Swedish death cleaning

 In recent times I have seen two mentions of this, an article in the Guardian and a tv episode on a obscure channel.

I had never heard of this before.  apparently it is  based on the New York Times bestseller, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.”

Swedish artist, Margareta Magnusson, sheds light on how to declutter your home with the intent of making the grieving process easier for your friends and family after you are gone.

Most of us know about decluttering if they have been involved in selling a house.  A suit \rrives at your suburban semi-detached house complete with clipboard and nose in the air, and announce you need to declutter.  Estate agentgs pretend to know what house buyers are looking for and they believe that people are put off by the way the present owners live.  Pictures on the wall, ornaments on the sideboard, gaily coloured cusions etc.  all "clutter" to a certain mind.

Now apparently this idea had been developed into a Nordic precursor to visiting Valhalla.

It is not a new thing, but seems to me to follow on from the fairly modern idea that everyone should make provision for leaving some kind of inheritance for their family, even if its only no work in disposing of the deceased's belongings.

I don't follow the concept that somehow, parents have an obligation to make life easy for their children by working hard before they die to leave a tidy , uncluttered home.  A bit bizarre to say the least.  When I die, I wont care what happens, will I? Do I really need to spend time sorting out my old clothes, giving away all my books, tidying up my computer hard drive so that my daughters don't have to do it?

Starting with my clothes would be a problem in itself.  I know I have too many jackets and waistcoats,  but which ones do I get rid of.  I like them all.  If I drop my clogs or fall off my perch in the next week or so, it wont matter, but if I live for another year or so, I might want to wear some of them.

The same with books.  I have got books I haven't read yet and still reluctant to get rid of some that I might want to read again.

And that computer hard drive. Full of half written blogs, articles and even some detective books which I haven't finished writing because I couldn't decide who the murderer was.

Sounds like too much hard work just to save somebody else the bother.  It may well be that my executors wont have a problem, just bundle everything into black bags, or hire a skip and it could all be gone in  a day.

HMS Whimbrel and D.day

 

HMS Whimbrel was a Royal Navy sloop which had been built in the Yarrow shipyards at Scotstoun Glasgow. Ernest McKie had been member of the crew from the time it had been handed over to the Royal Navy in January 1943.

From then it had been employed on anti submarine escort duties across the Atlantic and back to America and Canada, to Freemantle in Africa via Gibraltar.  North Africa for the invasion of Sicily was also on its itinerary and lately the hazardous journeys with convoys carrying supplies to Russia in atrocious winter weather.  During its first three years, Whimbrel had to go into shipyards several times, usually on the Mersey,  for repairs occasioned by the weather rather than enemy action. 

Come June 1944, Whimbrel was in the Bristol channel preparing to escort a convoy of ships carrying American troops and their vehicles round to the English channel aspart of operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, D.day!

They were scheduled to leave for the 250 journey on 4th June but the appalling weather in the channel decreed otherwise and the journey was put off for a day but eventually the orders were given to go and the convoy had an uneventful trip around to the appointed place off the Isle of Wight.  Deespite the fact that the landings did not appear to have gone completely to plan the convoy vessels went in to the Normandy beaches to discharge their cargos of men and vehicles. The available records do not make it clear if this occured late on the 6th June or the following day.  Leaving the convoy,  Whimbrel went into the Solent before immediately returning to the Bristol channel to escort another convoy.  No rest no respite. Despite the famous Landings on the beaches of Normandy elsewhere the war went on.

©Ed McKie 2024

Do you ever weep ?

 Do you every weep? For the state of the world? The people of Ukraine or the ones risking their lives crossing the channel in small boats? Now there are the people of Israel and Palestine, none of whom would choose to go to war against eaach other but are stuck in a situation created by zealots on both sides. We should weep for them all.

Tears can come watching TV at all of this and stories of children in trouble or happy because their football heroes acknowledge them. I weep remembering our family tragedies even though a long time ago.

