Saturday, April 20, 2024

Blake again today

Lots of rain and that is good. The grass is greening up and still only April; generally we wait until May for luxurious green in front of us. Perhaps some earth moving today and seeding. We will see.

Blake yesterday and I mulled about what to do with the Richard le Blak information and finally make a decision that I would just let the chapter sit as it is for the moment and move on to extraction of Blake from Find My Past. This will be a faster process since I am only going to look at initially Blake in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Berkshire.  By 1538 the Blake line that I am looking at for my Grandpa is principally in the Andover area but I also want to check up on the Blake families whose wills mention the Blake family at Andover but are living in Berkshire and perhaps Wiltshire although it is the wills in Berkshire that mention Blake. I need to reread the Wiltshire wills as I do not remember offhand any mention of the Blake family of Andover in their wills. I have transcribed most of these wills way back in the early 2010s. I will not extract the Blake families of Somerset, Devon, or Cornwall as I am confident that all of these individuals are descendant, in the case of Somerset the Calne Blake family and in the case of Devon and Cornwall the Blake family of Bretagne (arrived in the early 1500s) although some of the Devon people may be Calne Blake descendants and later some of the Blake families along the Cornwall border were perhaps Calne Blake descendants. The Blake families in Warwickshire and across the Midlands are quite likely descendant of the le Blake families that I mentioned earlier as being in those areas in the 1100s., There is also a large Blake family in East Anglia in these early times. Of course there are several large Blake families in Ireland particularly in Galway but they are descendant of Richard Caddell alias Blake. So my work for the day is laid out in front of me and I will pursue it a little later.

It will be interesting to see whether or not this budget passes since it is a money bill it could bring down the government if it fails to pass and we are into election time. The only real winner in that would be the Liberal Party because voting it down votes down all of these perks for people like free dental care, free lunches and the like. It is a win win for them but the bureaucracy to run it will be huge if they implement it. It really needs to be given to the provinces (i.e. the money) and let them add dental into medical care and school lunches into medical care. The system already exists in each province for the distribution of medical care. I guess my thoughts on it all really are that people can claim dental care on their taxes. You just have to decide priorities perhaps as I recall after my father went bankrupt when I was a young child (I was three I think but perhaps nearly four as I can remember stuff from when I was four) then my mother made the decision to concentrate the available monies to dental care and health care for her then five children and themselves. I realize that people have to make their own decisions in that regard but the health care of children and adults is more important than anything else. I can remember it really well because my glasses became a precious object in my mind as my mother said to me they cost $10 and we can not afford for you to lose them or break them. I was very conscious of that (and must admit it stuck to me my entire life). Was it good training for a child? Absolutely I think. Whenever my husband wanted to move to a bigger better house I was always the not interested one (had my proofreading to do when they were gone!) and off he went with the girls and they house hunted but they always came home with reasons why not to buy that one. That was music to my ears as I had no interest in moving. Probably if my family had been in this area I would have been more interested but then my children would have had their aunts, uncles and cousins so more of an incentive to have a bigger better house. I like my little house and at 78.5 it is all that I can take care of for sure. There is parging to do and the painting and the grounds to take care of and it is plenty. I am so very glad that I do not have a big house to take care of in my old age. But it was just us all those years and this house suited me very well especially when I went back to work outside of the home in the mid 1990s having worked at home copyediting and proofreading for over fifteen years at that time. Working at home is great as you are always here in case the children need you or there are deliveries etc etc. Being the fourth child I wore hand me downs most of my life until I was five inches taller than my older sister but then I was babysitting and I bought my own clothes. But I am not a clothes horse although I do, one of these days, have to buy some new clothes as mine are all purchased before Edward took ill in 2011 which finally resulted in a pace maker in 2012. 

The day moves onward and I have finished my tea and must get to my Latin studies and then breakfast. On to the day.



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