15 september 2013, been a while

A fortnight on, and I am still shaking the branches of my family tree, with ripe and interesting fruits falling out left, right and centre. There are family schisms over raincoat factories, penniless litvaks turning up in dundee thinking they're in "amerika", great uncles getting shot down in the battle of britain, rather too many kids disappearing between birth and adulthood, a dramatic deathbed scene, and offshoots springing up in america, south africa and australia, as well as much dead wood I know I'll never find in the old world of der heim. A common thread is the amazing march across the generations, uncannily similar in the endless different branches I am delving into, of poverty-stricken immigrants seeing their children embed themselves in their adopted homelands, and the next generation succeed to parent the pillars of the community that form the often-accurate stereotype of today. So much of my own history is in manchester, and I'm working on a map with a pin (electronic of course) of everywhere we've laid our hats, and will one day make a tour, at least of the properties still standing, which I don't think are many. And my kids are now being sucked in too, as we start to set it all out on a big wall in my study, with photgraphs where we have them. I think that some thirty years after I gave up stamps, I may have myself a hobby !