Everyone who received an
email about this newsletter is already a member, but new members are always
welcome - it's FREE to join, and you'll get an email to alert you whenever
there's a new edition of this newsletter available.
In defence of
Essex Record Office
It was perhaps a bit unfair
to disclose in the leading article in the last issue that Essex Record Office was
collecting about £80,000 annually from subscribers to Essex Ancestors, which
makes available online high-quality, but unindexed, images of parish registers.
However, I felt it was important to set out the backdrop against which Suffolk
will shortly be making their decision.
After the article appeared I
received an email from Guy Etchells who, as many of
you will know, led the successful campaign for the early release of the 1911
England & Wales census, and was - like me - involved in the campaign to get
the 1939 Register released. Here's what Guy had to say:
In
your latest newsletter you address provision of digital access by Essex Record
Office where you complain about the cost of this service. You try to justify
your comments by comparing it to large commercial providers but that is a false
comparison.
They
are providing a service and should be remunerated for the service they provide.
If
subscribers to the commercial sites cannot access the records they want then
that site is of no use to them no matter how many counties they cover in that
case the subscribers subscribe to other commercial sites when and if they can
afford to do so, (or they ask others for look-ups even if that is against the
sites terms & conditions) that is life.
I
- and I write as someone who has been very critical of archives and record
offices up and down the country for over 40 years - congratulate Essex Record
Office for providing the online access and I would recommend that every Record
Office in the country follow suit.
This
is not a tax on parish registers your cousins can visit the record office and
access the records there. This is an additional service which is and should be
paid for by the users of the service.
The
Essex Record Office are providing a service and should be remunerated for the
service they provide. There is nothing wrong with not having the register
indexed in fact in many cases it is better that indexes are not used as family
members can be missed when indexes are religiously followed.
Cheers
Guy
I am still convinced that
family historians are better served when parish registers are made available through
one or other of the major websites, since this ensures that the records are indexed.
But I felt it was important that the opposing view should be heard.
As it happens, I did
congratulate Essex Record Office through this newsletter when their registers
began to appear online - you can see what I wrote in June 2009 if you follow
this link.
But it’s important to put my comments then into context - access to the Essex
registers was completely free in 2009, and it was by no means clear that they would
remain unindexed for ever.
Furthermore, at that time
there was no expectation that Ancestry and Findmypast
would digitise and index the parish registers of so many counties. Indeed there
were no parish registers at all at Findmypast, and
the only registers at Ancestry were in the London Metropolitan Archives collection
- which had been launched just a few months previously (see my article
from March 2009 anticipating their release).
Almost a decade later, family
historians have come to expect more - indeed, I sometimes feel that many don't
appreciate just how much easier it is to research these nowadays.
By the standards of LostCousins members, some of whom have been researching for
40, 50, or even 60 years, I was a late starter when I began my research in 2002,
but I can remember spending days on end at the Family Records Centre looking up
index entries for births, marriages, and deaths in those enormous volumes - or
scrolling through microfilm in the hope (not expectation) of finding one of my
relatives on the census.
In those days there were many
researchers who didn't believe that they needed computers, and even some of
those who did weren't connected to the Internet. Nobody would embark on their
research today unless they had an Internet connection - it just wouldn't make
sense - but there are still some old-timers who eschew newer methods.
When Karl Marx wrote that history
repeats itself, "first as tragedy, then as farce" he was referring to
Napoleon Bonaparte and his nephew Louis Napoleon, who became Napoleon III.
But when I wrote at the end of
the preceding article about the tragic failure of so many family historians to
recognise the potential of computers and the Internet, I suddenly realised that
history is indeed repeating itself - and arguably there is something farcical
about it.
Many of you would be surprised
at how many emails I still get from readers who are not convinced that DNA tests
can help. On the one hand they point to people who have learned things that
shocked them, and on the other they direct me to articles which question whether
the tests work at all. Either they work or they don’t - you can’t have it both
ways!
The reality is that good news
doesn’t sell as many newspapers as bad news. So "Family historian knocks
down 15 year-old brick wall thanks to DNA" isn’t going to be nearly as
appealing to readers as "DNA disaster - Donna discovers Dad was donor".
I made the last one up, by the way.
