First of my weekly posts

 And a happy new year to you.

I have to admit that it has been a bit of a relief not to have the compulsion to write a post for the blog every single day.

It was a bit odd just going back to work for Tuesday, having Wednesday off and then going back in for two days. Had me thinking Thursday was  Monday.

So what have we been doing this week?

Well work obviously, and despite the fact that is has been a bit chilly there is still no sign of any snow here at Crystal Palace.

Yesterday, Saturday we donned our wet weather gear, hopped on a bus and went to help a friend load up their van because they are moving house. Seeing The Man stowing things in the van took me right back to when him and me were market traders back home in New Zealand. We had a high top Nissan Safari and it would be crammed to the roof with our wares,  sales tables and couple of gazebos. The Man would load up the truck on a Friday night in anticipation of an early start to drive from Fielding where we were living at the time to Wanganui.

 http://therivertraders.co.nz/

We had lots of fun and made a little ready cash into the bargain. One we were set up I’d leave The Man in charge and go have e a bit of a wander around the other stalls, sometimes even buying things to resell. We stocked all sorts of ‘junk’ and shells, hundred and hundreds of shells. It was good time and we often muse about doing it again when we get back home.

This morning I got up just in time to see a beautiful sunrise, a good opportunity to try out the new camera.

Here comes the sun

What do you think of the pic

I’ve spent the afternoon working on the family story concentrating on my paternal grandparents. Trouble is it is so easy for me to get side tracked by an interesting snippet or fact and then go off on a tangent researching and spending even more time on obscure and not directly related facts.

Penultimate

The Man and I arrived back in our little flat in Crystal Palace after a lovely week away.
It didn't take long to get thing stowed away.
Come wednesdy I've blogged every day for two years.
I wont say that it hasn't been a huge commitment because it has.
Tomorrow will be my last post of the year and the last of my daily musings.
I will continue to blog, but once a week rather than once a day.

Just chilling..

Today The Man and I got to spend the day with one of our sons. Nothing on in that you might think.
But today is his birthday. Haven't done that for a long time, even back in New Zealand .
What a lovely lazy day we've had. The Man and I, The Son and his Lovely Lady.just chilling.

With family now...

Strong winds made for slow speeds and road works slowed us down even further. Adding an extra two hours plus to our trip.
Suffice it to say that we are now comfortably seated in Peterborough, well fed and watered by family.
and that is all i have to say about that

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Did you hear that big sigh of relief?

…No?

And why?

Once I finished work today that was it for another, ooo let me see, counting on my fingers. Nine days.

It was very very busy day and to get things finalised I wound up staying on an extra hour, but as my mate Forrest Gump likes to say That’s all I have to say about that.

On the way home we got our first glimpse of winter. We got off the train at Annerly to discover a lot of hail in the ground and lots of pretty cold rain falling.

The Man had discovered that at Annerly train station the bus stop is directly across the road from the glass fronted waiting room. We can wait inside for the bus up to Crystal palace rather than having to wait out in the chilly rain at the bus stop.

Oddly enough the hail was confined to the area immediately around the station, not a sign of it at Crystal palace.

Last night at the movies

So as I wrote yesterday we went off to the flicks last night.
Great movie.
Saving Mr Banks starring two of my most favourite actors. Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson.

When Walt Disney's daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers' "Mary Poppins," he made them a promise that he didn't realize would take 20 years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. It is only when Walt reaches into his own childhood that he discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing films in cinematic history.

And today's kids though that wearing your trousers down around you knees was a modern fashion statement

A flash of red tartan ...

When we were at the mall in Bromley yesterday off in the distance  I could hear carols being sung.
Nothing unusual in that is there after all it is that time of the year.
The singing got louder and louder and as we rounded one of the corners there in front of us was a group of carollers raising money for Samaritans.
Decking the halls of the mall with their voices, we heard the Bells of Christmas jingling all the way in their songs.
Listening to live performances like that always chokes me up. So does live bagpipe music.
Strange that 'cos the recorded stuff doesn't have the same effect.
Talking...well actually writing about the men in kilts reminds me of something I saw on saturday.
And doesn't a bloke in a kilt look amazing. I've tried for years to get The Man to agree to wearing one.
 And will he?
Nope, despite the fact that I think that a man in a kilt looks very sexy.
anyway, there I was at the  station when this chappie in a lovely red tartan kilt walked past, handsomely kitted out in matching hose and spats, carrying a chanter and what must have been bag pipes in a bag.
I resisted the temptaion to engage him in conversation.
He got off the train ahead of me and was out of the station in a swagger of  red tartan. 
i overheard a cooment about hi from two young fellows coming down the  starrs.
"Well" one said to the other turning to look at the disappearing scott. "That's not something you see every day is it"?
" Nope" said the other "I've never seen an Indian in a kilt before."

