Saturday, March 30, 2013

Pity about my flu vaccination scheduled for 8th April

I have the flu.  Not a very bad case but enough to be uncomfortable but have hit on a medication routine which is keeping me on my feet.  I have headaches and hot flushes and it is trying to go to my chest as usual with these URTIs.

I am entertaining myself by working on the Family History and Bro sent me a newsletter from 1950 with a potted history of Father's progress through Elder Smith & Company.  It gives DATES!

The family moved from Melbourne in 1940, much earlier than I had thought because I have a couple of flashes of memory relating to the move.  I would have been only 18 months old at the latest so that is amazing.  They are just quick mental pictures but they are there; I just hadn't realised that I was so young.

The family history is coming on slowly.  The problem is that the more I dig the more information I discover so, like my genealogy research, it is going to be never-ending.  There is still one branch, predictably on my mother's side of the family because I have started looking at convict records for one of my great great grandfathers.  But even the convict records are not turning up anything relevant.

Most of the photos which I have posted have been of Parsifal because he is his mother's little helper whereas Poppy is the lapcat which doesn't make for very interesting pictures but here is one of her which I may have posted before.  It is a nice photo, though, and worth repeating.  click on the image to enlarge it.



Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Autumn has arrived very suddenly

... and yesterday was cold!

I shut all the doors and turned on the heating.  The little control panel said that it was time to clean the filter and since it was a job which I always did at the witches' Sabbaths I figured that it was timely but when I removed the grid I found that there was no filter behind it.  I assume that all the dust goes into some great collection filter in the sky; (I think that the main air conditioning unit is on the roof) so I pressed the reset button and hopefully that is all I need to do.

I have started on the Davies family but having gone to Trove to get details of various divorces I was again hooked into the Hundreds of Onkaparinga court cases.  H. B. was very litigageous and it seems to be one contested will after another, the latest being that of his mother with a suggestion that she was demented when she wrote her last Will and that the previous one should be the one considered to be her proper wishes.

However, although I now think that he was my great-grandfather, I am not going to research him in any depth.  He was a stockbroker, a magistrate and stood for Parliament (but I have yet to discover if he was elected) and a gambler.  Perhaps that is why he was constantly involved in disputed Wills.

The Selfs are overseas and Herself has kitted Himself out with thermal underwear which, from what I have been reading about blizzards in Europe, they will both be needing.

I haven't posted any pictures of the cats for a while so here is one of Parsifal helping (?) me to sweep the floor.  Click on the picture to enlarge it.


Friday, March 8, 2013

Free WiFi on my doorstep

I have just popped downstairs to test the WiFi hotspot in the Claremont Quarter and it is alive and well.  I'll be able to go down and play games on my Surface and my I-pad and not have to worry about high bandwidth useage.  I was horrified when I found how much bandwidth my AnkhMorpork app used and decided to only access it during my 'freetime' but I will now be joining the group on the circular couch in the mall.

I have transcribed that Codicil and added it to that Will and my next job, other than the much-married Davies family (which I keep on relegating to the too-hard basket), is to trawl through the old court cases and try to discover how the trustees wriggled around the will and how the twins both ended up so rich.

Perhaps my great-grandfather was declared of unsound mind when he wrote the codicil; the solicitor who drew up the will and the codicil was obviously sufficiently troubled to actually attach a description of the drawing up of the codicil so perhaps that was used to include the twins in their legal father's legacy.

I promised, when I said that I would try to write an accurate family history, to write it warts and all.  But this is rather a large wart ...

Thursday, March 7, 2013

That other shoe

The other shoe has dropped.  I have received the codicil to my great-grandfather's will and even though he examined it and made a minor change to it the day before he died, there is still no mention of the twins, leading me to believe that the twins were not his.  They had just turned one year old when he died so if he had intended to make provision for them he would surely have mentioned them in the codicil.  All that research and now I will have to start again with that branch, plough through the old newspapers because there was a law suit regarding the sale of some shares and see just how it was that the twins ended up so well off if they started life with nothing.  And research my great-grandmother's second husband.

I have started a course of six Intermediate Yoga lessons with a different teacher so things are a bit strange and I am stiff again.  I am doing battle with the 'Tree' pose which I find very hard because my balance is bad and standing on one leg is not eaasy.  I am finding that I can do it standing on a really firm floor like the tiles in my apartment but I can't do it on a mat or carpet.  I will keep working on it.  My ambition was to be able to do the Warrior poses and I can do them now so hopefully it is just going to be a matter of time and application.

The cats are well but Parsifal made off with a diamond ring (he likes carrying bottle tops around) and I eventually found it underneath the filing cabinet in my study, along with a rubber ball which he had managed to jam underneath as well.

They have both become addicted to being brushed and the sound of ripping velcro brings Parsifal running.  Poppy has taken longer to decide that she likes it and I have to be much more gentle with her but they both roll from side to side and onto their backs so that I can brush every part of them.  There is actually nothing left to brush  -  I have go rid of all the loose hair but do it anyway because they, particularly Parsifal, enjoy it so much.