Pershore Abbey in Worcestershire, The Abbey Church of the Holly Cross

 Absolutely stunning old Abbey in Worcestershire. The Britons have an amazing number of old Churches - the talent that went into building them was wonderful. 

The service was lovely and I felt very content to be able to attend a real All Saints Day Service if only online but at my age online is good. There are no commitments for me and to be in the company of Anglicans was a pleasant experience. 

Working on the Charting book and I am at page 138 - it has expanded somewhat as I found the letter size was maybe a bit small in some of them. Interesting I was actually shocked at the size of the type in the revised version that I published back in the winter last year. I now realize my eyes were really not up to doing that as I often thought the print was a bit small but in reality it is huge. That is part of the reason the book is so long. I suspect that the Blake and Pincombe books are also such larger type but I haven't looked at them since before the first surgery. Time just has flown by once I realized that I needed to do the Charting book for Siderfin. 

Lots of exercise yesterday through the day and it was a lovely quiet day. The sort of day that appealed to me when I was younger and wanting to read whatever it was I was reading. My teen years were spent doing a lot of reading. But also I was on a panel for one of the radio stations in London where I grew up. I can not remember the call sign although it might come to me. We discussed teenage thoughts and I think there was maybe six of us perhaps from different schools; I think it was a bit political I have forgotten now but we did talk about a lot of things. I did that for one year as I recalled with a friend that my grandmother had introduced me to. She is a lovely person and I last saw her at my uncle's funeral in 2003. Should have exchanged emails or something but mostly we were remembering my uncle and the time flew by and then we were on our way. Sort of one of those times in your life when you meet someone you knew in your teen years and by then I was 58 and I think her life had been busy as well but we enjoyed chatting; it was fun. Hard to believe that this loner did things like that when I think about it. 

Watched the news yesterday and still the Satanists of the world continue to threaten our desire for a peaceful existence. Strange really but then that is Satan; always causing trouble. It was interesting hearing that in Mecca the pilgrims stone Satan to rid Satan from their lives I guess. Without Satan we could truly have peace. 

Today the cleaning and it is the two floors so will be busy. I am getting more and more organized though and the time taken seems to be lessened. Basement on Tuesday.

 

All Saints Celebration

 One of my very favourite services is All Saints Day. I used to go when I still lived at home to the service even though it was during school time. It was and still is wonderful to hear the stories of the early Christians as they tried to follow Jesus' teachings to give everyone a better life. The online service today is an All Saints Day Service so will attend after breakfast. 

Yesterday was a day of thinking and working. I moved forward to page 117 in the Charting Book and slowly but surely it is coming to the end of the book but still another few days and then the need to continue the indexing and then proofreading and that should see the end of the book to completion. I will correct the original revision to eliminate my errors during my time of cataracts and then put them up on line. 

Then and only then I will move onto the Blake and Pincombe books once again. Today I need to work on the Kipp Newsletter. I just did not get to it yet. I am still thinking about what I want to say and it is more difficult because this is not my family line but it is the family line of my husband and children. The yDNA was what I generally worked on for the Kipp family and Edward did the autosomal DNA whilst I was and still am a co-administrator of the T2 mitochondrial haplogroup that is his and the Full T haplogroup.  Life has been busy for a while for me as I delved into yDNA and mtDNA. I was a slower comer to autosomal although did do all the testing. I just waited for quite a while as the matches flowed in before I really got into it. The Pincombe became the most interesting because so many of my cousins tested. Then so many Blake cousins tested that it to became quite interesting. I find my interest now lies more in the autosomal matches now then in the yDNA and mtDNA matches although these are also usual in research. I did manage to get a cousin to test our Pincombe line which has since been verified by a number of other testers. 

Daylight savings is over and I hope it is the last time that we move to daylight savings. I really prefer the brighter mornings and the dark evenings let me work away for hours and hours. But I am definitely a morning person mostly up every day at 6:00 a.m. just as I have been most of my life. It worked well for us when our children were small as Edward liked to stay up late and sleep in in the mornings. Although gradually he moved to going to bed earlier and getting up earlier which was nice and they do say it is healthier. I used to worry about his health staying up so late although didn't go on and on about it. Just kept it to myself. 

So my list for the day is breakfast first, then Church, then latin and then the newsletter and finally the Charting book. Mixed in will be my exercise routines and perhaps I will get into the backyard at least for fresh air. Although the air seems fresh enough inside as well to be honest. It is definitely hibernation time as there are fewer and fewer squirrels about. The chipmunks appear to have moved on with the new fence building although we will see if they return in the spring. Definitely the birds are gone with the feeders taken down now. Still see some birds but not so many. 