I love computors...when I can ge them to work properly

I really do love my technology, I just wish it was easy to fix things when they don't work properly or do things I don't expect.
Good thing my son is on hand to guide me in the right direction.
When I say on hand I mean on skype. Actually he's still back in NZ, staying with his biggest sister for the last few days and hopefully getting a final burst of vitamin D before heading over here.
Now back to the putor probs.
I'd read a hints book about how to temporarily disable the mouse pad to stop the cursor jumping around, and inadvertantley turend off a lot of buttons onthe key pad...OK so restoreto an earlier time to fix that.
Then he helped me to get rid of a nasty adverts page that was askingme to click on it to 'fix the problems on the pc' I don't think so tim. I've been ignoring that one for a while now.
So lots of clicks later and he tells me that he spyware/malware programme could have done it for me. Ah well it was a learning experience.
So now the notebook is running much better and yes I will be doing a virus check as soon as I finishing typing here 

A bit of this and that...

Canary Wharf is looking pretty Christmassy. The decorated trees are sparkling  and the stores have shaken out all their boxes of deckies  and decked their windows with tinsel and trees. All it needs now is the Santa grotto and some snow.

Talking about the white stuff it certainly feels cold enough for it fingers crossed. The first year we were here it snowed on December first.

The man and I have a ‘train friend’ a chap we met more than a year ago now who has become our travelling buddy between Crystal palace and Canada Water. He’s quite excited a the moment and we are too for him. He’s been looking for a new job for quite a long time. Yesterday he had a very promising interview for a post in China. Well why not he’s single, fancy free and loves China. We’ve got our fingers crossed for him.

Change is on the cards for one of our family too, he’s in his final few day in New Zealand. Son he will be winging it to say a goodbye to his best mate who lives in Oz and then boarding a longer flight bound for our side of the world. We’ll be looking forward to seeing him again, but not as much as a certain lady who live further north.

Silvertown

I’ve been doing a a bit of background reading for the next assignment in the writing course I’m doing and wanted to share this with you.

While my grandparent weren’t directly involved with this they certainly would have known people  who were 

On 19 January 1917, in the darkest days of the Great War, a massive explosion rocked London’s East End. Shockwaves could be felt in Essex, while the blast itself was heard as far away as Southampton and Norwich. But the firestorm wasn’t caused by the sinister German Zeppelins that were making increasingly frequent appearances on London’s skyline. In fact, the roots of capital’s biggest ever explosion were much closer to home: a TNT factory in Silvertown.

From the outset, the management of the former Brunner, Mond and Co. chemical works expressed their concern about government plans to turn their plant over from the production of caustic soda to TNT for munitions. TNT is a highly unstable substance and the factory was in a crowded urban area. The Metropolitan Building Act of 1844 made it illegal to carry out ‘harmful trades’ inside the boundaries of London. But Silvertown was just outside this boundary, and its plentiful supply of labour and easy access to ports made it too good a location to overlook. In September 1915, the management caved to government pressure and the plant was soon making nine tons of TNT a day.

Sadly, the management’s concerns were founded. The explosion that ripped through the factory on that fateful Friday evening instantly destroyed part of the factory and several nearby streets. It showered molten metal across several miles, starting wild fires that could be seen as far away as Kent and Surrey.

More than 900 homes near the plant were destroyed or badly damaged in the disaster, leaving thousands of people homeless. Between 60,000 and 70,000 buildings were damaged to some extent, including a gasometer over the river in Greenwich which blew up, spewing 200,000 cubic metres of gas into the air in a massive fireball. Factories, docks and warehouses were also decimated. The eventual repair bill was around £250,000 – a staggering amount of money at the time.

Even more serious was the human cost. Seventy three people died that day. More than 400 were injured, 94 of them seriously. One man lost his wife and four children, aged between 10 and 13. The dead also included many firemen from the local station, along with dock and factory workers and children, asleep in their beds. But the death toll could have been much worse: by a stroke of luck, the explosion happened at just before 7pm, after most people had left the factory for the day and before they had gone to bed (most of the damage to homes was to the upper floors).

The precise cause of the explosion has never been found and rumours abounded of sabotage by a German spy or that the factory had been hit by a German bombing raid. The most likely explanation is much more mundane – that fire broke out in a melt-pot room and quickly spread to railway wagons where 50 tons of TNT was waiting to be moved. The inquiry found that the site was totally unsuitable and that Brunner Mond had failed to look after the welfare of its staff. The government chose not to publish the findings until the 1950s.

 

Interesting that at the beginning it says that the management were concerned about the dangers of a such a plant but were overridden by the government At the end it says that the enquiry though it confirmed the initial fears of the managers still found against them…

No justice is there

Looking for....

Well that wasn’t a very nice dream to wake up to.

Short version is I got lost…OK so those of you who know me  will be aware that I am geographically challenged….but that dream was ridiculous.

So ‘nuff said about that …

The man and I headed out to visit a local records office to look at some registers.

And it was very chilly out there too.

The good folks at the office informed me that I could have looked at them online on Ancestry…hmm so what next.

After some considerable mulling I looked at some maps and then some newspaper clippings about dockers then did a bit of reading around the lives of women.

By which time both of us were more than a tad peckish…so it was time to call it a day.

I did buy yet another book, about the working life of London’s East End, and an old ordinance survey map.

By the time we got back to Crystal palace it was getting dark, but it was only 1630.  So a quick trip to Iceland, the supermarket not the country, for essential supplies.

This evening I had a look on Ancestry and sure enough there were the parish registers I was hoping to look at this morning.