When I see politicians with po faces and no emotions then I weep for them and for us that those who will be in charge of our destinies for the next few years have no empathy orf even genuine understanding of ordinary people.

Six Nations ? We have more than that.

 The six nations rugby competion has come round again and if we swapped those six nations around a bit, one of our family would always win!

We have English Irish and Scots and there might also be a Welsh, if you assume that Pritchard was really Ap Richard from across the Marches from Herefordshire.

We could leave in the French as family tradition suggests that there was a French grandmother somewhere but we can definitely include the Maltese, who could also have had Italian connections as the island is within sight of Sicily and there was constant traffic between the two. Then there are our German, Slovenian, and Czechoslovakian ancestors and if so minded we could throw in a couple of Aussies and Kiwis  into the mix as well.

Perhaps it is salutary to think in these times that these British Isles for centuries was more welcoming of migrants coming as refugees, fleeing appression than it is today. It seems that the only foreigners who are given the glad hand now are footballers coming to play for large sums of money for foreign owned "English" football clubs.  Ironic dont you think?

PPE but not plastic aprons or masks

 

If I had gone to university, as I might have done as a mature student then no doubt I would have chosen PPE as a course. These initials became synonimous in the covid pandemic with the plastic aprons and masks, many of them supplied to the NHS at exorbitant prices by Tory cronies.

I meant  Philosophy,politics and economics, Sounds grand doesn't it and ideal for budding politicians, which is probably why so many current parliamentarians seem to have their degrees in that.

Over the years I have thought about what was actually learned to study PPE.  Judging from the attitudes of so many of the aforementioned parliamentarians many seem to have skipped the philosophy modules and concentrated on economics,more specifically perhaps their own finances!

Doesn't matter what shade of politics philosophical commitment to the cause doesn't seem to rank as high as the need to climb the proverbial greasy poll. 

Tories by definition have to pretend to be concerned about the condition of people in poverty whilst at the same time supporting policies that make them poorer whilst so many labour hopefuls have never had their hands dirty and are only too willing to pander to the worst aspects of the attitudes of people who have no affiliation to the labour movement,decry trade unionists and voted Brexit.

A challenging project right off the bat

 A challenging project right off the bat

 The conservation and partial restoration of an 18th-century taxidermy bat specimen

 © Simon Moore ACR   

Cumberland House Natural History Museum received a grant from the Collections Care Stimulus Grant Fund to conserve and partially restore a taxidermy bat dated 6 September 1779 - the oldest specimen in their natural history collection.  

 1779 Taxidermist's label still intact 

The taxidermist's label on the rear of the case is still intact, and shows that it is the work of Thomas Hall. Thomas Hall was one of the UK's earliest taxidermists and described himself as "the first artist in the world for preserving birds, beasts and all sorts of reptiles, to resemble attitude and perfection of life". He had a museum of stuffed animals at his home and is thought to have owned and exhibited the first kangaroo seen in Europe. 

© Simon Moore ACR 

Specimen label dated to 1779 

  A delicate and challenging project The work was carried out by Simon Moore ACR of Natural History Conservation, leading expert in the field of natural sciences conservation. The job was very delicate - head and both ears were detached, exposed part of armature rusted, wings embrittled and frequently torn and holed. Judging by the frass particles under the fur, the specimen had also been attacked by clothes moth larvae.  

© Simon Moore ACR  

 The right wing had become detached and the wing membrane and many other areas, especially the tail web, had either become torn or eaten away by the pest larvae. The brittleness of the wings was extreme and the project suffered a setback - a large hole appeared during the sizing of the wings because of the rehydration process and the weight of the size; but this was quickly tissued over and held together. The sizing, once dry adds a stronger and invisible membrane and also helps to blend in the tissued areas.