 

Saturday in God's World

Another beautiful Saturday. I loved Saturday as a child mostly because I didn't like going to school. I loved to learn and read everything I could manage. Saturdays were special. My father always got up early and made oatmeal porridge and I would go down from my attic solitude and he would fill a  bowl for me before he left for work. Sometimes we would chat a few minutes but then he was off. I just ate it like that; in the bowl without brown sugar and no adornments. Now I  make my own and it is cooked with raisins and cranberries and then blueberries are added at the end along with wheat germ, wheat bran and cocoa. Absolutely delicious and doesn't change from day to day to week to month to year. Possibly it could change but I doubt it. When I went out to work every day I did not make oatmeal. I usually had bran muffins that I cooked on Sunday to last the week. Love bran muffins and have not made any since Edward died. He liked them as well. So pretty soon time for breakfast but right now solitaire games, the daily Microsoft treat  on the computer. I also do the Weekly Challenge which gives me double the points once completed in the week. That is redone every week. It is just plain fun. 

When my children went to school I helped in the early years in the classroom once a week all year. I learned to appreciate the trials of a classroom teacher and understood much better why I was not happy in school. The lowest learner gets the prime amount of attention and in order to control the class you need rules that do not always fit for a student that is quite willing to move ahead and learn on their own. It is a challenge to have the slower students still working away on their arithmetic problems and a faster student reading because it looks like more fun to the slower students and they could become difficult in a classroom making the life of a teacher much harder. Interesting really what one learns as an adult. You do forget as you move along in school just how much you did learn in those early years. 

Yesterday was a busy day and I did a little work on the Siderfin family books. I will be glad to have them completed. Occasionally I mull around the thought - why ever did I do this, my Siderfin ancestor was my 3x great grandmother but it was the need to update James Sanders book that drove me. I am surprised no one did it until 110 years after he wrote it. He even in his Foreword emphasizes that his knowledge of genealogy is low and he hopes he will be forgiven for diving into this field of which he had low background. Myself, I should have realized how poorly my eyes were working. I had enough headaches to show that last year when I was working away at the text. So forward and onward and get this task completed so that I can get back to my parent's surnames and work on their books. 

It was nice to see the two big bags of raked up walnut leaves and stems go into the compost truck. There are more leaves and stems this year than last and the tree continues to grow at its usual miraculous rate of a walnut tree. They are basically a weed tree that grow in the woods but a squirrel must have planted a walnut in the backyard next door. It is too close to the fence and one day will take it out but not in my time. 

Now that fall is well into and the leaf cover is pretty much gone one can see the sky once again. The winter sky is beautiful. Usually bright blue and cold but you can see so much in the heavens wherein God dwells watching and waiting for us to do the right things. He gave all the instructions we just have to do it and live a better life on the uplifted plain of peace. It always seems within our grasp but Satan slithers in and takes it away (Russia and Iran you know who you are - Satan for sure). 

Onto the day and breakfast is next. Then Latin and another new week of Latin begins on Monday. I am getting to the end of the lessons. But I will continue to work away on practise sessions into next year and start to work on my French once again. I may eventually also bring my German up to scratch. It is just plain fun. 

Hallowe'en

A quiet Hallowe-en on this street with just a few children wandering from door to door. That is pretty usual the last ten years actually. I still wonder about the custom of children going door to door but it is a custom. 

More work on the Siderfin book yesterday and I am on page 108, slowly working my way towards the end of the book. I occasionally have to redo the chart because I think the lettering is just too small and that was the case once again with one yesterday. The page count is now 136 without indexes. It will shorten a little but not a lot. Most lines reach up to 1900 or slightly into 1900 which is fine as I think these days most know their grandparents and great grandparents. 

Latin moving along and my fingers are itching to get at those transcriptions of Blake and Pincombe material that I have collected up. I have had a cursory glance at most of the material but indepth is needed to see if they are valuable to the book.

November 1st and the Kipp Newsletter is due. I have not yet written it but will do so today. It will only discuss yDNA discoveries as a result of the Y-700 testing that was done on Edward's sample. It has actually led me on the path I thought it would which is good as it makes it easier for me to continue following through with that. YDNA is perhaps the most interesting as the surname stays basically the same. mtDNA has proven to be interesting with my line partly because of the questions it does not answer thus provoking one to look at it more intently. 

I raked for about 1.5 hours yesterday and the dreadful stems and leaves of the walnut tree are now bagged. They do poison the soil for a lot of plants. Plus it is only about 30 centimetres from the fence so will eventually destroy it or displace it. No idea why people let trees grow up along the fence line actually. I have a maple I have to get out of the fence on the other side and will do that soon. 

Other than that the warming spell is meant to dissipate and colder weather to arrive but no snow yet in the forecast that I have seen but I have not been paying a great deal of attention to the weather lately. Once I am inside for the winter I seldom notice since it doesn't affect me very much since I have a company to clear the snow. 

Breakfast soon and then Latin. Exercises to follow and more work on the Siderfin Book later today. I worked too hard yesterday and got a slight headache so will take it easier today.