No rain forecast this week. Just to let you know. Good time to get those outdoor jobs done. Public service announcement.
Not sure I have any outdoor jobs in mind though I do need to clear the drain/gutter in front of the garage door. Do it every year as it gets filled with leaves. A good source of compost. Lots of worms in there. Mind you it isn’t on the jobs list, yet.
Another week. Another weekend survived. Don’t get me wrong. Weekends are not times where I naturally look back and say phew, made it. We should be glad to wake up and face each new day. Be glad to be alive. Enjoy every moment. Stuff like that.
Today is a grey day. Nowt in the diary. Just checked my emails and the one meeting I had scheduled, for 1pm, looks as if it will only have me there so it ain’t apnin. So that’s another day of family tree research.
Currently I’m going through all the work I did sixteen years ago and firming up on it. This includes uploading birth and marriage certs to the tree on ancestry.co.uk. Only the old data. Not uploading my own birth certificate for example. That would be asking for trouble. Details from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are however useful.
One of the census records I was reading yesterday showed the time when my great great grandfather Benjamin Davies became the master of a small wool factory at Abersannan and subsequent census show him moving to another mill at Birds Hill/Rhiwadar. The last one in the family, Maesdulais, was owned by my great grandfather so things must have gone well.
That was on dad’s dad side of the family. My dad’s mam’s side, came from the direction of Swansea. Her father John Lewis became the mining engineer that sank the pit at Blaenhirwaun opposite my grandmother’s house. All interesting stuff.
My main focus right now is finding my 5g grandparents. The trail is cold but I do have some clues to run with.
…
Left the heating on in the shed overnight which I don’t normally do so this morning it is suitably cosy. The cosiness of the shed. Sheds are either cosy places or cold and draughty. Mine is cosy.
Currently I’m playing a spot of Jules Massenet. La Vierge. Never eard of Jules before I looked on the ‘now playing’ line on Spotify. It’s in a Calming Classical playlist put together presumably by a machine. Our lives are increasingly being controlled by machines.
The deck in front of the shed is covered yet again with leaves of varying hues of brown. It actually looks quite picturesque although probably lethal to the unwary walker. Stride not carelessly to the shed but cautiously. Slip not. Not slip knot which is a different thing. I have slipped but know not how to tie a slip knot. Could look it up I suppose.
Our Disney + subscription came in the post over the weekend. Electronic post. This is not something high on my list to watch but it came free with our Lloyds Bank account and was the best of a not particularly interesting list of benefits we had to choose from. There is a Beatles documentary I will watch at some point. Before we go and see Macca in Manchester in December.
…
Made a bit of progress behind the shed/greenhouse this morning. A rodent (ie rat) had been getting into the compost bin which normally would be full of worms and invertebrates at the top but I suspect it has eaten them all. Properly closed off the bottom so unless it is still in there it won’t be able to use the same route again. Don’t think it hangs around in there. Nothing gets chucked in the compost that should attract them as far as I am aware. eg no eggshells.
Then I pulled out an old armoured cable that had served the deck lights and water feature in the pre shed days. A job that’s been needed doing for a while. Five years! Little by little. Bit by bit. At some stage I’ll tidy up the ducting and remaining cable.
…
I have a list of vicars of St Michael’s church Llanfihangel ar Arth dating back to the year 1660 is anyone is interested. The church is a lot older than that, predating the Norman conquest, but it is what it is. Unfortunately what I really need is the register of births from the mid 1700s but the earliest they have is 1787.
Vicars of Llanfihangel ar arth:
1660 OWEN JONES
1661 GRIFFIN JONES
1669 MAURICE MEREDITH
1688 DAVID PARRY
1707 JOHN COBNER
1730 JOSHUA JONES
1753 DAVID HUGHES
1787 METHUSALEM WILLIAMS
1818 THOMAS LEWES
1850 JOHN EDWARDS
1860 EVAN JONES
1875 JAMES JONES
1887 JOHN THOMAS HUGHES
1931 DANIEL EVANS
1958 JOHN OLIVER EVANS
1984 GUY MAXWELL LYON EVANS
1992 JOHN HUGH ALEXANDER JAMES
2006 BRONWEN DORIS TIMOTHY