 © Simon Moore ACR

Left wing prior to adhesion  

 Final result 

At the end of the project, the bat was mounted on a bit of cocktail stick and a small depression was drilled in the box base so the bat could be mounted back in its box. The partly-missing lower left corner of the box was also rebuilt so that the glass would sit nicely in the rebate, and also to help keep the pests out. The ripply old glass was carefully sealed in using old-fashioned gummed paper tape. This was then painted black and the final result is shown below.

 © Simon Moore ACR  

 Made possible through the generous support of the Radcliffe Trust and others, the Collections Care Stimulus Fund supported the care and conservation of collections at a time when budgets for the conservation of collections and objects are diminishing.

 Icon awarded eight grants of up to £1,250 to UK-based museums, galleries and heritage institutions with less than 100,000 visitors per year that have suffered from a major drop in income over the last 12 months and were less able to commission conservation projects as a result. The conservation activities were carried out by Icon Accredited members. An accredited member of Icon (ACR) will have been through a robust professional practice assessment process to demonstrate that they have met the ‘proficient’ level of Icon’s Professional Standards. Accredited members can be identified through the Conservation Register.

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00ooo000ooo000ooo000ooo000ooo000ooo000oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

This article was copied, with their permission from the Institute of Conservation website.

The pun in the heading is not mine! althoughy other errors may well be. Although we spent many years researching the lives of the Hall family this is my first post about them since 2014 https://edmck.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-stuff-rhinoceros.html

The Old Man at sea

Eighty years ago at the age of 42 my dad joined the Royal Navy for the second time having already been in the First World War. We do not know if he was called up or volunteered.

When he was sent to Scotland to serve on HMS Whimbrel the following year he was the oldest man on the crew and also the only grandfather. Even the Captain was seven years his junior.

Whimbrel had only recently been completed at the Yarrow shipyard and was doing its sea trials before being handed over to the Royal Navy.  Dad remained with Whimbrel until he was sent home after VE Day to be demobbed

Whimbrel was a sloop of the Swan class and had been essentially designed as an escort and submarine defence vessel.  It served in this role throughout the war providing escorts for convoys between the UK and America, Russia and the Mediterranean as well as also being involved in the Sicily landings in June  1943.

It was eventful few years in the war not just for Dad but for Whimbrel. It was never damaged by enemy attack but the weather damage during those fateful Atlantic and Russian convoys during winter months took its toll and the ship was in for repairs on several occasions. The Russian convoys were particularly hard on the crew and the ship because of the extreme weather. It is galling to many of the descendants of those men that the present day rulers of Russia have chosen to ignore the sacrifices of the men of the Royal Navy in saving the Russian people by getting greatly needed supplies through. Putin and co of course were not alive then and it is easy for them to choose to portray "the west" that saved them as now being the enemy.

There are several stories about these years in my book "Tales my father told me" available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1517297184

HMS Whimbrel is still afloat, although under the name ENS Tariq, having been sold to the Egyptian Navy in 1954 despite many attempts over the years to bring her back to the UK for preservation.

©Ed McKie 2022

Lavender Place,St. George in the East

 Lavender Place was situated just along Pennington Street from where my dad was born in August 1900.

Lavender Place had 11 Houses where 134 people were listed on the 1901 census including 21 children under 14.

It was a multinational community, if it thought of itself as a community, with birthplaces including Russia, Germany, Ireland, Palestine, and Scotland as well as those born in London.  The occupations were also diverse including dock workers, boot makers, rag sorters, tailors, tent makers, as well as the inevitable carmen and van boys. 

The southern side of Pennington Street was the high wall that encircled the London Docks and was the outer boundary of the Parish of St. John of Wapping.  Pennington Street was therefore not in Wapping despite the hundreds of images on the internet which describe it as such because of the problems that arose when the notorious Murdoch moved his printing presses to the newly industrialized London Docks and thus set off a dispute with the print unions.  It was easy for the Murdoch newspapers to describe the strike pickets at the gates in Pennington street as being in Wapping because it took up less room in a column than St. George in the East, although it would have been just as easy to say Stepney.+

Covid 19, Old Age, or food processing?

