I have been thinking about the ways we are all linked to the past.
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| Ann Hall, 1941 |
It was occasioned by a programme on the Blitz which made me reflect on the experiences of my parents and grandparents who lived through the conflict.
I belong to that generation which was born during and directly after the last world war.
And while my family rarely talked about those six years, the evidence of that conflict and the damage was everywhere to be seen.
As kids we played on bombsites, walked past the painted signs announcing Shelters and Emergency Water Supplies which had yet to fade, and took for granted the odd relic, which might be a gas mask, or one of those empty tins which once held Dried Eggs, but long ago had been pressed into service to store nuts, bolts and screws.
So, ours was less a direct link to the war, but a full 76 years since VE and VJ Day it’s as close as you can get.
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| That earlier conflict George Bradford Simpson, circa 1918 |
For most of my life I can’t say I gave these memories that much thought, but the passage of the years and with the knowledge that there are fewer years ahead of me than behind, I have come to work my way through those recollections.
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| The Derby Floods, 1932 |
That said, as the children came along and reached school age, I wondered just how I could have faced seeing them evacuated to a place miles away in the care of strangers, or for that matter how the family would have coped with the possibility that I would have been called up with little idea of when I would return home.
We have some of the bits and pieces which together offer up keys to the war, and when placed against the historical accounts make it possible to travel back to 1940 and make a sense of what mum, dad, and my grandparents went through.
And our kids will have their own bits and pieces which will link them to their history, and I suppose, the time will come when the family photographs, letters, and memorabilia held by me will pass to them, pushing back their own links to a bigger picture.
Key to all of this, is as ever the family history record, which doesn’t just have to be the family tree, but also the stories and anecdotes, which can be anything from going off to war, the birth of a grandchild, or the Sunday night one of the lads fell off the freezer onto his younger brother, the consequence of which was a broken leg and a long stay in hospital.
I remain surprised how my own childhood memories going back 60 or more years have stood the test of time, and in some cases ones which I discounted as imagination, have proved to be correct when placed against family research.
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| Working the silk, 1843 |
And so, while we say memory can play us false, more often than not it is in fact a vivid piece of history which walks with us. The trick is to try and save the memories of those who are older and build them into the story.
I remember asking one of my uncles about his memories of the General Strike of 1926, when he was living in Gateshead. I was expecting accounts of workers at meetings, and of strike breakers driving lorries and railway trains, but instead I got the memory of just how clear the sky line was, freed from the smoke thrown up by hundreds of factory chimneys.
In the same way I was fascinated by two accounts from a recent Radio 4 programme featuring the memories of women from the 1940s.
In the first, a woman in her 80s recalled a conversation with an even more elderly woman who worked as a servant in the court of King George III, while another woman talked about her great grandmother’s reaction on hearing the news of the execution of the French Queen in 1793.
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| Memories of 1914 |
What I like is that in just two people’s memories we are back at the end of the 18th century, and that makes me wish I could have eavesdropped on the conversation between the philosopher Bertrand Russel and one of his relatives who had discussed the passing of the Great Reform Bill in 1832 with Lord John Russell who had campaigned for Parliamentary reform.
All of which leads me to admit that this is twisty turny and perhaps rambles a bit, but our links with our collective past are never simple or straight.
Ours, slides from the east Highlands, and the rural Midlands, touches on itinerant traders, and engineers, as well as agricultural labourers, and handloom weavers, and crashes into a chunk of our Imperial past, two world wars, and along the way mixes family stories from Germany, Italy and India.
It could have finished in south east London where we all grew up, but took another twist which saw three of us leave home to head north to Manchester, south to Kent, and west to Somerset, while our collective children have settled across the country, and beyond with one settling inPoland, another in Turkey and yet another in Australia.
Location; three centuries and lots of places.
Pictures; from George Bradford Simpson, circa 1918, Ann Hall, circa 1941,steel notebook holder, circa 1914 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Souvenir of the Derby Floods, 1932, Published by the Derby Branch of the Y.M.C.A., in aid of the Mayor’s Flood Fund, A Day in a Silk Mill, Penny Magazine, 1843
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