The point I'm trying to make is
that ignoring the potential of DNA testing to confirm and complement more conventional
research methods is not so very different from the attitude of the Luddites who
refused to accept the help of computers and the Internet. In fact it’s worse,
because whereas paper records are carefully preserved and protected once they
are archived, DNA records are being lost every day without anyone realising.
I'm not taking about DNA results being lost, I'm talking about
the DNA record that vanishes for ever when someone dies. Other than identical
twins, no two people have precisely the same DNA - siblings each inherit half
of their parents' DNA, but it isn't the same half. And no matter how many
children you have, there will be some of your DNA that isn’t inherited by any
of them.
Those researchers who spurn
DNA, or sit on the fence, are not only missing an opportunity but guilty of
allowing valuable information to be destroyed. It's not a victimless crime
either, because each of us shares our ancestors with countless thousands of
living cousins - and the evidence that we turn our back on could be key to
someone else's investigation.
Even those family historians
who have embraced DNA often test the wrong people. In my family there's nobody
from the previous generation still alive but some of you are in a more
fortunate position. Yes, if you test yourself instead of asking your parents (or
their siblings) to test you'll save money, but the price is a high one - you'll
lose half of the information in your parents' DNA
You may not believe me or the
experts when we tell you how useful DNA testing can be, but if you’re right and
I'm wrong, all you will have lost is a few quid. On the other hand, if you’re wrong
and I'm right you’re losing something infinitely more valuable - the genetic information
inherited from your ancestors. Are you really prepared to take that risk?
Free Christmas gifts
for your DNA cousins EXCLUSIVE
If you've taken an autosomal
DNA test you'll know that while DNA produces lots of matches with genetic
cousins it only tells half the story - the rest has to come from records-based
research, and from finding cousins in more conventional ways.
Christmas is a time for giving,
so from now until New Year's Day I'm offering members the chance to give
their DNA cousins a free LostCousins subscription
that runs until 1st May 2019 (the 15th Birthday of LostCousins).
LostCousins can help your cousins in at least three ways:
- Firstly, the DNA
Masterclass is an essential guide for anyone who tested their DNA at
Ancestry - it literally can make the difference between success and
failure.
- Secondly, the news, hints and tips in this newsletter can highlight
records and techniques that they might otherwise have missed.
- Last, but certainly not least, LostCousins
provides the opportunity to find documented cousins who are experienced
researchers.
All you need to do is pass
on to your DNA cousins the special offer code on your My Summary page - all they need to do is enter it in the
offer codes box (at the bottom of the registration page) when they join the LostCousins site. There are no catches - they won’t be
asked to provide their bank or card details, nor will they need to cancel at
the end of the period (they'll automatically convert to free basic membership).
Here's how to find the offer
code (it begins with the letters DNA):
If your code isn't shown on
your My Summary page it's because you
haven’t told me yet that you've taken a DNA test. But please don’t send
me an email - instead update your My Details
page (it's the last item on the page) and try again.
Tip: you don’t need to have figured out how you're
related to your genetic cousins for them to benefit from this offer. But there's
probably not much point in inviting them to join if they don’t have ancestors
from one of more of the countries listed above.
Take part
in the LostCousins project
Just over 15 years ago I had
a dream - to connect family historians who share the same ancestors wherever
they are in the world.
I envisaged a system that
would provide privacy and would be automatic - yet at the same time would be
100% accurate. And to this day the LostCousins site
is the only one that can do this. Other
sites with their online trees and hints do their best, but they don't offer the
privacy or the accuracy that LostCousins members have
come to expect.
If you received an email from me telling you about
this newsletter you’re already a LostCousins member,
and can take part in my project - you don't need any subscriptions because the key censuses are all free online.
Start entering your relatives
from 1881 today - the Getting Started
guide on the Help & Advice page
will show you how to enter your first household, and once you've discovered how
quick and easy it is to find your 'lost cousins' you won't want to stop!
Tip: if you've forgotten how to log-in just click this
link and
enter your email address (as shown in the email that told you about this newsletter).
The 15% discount offer for first-time
subscribers continues (see last issue for full
details); but bearing in mind that LostCousins
members are more experienced than most, I'm trying to arrange an offer for
lapsed subscribers - though it might not be quite as generous.
2 million
new Portsmouth records online
This week Findmypast
added 2.4 million new records in partnership with the Portsmouth History Centre
- you can find out all about them here.