 One of the symptoms of covid 19 is a loss of smell and taste.  Well, we have experienced that for some time before the pandemic and we are often told that it is related to the aging process. I am inclined to the view that it is also related to eating foods that have been processed or manufactured in some way.

Almost everything that we eat these days has been through some processing. You may think that raw vegetables do not come into this category but with the emphasis on "natural", or "organic" there has been some interference with the normal growing process.  Farming today is as much a factory-type activity as the production of bread. so even the humble potato or carrot is not safe from being manipulated in some way and tomatoes grown in chemical fluids rarely if ever taste like tomatoes.

In ordinary food processing then the recipes have changed over time and the emphasis on being salt-free has changed most foods that we buy.  But simply removing salt from some recipes would not have been enough so something had to be substituted.  Going salt free of course had an added bonus for manufacturers, less cost!

Even meat goes through processing even if it is still referred to as butchering.  If your chops arrived prepackaged, cryovacced etc then they have gone through a process that is far removed from what used to happen at your local butcher. And it is tempting to wonder if beef mince has ever been near a cow let alone being part of one!

Had one of these for breakfast:

Dont know what it tasted like, but it was not like a crumpet.

Smuggling cigars

Dad's stepfather George Pokham was a merchant seaman who worked mainly on the ships carrying various items between the London Docks and the Baltic ports. Only short runs and he was rarely away for more than a week at a time. 

With her somewhat difficult experience with her first husband, our Grandmother did not trust the second one to come straight home after being paid off and she would regularly be at the dock gates and often inside waiting for George to leave the ship. Security was not as great in those days, there were only the Dock policemen on the gate, it was quite a regular occurrence for wives with their children to wait inside the gates for their husbands to come off the ships with their pay.

Gran usually had a couple of the younger boys with her on these occasions and they would run up to George to be lifted up and swung round with great shows of paternal affection. He was also stuffing their pockets with contraband cigars during this process. He would always speak to the dock police at the gate and offer his bag for inspection. Ironically this was at the gate in Pennington Street now being used for the upmarket event venue called Tobacco Dock.

Dad was never sure if Gran or even the policemen for that matter was in on this minor smuggling, but it seemed to happen every time. The blind eye may also have been related perhaps to the fact there was a small block of Police flats in Pennington Street at that time, so many of the regular gate police were neighbours as it were. 

Before Duvets

 Winter has arrived without a doubt in the Northwest of England so we have changed over to the winter weight duvet. 

Perhaps there are still a few people like me who can remember a time before duvets in English bedrooms,  although there is a popular song in these parts called "when I was a lad" which refers to greatcoats on the bed!

The first duvet I encountered was shortly after completing my National Service in the Military Police and spending most of that in the Suez Canal zone I decided to take a hitchhiking holiday in France.

I set off from the ferry at Calais and headed for P\aris and got some lifts on the way, and spend a couple of nights in the little bivouac tent I carried astride my haversack.  I spoke no french.  Although I had learned some French at school, whatever  I knew at 16 had disappeared by the time I was 21 so I relied on a French/English phrasebook, much to the amusement of any french person I tried to speak to.  I was able to speak the french phrases quite fluently which gave the impression that |I knew what I was saying but unfortuna\gtely I could not understand any replies.   Still, I got by although for the most part I lived on bread and cheese which I could buy just by pointing.

Obviously, I did not use the main routes and did a fair amount of walking on the quiet country roads. One day I had not got any lifts so was quite tired by the end of the day and I knew that I was still some way from the Amiens, the nearest town. Seeing a sign on the gatepost of a farm I went in and asked for a room for the night.

  No English was spoken at this house but I was welcomed being both young and English.  I was given a good meal of soup and some homegrown ham and bread and then shown to the bedroom.  Anyone familiar with "Allo Allo" would recognize the room, a sloping ceiling and a large iron bedstead with an enormous feather-filled duvet which I assumed was an eiderdown.  

