How well do you know those that you love?
I’m sure you talk to them every day. You’ve probably had endless and numerous conversations over bowls of paella, plates of lasagne and mounds of moussaka whilst fighting off mosquitos and scratching your sunburn on holiday. But, other than that, what do you remember about them? What did you talk about?
You may know that they are irritated by self-service check-outs in Tescos, that they are miserably inept at loading the dishwasher and are hopeless at D-I-Y but what about His Story? Or Her Story? What do you know about that?
What was his name again?
Do you know where they went to school? Or, even before we get to that, do you know the names of their parents? Where they were born and how many brothers and sisters they had? Of course, when we’re in our first few decades things that like are fairly obvious but once people get older even those straightforward facts can be lost to the annuls of time.
Even more important than names and numbers though is what they were like as children. Did they have a quiet, studious family life or was it robust and loud? What did their mum and dad do for a living? Were there any events in their childhood that shaped the adult they was to become?
In my role as a civil celebrant I am continually fascinated by the back stories people have.
The German pilot ruined their coats
The elderly man whose father lost a leg in the War and whose mother had to apply for special permission to work and keep the family. Back in those days, the Government had decreed that married women weren’t allowed to hold down a job as employment was scarce and had to be reserved for the returning soldiers.
Then there was the eighty-odd year old lady who nearly never made it past her sixth birthday. It was 1942 and, terrifyingly, a German fighter plane emptied it’s bullets over her family as they walked back home from a day out in Norwich. Mum pushed the children into a ditch and saved their lives although, apparently, she was far more worried about them damaging the new coats she had recently made them!
We are nowadays privy to an unlimited supply of information about the past. We can look up historical facts and data on our phones and tablets but they are just outlines. It is stories like those that really conjure up pictures and put colour and flesh on the bones of the portraits of the past. And when those stories belong to our loved ones then they become even more real.
How did we live with Brexit?
The point is that we are all living in the past. Some day, in the distant or not-too-distant future, we will have been deemed to have lived “in the olden days”. Future generations will view our lives through the telescope of time and wonder aloud at how we lived with the uncertainty of Brexit; why we allowed people to perish in poverty and what on earth was a landline?
Who do you think you are?
The reason that Who Do You Think You Are is so popular isn’t because anybody thinks that a celebrity sitting in a library with a book is particularly interesting. However, people are fascinated by the stories that their ancestry throws up. Of course, we can’t all be related to royalty like Danny Dyer but that doesn’t matter. There are stories in every family and each individual has their own piece of the past.
Apparently watching the first series of the BBC programme caused 7% of people to start researching their ancestry. You don’t have to develop an obsession with genealogy to keep those stories alive though. All you need to do is talk to each other. Your partner, your parents and grandparents, your aunties and uncles. The stories you uncover might not be ground breaking but they will provide fascinating little insights into the people that surround you.
What’s wrong with Dave Allen?
Sometimes it’s what somebody doesn’t like that it equally fascinating. A family I recently spoke to revealed that their mild mannered mother always hated Dave Allen. Why? What was wrong with Dave Allen? At least I knew why my mum didn’t like Judith Chalmers…
It’s good to talk
A TV campaign back in the day for BT used the marketing slogan “it’s good to talk”. Well it certainly is. Although I suppose it’s equally good to listen. And, if there’s nobody willing to do either then why not jot down some of your memories yourself?