Bitzer's Daily musings: G'day all!

19 July 2011

G’day all! And what a fine Tuesday it is. OK, the weather isn’t great, it’s dark and murky in Dorktown today but it is dry, and that has to be a bonus.

Our two terrors

Rusty-pup (on the right) and Bella-pup (on the left - both fully grown now), had managed to get hold of an Asda bag of the table out in the back room and had great fun ripping it up to pieces and leaving us with a fine mess to get up to. That was a first for them so I shouldn’t moan too much really.

We did get out shopping yesterday and when we got back we walked down the street to have a look at the house which burned on Sunday. The whole of the roof has gone and it’s all in a sorry state. We realized at that point it was the house of mother’s best friend Ann before she died about 5 years ago. Be that as it may, the roof’s still gone! The local paper carried a report of it this morning. A 17 year man has been arrested on suspicion of arson, cultivating cannabis and by-passing the electric metre. He’s now been released on police bail while investigations are ongoing. The report also said that the fire was reported at 4.15am! We became aware of it around 10-11(ish), we hadn’t heard a thing! But that’s nowt new for us.

We lived in a house in Veron’s Lane in 1984/5. Number 8 has a phone box outside and we got fed-up of people come knocking the door and asking us if we had changed for the phone ... not pleased about that at the time. Anyway, one Monday during the summer there was a knock on the door and a copper at the door. It seems that during the night a fright had broken out over the use of the phone and one of the combatants had been stabbed. It was a very hot night that night and we had our windows open to get some air – and didn’t hear a thing, not a thing!

Not so long ago I had a go at looking at tracing my family history. I already know a good amount of it anyway – or at least I thought I did. My family name is Clark but according to my dad it should be Crosby-Clark. The story was that granddad Clark came from a family of wealthy barristers in Glasgow but he fell out with them and moved to South Wales to find work in the pits. OK - that seems good but I am reminded of a quote in the magazine History Today in which one writer said, “We are historians and it is our responsibility to check every source, and check it again for accuracy.” (Or something along those lines). So one of the first things I did was to get hold of copies of the marriage licences for both my grandparents. And guess what? Granddad Clark’s dad is listed as ‘Clark’ not Crosby-Clark! And he wasn’t a barrister either, he was haulier – oops. And that is as far as I have been able to go with the Clark side of the family. On the Jayne side I have managed to get back to around 1803 but then we lose any all references to them. But the Bolter side, well, Grandma Jayne was a Bolter and her dad was called John. A very imaginative family were the Bolters. John’s dad was called John, and his dad, and his dad and it goes right back to about 1760. They were farm hands in Abbey Dore in Herefordshire. I went to have a look and there’s a really nice church there is worth a visit.

I think that’s enough of my prattling on for today. Have fun guys n gals.