I was a little nonplussed at first as there was no sheet under the duvet, not knowing that this was not regarded as necessary, and getting in the bed the weight of the cover took some getting used to. But I was tired and soon adjusted and slept like a log until close to midday the following day much to the amusement of my hosts. Still, I had breakfast and was on my way after paying a very trifling amount which I am  sure was much below the going rate even for then. 

Catholic tories

In the 1950s I was a young Labour councillor on Lewisham Council.  Having been brought up as a Catholic one of the things I found difficult to grasp was that there were Catholics on the other side of the council chamber.  Tories!  On the Labour side there were several Catholics including John Henry a former fireman with a scarred face as testament to the bravery of his calling and Fred Copeman, OBE, a former member of the International brigade fighting the fascists in Spain just before the war.  My father had been a councillor in Stepney between the wars,  was a Papal Knight and an active trade unionist.

The Pope at the time was preaching social justice and the Catholic Church in the UK was  active in working to secure better conditions for working people.

So how could these "good Catholics " belong to an organisation that ignored all that?  I found it difficult to even be friendly to these blue Catholics.

I was naive of course not yet having come to realise that in a conservative world,  no matter what people professed as a religion, personal gain and advancement took priority. 

Sixty odd years have passed and nothing has changed.  A Tory can claim that they believe in helping those well off and spout the current catch phrase "levelling up " but what they actually do does not bring that about. Conservative government still means that the rich get richer by means of old boy networks, cronyism and access to government contracts.  Legislation that protects the rights of employees gets whittled away so that it ends up being meaningless. 

Press button "B"

 Many phrases like this one, well known in the past no longer have any meaning.  It of course referred to the system of payment in public telephone boxes.  The red public phone box was on almost every street corner in the days when there were few telephones installed in private houses and before the invention of mobile phones.  In many remote areas of the Uk, they were the lifeline for a village and the only means of communication with the rest of the county.

 To use a public phone box it was necessary to make a prepayment of the necessary number of coins before dialing the number you wished to call.  If someone answered the call then it was necessary to press button "A" to make a connection.  If there was no reply then press button "B" to get the coins back.

Quite straight forward you would have thought but it did not always work that way.  The coins used for many years were pennies.  Probably the most common coin in the Uk in terms of usage so that they were also then the most worn.

. Pressing button B to get them back often resulted in two coins getting stuck together and not falling through into the receptacle cup as intended.  After a few bangs on the black box, they could come through but otherwise, the frustrated caller would go off. The next person in the box could be lucky and their coins could dislodge the stuck coins and they could make a call by pressing button "a" or their own coins would get stuck as well, adding to the blockage.

Then perhaps along came an enterprising young boy who would manage to dislodge the blockage by various means.  Most youngsters "tested" the phone box on every occasion.  Often it was just a question of pressing button "b" and retrieving the coins left behind by a caller who had been frustrated in making a call and dashed off without retrieving their money.  Otherwise, a few sharp bangs on the box would do the trick, or the judicious use of a penknife, the necessary adjunct to any schoolboy's pocket then, could release stuck coins.  Didn't work every time of course, but it was always worth a try, and if you are sauntering along with nothing else to do.......

Army sport

Until I did my national service I had never seen a game of rugby. Bear in mind that this was in the days before TV.

Whilst doing my military police training we were supposed to have Saturday afternoons free but if the camp rugby team were playing at home then we were obliged to watch. Standing on the edge of a football pitch that did not look like a football pitch and the goalposts were a strange shape as well. Not my idea of a free Saturday afternoon!

And I did not understand what was going on at all. Having played football at school and attended a few professional games I was well aware of the need to keep the ball on the pitch. These rugby players seemed to spend a lot of the time throwing the ball off the pitch and then throwing it back on again. All very strange. 

