This week’s roundup – and a fine selection with quite a few new (to me) blogs is now up on Liberal England.
And next week is my (official) turn – as opposed to fill-in occasions – so please get those nominations rolling in: the address is easy to remember – britblog AT gmail DOT com.
I’m spending a few days in Paris, trying if not entirely succeeding in getting away from it all (well when I’m not writing letters/reports etc). But I did get to stroll along “Path of plants†from the Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes (built on an old railway line – raised through the central part so you get a great different angle on Paris) on a lovely sunny winter’s day.
At the “forest†(well it is really more like Hyde Park), I got to expand my French vocabulary with the posters indicating the names of the (generally not so wild) animal life. I was taken by the names for house martin and swifts (Hirondelle de fenetre and Hirondelle de cheminee respectively – an eminently practical if I suspect, not entirely accurate division). And I learnt that anguille means eel – possibly a useful fact for the next time I feel the urge to order the “I wonder what that is?†object on the menu.
I have to celebrate the fact that John Howard, the man who culturally took Australia back to the 1950s, while presiding over an orgy of materialism, is finally, finally gone.
I think my mood is best captured by this audio-visual presentation from the SMH, of the victory speech of Maxine McKew, who unseated Howard in his home constituency, Bennelong, in which I grew up.
I can’t say Kevin Rudd, the new PM, excites me exactly, but at least he is going to sign the Kyoto protocol, and bring Australian troops out of Iraq.
And Australia does now have a female deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, I believe the highest political office ever held by a woman in Australia.
Where does the paper come from? I’ve just spent the best part of an evening trying finally to get on top of seven months or so of filing – and that despite the fact that I’m trying very hard to go entirely over to virtual records. (No more photocopying of articles!)
But one little gem that emerged was from a newsletter of the IHR friends – a website detailing Richard II’s treasure roll – lost for centuries at the bottom of a miscellaneous pile of files…. unfortunately I didn’t find anything quite such fun – mostly receipts that probably should go on my tax return but I can no longer remember to what they relate.
… over on My London Your London. I’ve been to a strong production of a beautifully written play, The Lightning Field, and Robert has been to an evening of Americana, which I gather is what you or I would probably call “country music”.
I had two years of that as a journalist in Tamworth, Australia’s “Country Music Capital” (has to be imagined said with a twangy and wholly fake American accent”). It was enough.
Of limited interest to most, but since my grandmother has been digging all of this up, I thought that I might post it in case it should help someone else’s Googesearch.
My great grandfather, William J.G. Boor, married Louisa A Hinton (one of 11 children) in 1893. They had two children: William R.G., born 1893, Doris Margaret. J. born 1897.
William married I don’t know when and my grandmother Edna Louise was born 1921 and married in 1941.
Louisa died in 1935.
Doris married George Michael Bushnell in 1938. (Interesting, at the age of 41.)
I believe that Louisa grew up on a farm near Stroud, NSW, and that William Boor may have been a soldier.
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