Centenary of WW1

Over at Lucky 7s blog challenge I asked everyone about current or past connections with WW1 as we celebrate the 100 year anniversary of war breaking out. I have found it really interesting on TV etc as I have never done history to any level and stopped it soon after the dull Bronze & Iron age stuff they taught us!

My Mum's dad Joe Tommy Warren here  went away to war and I have a pencil written notebook of his diary thoughts.  The intention is to get it onto the computer but really I need to decipher his lovely hand and dictate to a willing typist, to allow some flow.

These are a few of the things I photographed last night.. he was in East Africa / Mombasa and Dar es Salaam..

Joe was a local school teacher, I sometimes think of him a bit like the character in Private Ryan, who had to be in charge but didn't want the guys to know he was 'just' a teacher...but it is so interesting to read his thoughts on war and the people he encountered abroad..

''Declaration of war may have been accompanied with the ringing of bells and expressions of hilarity but deep in the hearts of thousands there was the greatest anxiety.'' August 1914

Christmas Card from the Desert

January 1916 from Mombasa to his wife-to-be
They married in July 1916

Staged note to say he was still alive

Christmas message with hint of who would know where he was..

Birthday note  22-march-1915 .. No recognition of it being a special day.

see the note above this date.. Fighting 12 miles from here.. One attempt to round up about 4 to 6 thousand of the enemy.

365/164 Antique.

Two things today : Uncle Bill's birthday.. I had in mind it was today and Kate saw it on Facebook.. ahh, it has some uses...Happy Birthday from your Cornish connection.. xxxx

...and Jordan PASSED her Driving Test.. what a little beauty!!  She had to wait for the car to come through MOT and then had to go to work half an hour later!


 I have most of the antique things I own in my Mum's little annexe which she used to live in. ..she went into a residential home for the last six months of her life and in that time I sorted a lot of stuff out, so as it turns out it was easier to do before than after.  The place was decorated for Uncle Bill to stay in so I kept the antique stuff in a nice glass cabinet, a little bit of our life long ago.

There are a few things hidden in my scrap room drawers and here are some of them..mostly a diary and post from my Mum's Dad, sent home from East Africa in the first war.. I should get on with the job of writing up his thoughts, he was a teacher and I am sure he had lots of views of the way the world was then..I think of him like the Tom Hanks character in Private Ryan, a teacher misplaced in a war.

Also found a silver coin, well worn, turns out, thanks to Google, it is a Queen Victoria commemoratuve meal from her Diamond Jubilee.. good timing.. here's the Google image I found, so the one I have is very worn, maybe it was worn around someone's neck.. it has a small hole in it.

365/136 Portrait of a stranger.

Again, several pondering thoughts about who I might photograph for this, but as is the usual thing for me in the week I know everyone I see during my day.. the nearest I get to a stranger is a delivery guy who brings things to our office, but it was quiet today and I'm not even sure anyone came in.  I was in town earlier,looking out things for our little family shindig on Saturday, but at that point I didn't know the day's prompt.

.. did you see what I did there.. wandered off a whole paragraph of excuses..

..here's my stranger.. well he would be if I was in the same room, as I never knew him, but he is Joe Warren, my Mum's dad, husband to the lady in the picture on Sunday.

..our favourite snapper of strangers is Col's Uncle Bill who when he is over always has his camera at hand, he has a great telephoto lens and when he's showing us the images he has taken there is usually someone eating an ice cream on the beach, or talking outside a shop and we ask who it is.. he says he doesn't know, he was on the opposite side of the harbour .. he should be in the papparazzi!!

..a few years ago, over the weekend of the Golden Wedding we went on a fishing trip and as we walked back around the harbour I stopped to speak to someone I knew.

 Uncle Bill took his picture, maybe two pictures.. the guy laughed and said why would anyone want a picture of me.  But on reflection there was so much to  see from Uncle Bill's point of view... this was an elderly man, a resident of the town, in fact a man who had lived all his life within 50 yards of Pemzance harbour. He was wearing a woollen hat and his tanned skin was so 'Cornish' to someone from the outside.

(I'll let you into a secret, the man used to be my father-in-law)

365/134 Portrait of a woman.

I used to have a portrait of my Dad's mum, Bessi Anne Stone a lady I know little about; she died when he was only 16 and, as he was an only child and died when I was 8, there was never was a time when he talked to me about her. The last time I saw that picture it was in an old oval frame and got damaged in the cellar / outdoor shed of our cottage in Mousehole. I was not that nostalgic then and for some reason did not save it, so who knows if I will ever see her picture.

...........................

This portrait I found amongst my Aunt and Mum's things when 'sorting' after Mum died. It is my maternal grandmother Leonora Edna Warren nee Jewels.  Looking at this picture she has the look of my great niece and I must show it to the family when they are next here. It is funny how we must resemble our ancestors so much yet often never know it as we don't meet or know people who can make the connnections.