And then there were the scrums.  A very odd procedure to someone who had not seen the game previously.  The two teams seem to huddle together on the pitch and try to push their opponents until suddenly the ball is thrown into the middle and then kicked out again. Being of a logical bent even in those days I could not work out the point of that. 

After the match, both teams went into the Naafi, got drunk together, and sang bawdy songs.

Come straight home

I am sure that I was not a particularly stupid child but I did not seem to be able to understand the stricture "come straight home from school".  At infants school in Wapping the way home was through the park (now called recreation ground) and there was a playground in the park...How was I expected to bypass the playground and go straight home, even though I knew that my mum was watching from the window of our top floor flat and could see me? 

 Later when we were evacuated to Brighton, the way home went past a monumental mason working in his outside workshop. I got lost in amazement as I watched him chisel out the lettering on a gravestone then later fill it with little lead triangles and then paint over the top. How I wanted to go in and get a closer look and learn how to do it, and the time went by!

 When we moved to Guildford and I was billeted at Shalford which was about two and half miles from school then there were plenty of distractions along the way.   Lewis Carrol's house with illustrations from Alice on the garden entrance: the river Wey ran for quite a long way along the road and at times there were folk rowing there or the water birds to watch.   In the winter months a meadow alongside the river was flooded from a sluice gate in the river and froze. Custom designed for small boys to skate on. 

Living with my mum after running away from my evacuee billets we lived in a small cottage in Trinity churchyard.  At the foot of the stairs leading into the churchyard there was a second hand bookshop which had a box of damaged books available for free.  Always worth a look for a few minutes or more. 

And so it went on.  Going straight home was never an option. 

Rambling

 

Rambling is one of those words which have a number of meanings.  When we were young it mostly meant a weekend activity with a group of friends going for a walk in the countryside.  A group of us from the local branch of the Labour Party League of Youth in Lewisham used to go out to Farnborough, Kent to the end of the number 47 bus route and follow one of the walks listed in a small book sold by the Evening news. 

Most of the walks started off by going through the churchyard but then diverged to different walks, some circular  returning to Farnborough, others finished elsewhere like Down or Halstead, mostly at a pub. These were never particularly active outings like keen ramblers seem to do these days with there alpine walking sticks and backpacks.  Ours were  more a country stroll with frequent stops just to loll about in the grass and talk.  We used to do a lot of talking in those days, rather more than groups of similarly aged young people in the twenty-first century. 

 At the end of the day it was usually wend our way home by the next available bus, and if we had been in the pub there was usually some singing including the Red Flag and the the Internationale, much to the consternation of homegoing church goers.  Getting a bus  could be hit and miss on a Sunday evening so the alternative was a walk to the nearest country railway station and the train to one of stations near home depending on which line we were on. The train journey was frequently free as country stations in those days were rarely manned on a Sunday so there was no one to buy a ticket from and at the other end there was no ticket collector either. It didn't seem illegal when there was no one to collect the fares. 

That kind of rambling is for the relatively young and fit.  As you get  older there is a greater inclination to do the other kind were your mind rambles around in a haphazard way, trying to remember a name that escapes  or a memory which is no longer as clear as it used to be.   C'est la vie.

What A Life!

I started researching our family history perhaps 40 years ago and started writing them up some 20 years ago. My first books I printed myself on a laser printer and just sent copies to those family members that I thought might be interested. Later I started having my books printed on Amazon, originally Createspace and now KDP.

I started blogging about 15 years ago about genealogy and family history, odd stories about my research and so on and then started to include small anecdotes from my childhood before the war and as a evacuee from London.

I've written and published some ten books mostly family histories of our ancestors and two detective novels. Some of my family have read what I have written and suggested that I should write my own story.

I am not a great fan of autobiographies so I am reluctant to consider that my own life story is worth a book. Does the world really need another diary of a nobody? I suppose I have had a fairly interesting life, married and raised a family and done a variety of jobs. the archetypal Jack of all trades I suppose. Our travels as a family have taken us to the other side of the world and back, but we do not need another travel book.