Save up to 50%
on WDYTYA? magazine EXCLUSIVE
I subscribed to Who Do You Think You Are? magazine from
the very first issue, and I've read every single edition since then.
Buying a subscription is always
cheaper than buying individual copies at the newsagents, but I've negotiated an
even better offer for readers of this newsletter: if you’re in the UK you can
save 50% on the print edition when you follow this link and pay by direct debit - it's just
£15.75 for 6 issues!
I'm hoping that I'll have an
offer for members outside the UK in my next newsletter - it won't be quite as
generous because postage is a much higher proportion of the cost, but it should
still be tempting.
The first story in this issue
reminds us that not all birth parents want to be found - for some it's a part
of their life that they have left behind:
"In
1975 we adopted a baby girl - a long struggle in those days because my husband
was 39 and considered too old by most agencies. She came with a bottle of
medicine for colic which had her birth name on the label, and this made tracing
her birth mother much easier when the time came.
"Although
we had always been honest and spoken of her origins - and she was always
adamant that we were her parents, nobody else - she did have a feeling of
rejection which affected her ability to form and maintain relationships with
her peers.
"When
she was 17 she started asking about tracing her birth family, in particular two
half-brothers she was keen to meet. I managed to trace a current address for
the mother, and wrote to her explaining that D was keen to make contact with
her and the reasons - to which I received a very pleasant reply which said that,
while she was happy to answer any questions, she did not at that time feel
ready to meet or have direct contact. She added that when her sons were
old enough she would explain about their older sister.
"No
further contact was made or received so a couple of years later we contacted
the agency and it was arranged for D & myself to travel to their headquarters,
speak to a counsellor, and see the adoption file, which we did - and we were
provided with a copy of all the documents in the file.
"After
another couple of years D was becoming more obsessed about meeting her brothers,
and even threatened to visit their home and knock on the door or lie in wait
for them and then approach them. In view of this, I wrote again to the birth
mother to ask if she was now ready for direct contact, but as she had left her
parents' home by then and was not on an electoral roll, I sent it with a
covering letter to her mother.
"The
response was totally unexpected - the mother wrote telling me she had no
interest in meeting her granddaughter and the birth mother wrote that her
parents had had a tremendous shock, that I was never to contact them again and
she herself did not want further contact. I did reply apologising but asked if
she could at least help me to contact the birth father whom I knew had moved to
London and had a very common name - but was informed that she knew nothing.
"I
did try unsuccessfully to find the father and D's emigration to NZ put the
matter in abeyance - until early last year when she took an Ancestry DNA test
and asked me to try again to find her birth father and brothers.
"To
cut this saga short, I was fortunate enough to find a public tree which I felt
sure belonged to a sibling of the father and contacted the tree owner, who
turned out to be the brother-in-law. He was very suspicious at first - because
his wife knew nothing of D's existence - but then they contacted the father,
who told them that I was correct and they could pass on his contact details,
which they did. After some exchange of emails he was happy to have direct
contact so they are now in regular contact and plan to meet next summer when D
and family holiday in Europe.
"I
managed to find the brothers through Facebook and D is now in regular contact
with the older one, but the younger brother is not interested. When the brother
first asked his mother about D's claims she refused to discuss the matter and
it caused a rift between them for some while.
"All
in all, very mixed results but the father is delighted - he married a divorcee and
has a stepson, but never fathered another child of his own. Whilst he took no
part in any of the adoption proceedings that was not because he was an
irresponsible teenager, it was because he was never kept informed - in fact his
ex-girlfriend deliberately refused to have any contact with him or let him know
what was happening. The brother is also really pleased about finding a sister.
The main thing is that D has finally come to terms with her adoption and knows
that she was not rejected by all involved which has meant she can now get on
with her life."
The second story ends with a
useful tip that might help others in the same position:
"I
read the recent adoption articles with some interest on two fronts: 'knowing'
and 'finding'.
"Starting
with 'knowing', this is something that always rests at the back of your mind. I
was born in 1948 and adopted at 5 months, then raised by very kind and caring
adopted parents - but the idea that you might have just walked past a brother
or sister in the street is never far from your thoughts.