This is the only grand parent I ever knew, and if I am honest there was little love between us, she was 70 when I was born and rather old at that point, housebound and frail, much 'older' than you'd expect a 70 year old to be now.

I think she was fonder of my brother, a first (and only) grandson, born when she was not then 60 and able to look after him a bit and enjoy him.  Leo was widowed in her early 40's as was my Mum, and she had three children still to raise. Her husband, my Mum's father was a strong capable type, a local peacher and school teacher so his sudden death must have left her quite helpless.

It's sad to find pictures of your grandparents in their youth, but it does remind you that they were someone's young mum once full of energy and smiles, much different to the grumbly old lady I knew who watched wrestling in TV but wouldn't let me play cards on a Sunday!

I feel a little guilty for my feelings towards her as she was mum to my mum and when I moaned to her she must have been hurt.. as I would if the kids moaned about mine now!

..........................Oh well, to lighten the mood I am off out with some of the family to a comedy show at Fowey's Literary Festival.. bye!!!

Now that's what I call..

.. a Family Portrait.

My Mum's parent's wedding picture. Joe Tommy warren married Leonora Edna Jewels on July 28th 1916.

He was a local school teacher who had been drafted to the war.

This is a page from the Penberth / 2K's album I did for my brother's 60th.

Great day!

Yesterday started a little later than intended and I was feeling a bit fatalistic as I saw sleety stuff falling from the sky close to mid-day, but Zac & JB made decisions for me, he even drove, and we set off to the metropolis we know in these parts as 'Hayle' to hit to stores (for stores read M&S, Next & Boots!), but we went to shop and shop we did! 

We returned home with the ubiquitous socks and smellies in our carriers and soup and cakes in our bellies (not just soup & cakes, but M&S soup & cakes!)  We made a slight detour to collect Christmas Pudding Ice Cream and Caramel Fudge Ice Cream from Mr. B's and got home just in time to unload the car before my next adventure began!

Ross and I went over to St Levan for the Candlelit Carol Service, we called by and collected Gill and Rosie. The church wasn't quite as full as usual but the event still ticked all the boxes for me. Lyn Batten organises it and some of the words she chose were beautiful, her Nan & Grandad would have been so proud to hear her and to see things run so smoothly.  They have just opened 'toilets' after much fundraising and new gravel has been laid into the church, it makes a very satisfying crunch as you walk in along the pathway lit by large glass candle jars.

After the service we have the usual mulled wine, mince pies and catch up with friends old and new. I was introduced to the son of an old favourite of my Mum's, he has a new baby and lives in the thatched cottage opposite my old home.  It was hard to explain who I was in terms of people he knew today, but then he asked how I was related to Tommy Thomas...I explained this was my Dad, and Tristan said that he had been told stories of Dad getting dressed for school standing on a stool to avoid flood water in the cottage!  Well, it was a story I hadn't heard, so whether it's a bit of Penberth folklore or not I'll have to ask my brother, but it was amazing to know that my Dad, a man who died so young at just 47 over 40 years ago, is still talked about.

My cousin also gave me a book that has been compiled on the history of St Buryan School, and there are quite a few photos of my mum, but mostly, again I was so touched, by the sheer volume of information and praise for my grandfather Joe Tommy Warren who was school teacher there before the 1st WW and afterwards til 1938, til he died, suddenly from appendicitis, another man stolen well before he was 50.  For the nostalgia queen that I am, it was an evening to really savour, and gave me more than a little nudge to remind me of the War Diary I have sitting just above this computer awaiting the uploading it deserves to pc.

As we came home past Penzance Ross' mind travelled to food and the thought of cooking when I got in was not on my list of best bits for the day.  Needless to say I didn't take much encouragement to call in at the Dolphin for a quick snack and there we bumped into Ross' posse of pals, including Kerry just home from Palma, and Jiggy who I discovered also has the pre-Christmas ritual of holly cutting and strapping a couple of branches together with cable ties, throwing it in the corner.. and hey presto!.. legend!

Just as a little extra for the snow days, this is a picture I found in an old album, a scene you don't see a lot, with Penberth being so close to the sea. My brother Ken outside the aforementioned thatched cottage, in the days of Auntie Janie Hosking, she of the saffron buns and the twitching curtain..'Whoos-at?'

Family history..

This week I finally started writing up the notes from my Mum's dad's WW1 diary. 

He was a local teacher at St. Buryan and I have kind of view of him as like the character played by Tom Hanks in Private Ryan, a little misplaced and pehaps too much of a thinker to go away to war without a heavy heart..

..I don't know a lot, but in the notes I've copied so far he has spent a year near Plymouth in training for going away to war...

''Declaration of war may have been accompanied with the ringing of bells and expressions of hilarity but deep in the hearts of thousands there was the greatest anxiety.'' August 1914