I have promised to write my story, if only for the information of my family who have claimed that they know little of my life before they were born. I have started but it is a bit off and on, so many things get in the way. However it has come to me, on my birthday that whilst I am trotting towards the end of my life, my memory is actually galloping away. So many things that I used to remember quite clearly are not just fuzzy but non-existent. So many names and places that I can no longer recall, struggle as I might. So I will have to knuckle down and get it written soon.

Take heed all writers out there. If your story is worth recording then do it now.

Tempus fugit and all that as well as Memento Mori

WW1 Prisoners of War made to work

Saw a film on TV this week called Land of Mines.  Danish made and tells the story of a group of young German POWs after the end of WW2 being compelled to clear landmines on a Danish beach, with the inevitable consequences.

Reminded me that my cousin Harold Daynton had a similar experience in WW1.  He had been captured near Albert,in France in February 1918  and had been shipped off to Germany.   They were asked to volunteer for work as carpenters and as conditions in the camp were so bad many did so in the hope of better rations.  They were disappointed as then a group of the men where  taken back to battlefields in  France their "carpentry" work job being to locate and make safe booby-trapped buildings which the Allies had vacated in the massive German Attack of 21st march. 

They moved around with their Guards to various locations for different tasks. They apparently got on well with the four Guards who sympathised with their situation but explained how short of food and other vital supplies in Germany  actually were. They stayed with these Guards for the remainder of the war, receiving no rations so living  on what food they could steal or acquire. 

 On 11 November they all shook hands, with the Germans walking eastwards and the 10 British POW’s walking westwards. That took quite a time as they were actually released somewhere in the triangle of  Aachen/Verviers/Maastricht and their long trudge took until late November when they reached Calais. They finally reached England on a ship on December 2nd.

Tell it to the Marines

My Mums uncle, Edward Eder joined the Royal Marine Light Infantry

at the age of 19 in 1881. Served for twelve years in Gibraltar, Malta  and Egypt, including  the Sudan during the Mahdi rebellions but was not involved in the disastrous Siege of Khartoum as far as I can gather.  But he did receive the Egyptian Medal and the Khedive Star so he must have been around somewhere.

Left the Marines in 1894, mostly earned good conduct pay having spent only seven days in the cells which for the army of the time was good going over a period of just over twelve years.

Obviously he  did not settle to civilian life as he signed up again in May 1901 into the Royal Garrison Artillery and remained in until May 1905 spending most of his time in Gibraltar.  

There is a family story that Edward visited his Grandfather in Trieste during his military service but this seems unlikely as the journey from Gibraltar would have taken quite a long time.

When the first world war came along Edward signed up again in October 1915 but was discharged in December as being "unlikely to become an efficient soldier".  

According to his Service record Edward was 5 foot 6 and half inches when he joined in 1881 but was 5 foot nine and half inches in 1894.  Obviously the good life in the Marines. 

The qwerty keyboard and me.

 I have had an association with the qwerty keyboard for something like 72 years and sadly it appears to be coming to an end.  I am still a reasonably competent touch typist but an unexplained damage to my left wrist some four months ago has meant that I have not been able to use my left hand for typing and I think I am l;osing the ability to do so.

Many two finger typists would consider that not to be a problem.  But if you learned touchtyping all those years ago then that is the only way you can type.  The constant repetion of familiar keys when learning to touch type means that the fingers automatically go to the correct key to press without having to think about it.  I think this is called muscle memory consolidation.  Your right hand then  does not necessarily  know where the keys normally pressed by the left are located. 

I tried to use speech recognition software but the skill involved in thinking and talking at the same time is completely diferent to thinking and typing at the same time.  I used to be fairly competent in having my fingers on the keyboard keeping up  with my mental flow when I was writing, say  for instance something like a blog.   But to dictate to the computer and watch the words coming up  on the screen inhibits the thought flow.  At least  does for me.