"But
it wasn't until I turned 40, with a son of my own that the urge to 'find' my
birth family became overpowering. I applied for my original birth
certificate and received it in the post on 21st April 1990 - which, by tragic
coincidence. was the very day my birth mother collapsed and died.
"In
consequence the need to 'find' my birth family was put back on hold for some
years, until the age of 60+ and then with the aid of the Internet, searching became
easier, so now I have found siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. But 'finding'
my birth father was never going to be easy, because his name wasn't on the
birth certificate and my birth mother had died.
"This
is when I had a bit of luck with - it's something that I haven't come across
before which might be of help to other readers hoping to 'find' their birth families. I
was advised to apply to Social Services for access to my adoption file, which contained
letters from/to the Local Authorities, Juvenile Court, birth mother and
adopting parents and turned out to be highly interesting in many ways.
"A
form of questionnaire had been completed by my birth mother and this revealed
not only my father's name, but also the fact he was in the British Army. Unfortunately
he too died before I could contact him, however I did manage to 'find' and meet
his younger sister and a cousin. I trust my experience might help someone else
with breaking down the 'brick wall' of a blank space in the column headed
father on a birth certificate."
When
maternity is in doubt: follow-up
On re-reading the article
in the last issue I realised I hadn't made it clear that in my view the birth
registration was intended to deceive, and that Harriet Lydia Holmes was not the
daughter of my ancestors John Holmes and Hannah Read, but the illegitimate
child of their second-eldest daughter Harriet, who was coming up to 19 years
old at the time the baby was born.
Of course, it’s not always
possible to find conclusive evidence for one point of view or the other,
especially when the evidence that exists is confusing or contradictory. We don’t
really know what happened to young Harriet Lydia between her birth in July 1851
and her appearance as Harriet Clark, aged 9, on the 1861 Census. Nor can we be
certain why she is shown as single in the 1871 Census, even though she married
John Charles Richards in November 1869.
What is certain, however, is
that her marriage to Richards ended in divorce in 1877 - quite surprising in
one sense, considering that no more than few hundred couples divorced annually in
1870s England. But reading the case papers, which are online at Ancestry it is
clear that the marriage was very short-lived, the couple having parted in March
1870. The documentation also reveals that there was a child of the marriage,
who had lived for just 9 days - so perhaps it was a 'shotgun wedding'.
The grounds for the divorce
was Harriett Lydia's adultery with George Palmer, which allegedly began in March
1870, but even though the divorce from Richards became absolute in January 1877
it was not until April 1880 that Harriett eventually married George.
Confusingly she gave her father's name as Philip Holmes, a dealer - but after
George Palmer died she married for a third time, to John Sipple,
and on this occasion she gave her father's name as John Holmes, so there's no
doubt that it's the same Harriett.
None of that helps to build
the case that that Harriet was the grand-daughter of John & Hannah, rather
than their daughter - as the birth registration attests. And whilst Harriett
Lydia married three times the only child she bore died in infancy, so there is
no possibility of using DNA to determine her parentage.
But there is telling evidence
in the 1891 Census, when Harriett - by then a widow - is living with Mary Ann
Savage (née Holmes), also a widow.
© Crown Copyright
Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England and used
by permission of Findmypast
You can see that Harriett L
Palmer is shown as the niece of Mary Ann, and not as her sister. For me this is
convincing evidence that Harriet(t) Lydia was indeed the daughter of Harriet
Holmes, Mary Ann's younger sister.
You'll often see mention of
the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) - it's effectively a checklist of the
processes we should go through before accepting something as fact, and you can
read an excellent explanation of the five elements in this article by Else Churchill of the Society of
Genealogists.
My view of the GPS is that
it's largely designed to protect professional genealogists who might be sued by
their clients if it transpires that some key part of the research they've
carried out is wrong. But whereas a professional genealogist needs to complete
projects in order to submit invoices, we amateurs have the luxury of being able
to leave things 'in the balance' until there is absolute proof that we're
correct.
Given the number of errors,
deliberate or otherwise, that have been found in birth, marriage, and death register
entries it's rarely possible to be 100% certain if all we have to go on are
paper records. We can point to a series of census or other entries that support
our hypothesis, but if someone didn't know when or where they were born, or who
their father really was, the written evidence could be consistently wrong.
It can be very reassuring when
we encounter other researchers who have come to the same conclusion as we have,
but it doesn't mean that we're right - if everyone was relying on the same
flawed evidence it's likely they'll come to the same conclusion. I can remember
a situation in which a dozen of my cousins had all come to the same conclusion
about the parentage of their ancestor, but they all had the
same wrong answer - because they hadn’t seen the evidence that I had gathered
while researching another branch of the family.
Someone said to me recently
that they like to find three pieces of independent evidence that confirm a
birth or marriage - the problem is, how independent can records really be given
considering that all of the informants are likely to be close relatives?
Perhaps it’s only with the
widespread adoption of DNA testing that we now have a body of independent
evidence to confirm or contradict our assumptions?
All of the offers in the last
newsletter are continuing, but there's an extra bonus from Family Tree DNA -
they're halving their shipping charge for overseas customers this weekend,
which means their 37-marker Y-DNA test is well worth considering if you have a
male 'brick wall' ancestor (remember, the person who tests needs to be a male
cousin with the right surname).
Please remember that you'll
only be supporting LostCousins when you click one of
my links to make your purchase.
Ancestry.co.uk
- £63 plus shipping until 11.59pm GMT on 25th December
Ancestry.com.au
- $89 plus shipping until 11.59pm AEST on 25th December
Ancestry.com - $59
plus taxes & shipping until 24th December
Ancestry.ca - $89 plus
shipping until 11.59pm EST on 25th December
Family
Tree DNA - $99 plus shipping for Y-DNA, $49 for Family Finder until 31st
December
Findmypast are also discounting their DNA tests, though not by
as much as on Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Their tests - provided by Living DNA -
offer the most detailed ethnicity estimates for those of us with mostly English
heritage. See this article
for more details.
If you decide to order the Findmypast test please use the links below - the discounts
last until midnight (London time) on 17th December; prices are in local
currency:
UK
- REDUCED FROM £79 to £69
Ireland
- REDUCED FROM €89 to €79
Australia
- REDUCED FROM $129 to $119
Canada
- REDUCED FROM $99 to $89
USA
- REDUCED FROM $89 to $79
Radio Times covers from the 1940s go online
When I was a boy the Radio Times was so important in our
household that it had a dedicated leather cover, with the title gold-blocked on
the front. Of course, in those days it only listed BBC broadcasts - if you
wanted to know what was on the commercial channel you had to buy the TV Times (which we seldom did) or rely
on the daily paper.
Radio Times
covers from the 1940s have recently gone online - see this BBC News article. But much more
exciting for me is the prospect of listening to (or watching) historic broadcasts, a new
feature that has been added to the BBC
Genome website, which has programme information from the Radio Times from 1923-2009.
About 30% of the programmes listed
are in the BBC Archive, and there is an ongoing project to link the programme
listings to the relevant recording (but it's a slow process - only 18,000
programmes have been linked so far). For example, if you follow this link you can
hear a September 1939 wireless broadcast from Waterloo Station describing the
scene as hundreds of evacuees board a train departing for an unnamed destination
- it's a reminder for those of us who can't find our parents in the 1939
Register that evacuation to the country was already well advanced by
Registration Day.
There's a lot of wartime
material - this page
in the archive has links to harrowing first-hand accounts of the horrors of Belsen and other concentration camps. The Battle of Britain
is recalled in a number of programmes, including this 1941 radio dramatisation and this 1965 television documentary
featuring Douglas Bader, the leg-less air ace whose story was told in the book
(and later, film) Reach for the Sky.
Note: Paul Brickhill's biography of Bader was the
first of many war books - all Book Club editions - that I read as a child in
the 1950s. One of the many interesting things that my wife told me after we got
together was that she had met Douglas Bader some years before, and I later
discovered that the mother of my half 4th cousin used to clean for him when he
lived in Rickmansworth in the early 1950s - what an amazing coincidence!
With the 50th anniversary of
the first moon landing coming up in 2019 you might also be interested in this
2009 documentary in
which Buzz Aldrin "relives the dangerous and dramatic moments of the final
descent to the lunar surface".
Note: I once had the opportunity to talk to Buzz
Aldrin - but didn't. It's one of the few things in my life that I truly regret!
The 1939
Register explained - by Arthur Askey
I'm not old enough to
remember Band Waggon, a radio
programme that ran on the BBC, but the programme broadcast on 30th September
1939 - the day after National Registration Day, started with a sketch with
Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch about the completion of the household schedule
- you can see the Radio Times entry here.
The recording isn't available
at the BBC Archive website, but LostCousins member
Francis found it here
(it’s also on YouTube).
I suspect that whilst the sketch is played for laughs there was a serious
intent.
I discovered this short film promoting the 1951
UK Census at YouTube - it’s amazing what you can find if you look (a bit like family
history!).
1898 letter to
Santa discovered
A 120 year-old letter to
Santa Claus has turned up inside a book donated to a charity shop - you can see
it in this BBC News article. The person
who discovered the letter tried to find out more about the letter writer, but
without success - however Gill, the LostCousins
member who drew my attention to the article soon found little Marjorie in the
1901 Census:
© Crown Copyright
Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England and used
by permission of Findmypast
Are you wondering what
happened to Marjorie? Searching at Findmypast I've
found her marriage, the birth of her two children, and her death in 1965. It's
possible one of her children is still living, but they would be well into their
90s.
Note: did you see this article
about a young boy who sent a letter addressed "Mr Postman can you take
this to Heaven for my dad's Birthday" - it's one of those rare stories
that's simultaneously sad and uplifting.
Truth can certainly be
stranger than fiction - the web of intrigue that surrounded Alexander Wilson, author
of mystery novels and sometime MI6 operative enmeshed four women, all of whom
thought they were married to him.
If you haven’t already
watched the recent dramatisation there's as chance to
see it on BBC iPlayer (provided you live in the UK), but you've only got 26
days.
I'm not going to spoil it for
those who haven't seen it, but it's one of those stories that will resonate
with many family historians - many of us have someone in our tree who ended up
with two families, usually completely unknown to each other. Indeed, some of us
are still discovering what our ancestors got up to - thanks to DNA!
By a strange coincidence
there's a link, albeit a tenuous one, between Alexander Wilson and LostCousins - if you've read the article on the BBC website by
his grandson Sam Wilson, you'll know that he was mentioned in a 1943 letter,
now declassified, from the head of MI6, known as 'C'. Indeed, it may well have
been 'C' who took the decision to fire Wilson.
From 1939 to 1952 MI6 was
headed by Major General Sir Stewart Menzies, whose widow lived for many years
in the house where LostCousins was founded (and is
still based). Whether 'C' ever visited isn't known - he and his 3rd wife had a
strange relationship, living on opposite sides of London and meeting up once a
week in an hotel in the capital. Almost as strange as Alexander Wilson!
Did you see the article
about the man who collected rubber bands supposedly dropped by the postman? He's
described as an 'eco warrior', but all he did was turn them into a useless ball
of rubber - whereas I reuse every one of the rubber bands around our post. I
find them very handy, using them around the house and also when I'm travelling
- and I suspect I'm not the only one.
Do you want to pay for one of
your overseas cousins to take an Ancestry DNA test? You'll probably run into a
problem - for regulatory and other reasons Ancestry don’t ship to different
countries. The simplest solution is to send your cousin the money (eg using PayPal) so that they can order the test
themselves, but another option is to 'swap' with another researcher who has the
opposite problem to you.
For example, supposing you’re
in the UK and want to pay for a cousin in Australia to test - if you can find
someone in Australia who wants a cousin in the UK to test you can each help the
other out, with no money changing hands. It's rather like the plot of the
Hitchcock movie Strangers on a Train - where the leading
characters swap murders - but somewhat more civilised!
But if you’re outside the UK
and can't find someone here to swap with, maybe I can help?
This is where any
major updates and corrections will be highlighted - if you think you've spotted
an error first reload the newsletter (press Ctrl-F5) then check again before writing to me, in case someone else has
beaten you to it......
That's all for
now - but I'll be back in touch before Christmas - and hopefully by then my
teeth will have stopped chattering! We've been without central heating since
Monday as we're having a new boiler fitted (the old one dates from the 1970s), and are taking the opportunity to
upgrade some of the radiators, fit the remainder with thermostatic valves, and
fix some other issues. Not ideal with the temperature outside hovering around
zero, and the temperature inside not much higher, despite keeping our log-burner
going - but it should pay off in terms of reduced heating bills for years to
come.
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2018
Peter Calver
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