amy’s blog on the mad house (tree)

on wednesday 6th february 2008 my bathroom was flooded!

i had been upstairs collecting the clothes to take backdownstairs toput in the washing machine.  i came downstairs and heard footsteps behind me, i guessed they belonged to Mackenzie my 2yr  old son.  i thought no more of it and went and loaded the washing machine and turned it on.

 i went and sat in the lounge and i could hear water dripping, i thought it was the washing machine leaking again so got up to have a look.  i got as far as the kitchen door when i saw water pouring from my ceiling light fitting.

i ran upstairs and there was Mackenzie totally unaware of the damage he was doing, playing with his boat and Thomas the Tank Engine in the sink.

the water was cascading over the sides of my sink and down my wooden bathroom cabinet, onto the floor and through the ceiling to downstairs.  i turned the taps off and saw that he had filled the plughole and the overflow hole with toilet paper!  i unblocked all of this and brought Mackenzie downstairs.

i placed a bucket nder th light to catch the water and moped up what had already hit the floor.

i rang the insurance company and they told me i had an excess of £150 so i would have to pay that and then send them the bills for anything else.   i then rang an electrician that said they would be out within an hour to check my electrics especilly the light where the water was coming from.

the electrician turned up, turned all of my elctrics off, tested the light and told me that my ceiling light was damaged and i would need a new 1.  (i didnt like the old 1 anyway, but his wasnt how i intended getting a new 1).  the electrician went and got a new fitting for me and wired it all in.

His charges were £45 an hour plus VAT and parts.   he was here for an hour and 3minutes but had to charge me for 2hours.  in total it cost me £115.

 all because little 1 wanted toplay with his boat in water.  yet if i give him a bowl of water to play in he isnt interested!

For weeks now we have had “when do i go to big school mummy” and “thats my big school there” every time we have passed it in the car or on a bus.  This got worse when i started buying his uniform in june.

 We had to tell him that “he would be going to big school after Mackenzie had had his birthday and the holidays were over”.  the day after Mackenzie’s birthday - “can i go to big school now?” NO!!!!

Before the school hoildays he had a morning and an afternoon at the school to meet his teacher and friends.  he enjoyed himself. 

 On the 6th september we had a meeting, me, him and his teacher just to check everything was ok and answer any questions etc.  Jarred was a right little terror, mouthy as anything etc.  The teacher contacted the hospital for his medical records which we agreed to.

Well, i stuck him in his uniform last night so i could get some photos out in the garden before he started just incase we were in a rush this morning.  we weren’t - we got out and took a few more photos and still had 10mins to spare.

the day:

7:15am alarm goes off, i hit the snooze button

7:20am alarm goes off again - get up this time and wake jarred

7:45am he’s downstairs eating his breakfast

8:15am he’s still playing with his breakfast, trying to colou the last of his homework book

8:25am he gets his uniform on

8:30am in the garden taking photos

8:35am we said goodbye to daddy and mackenzie and walked across the road to school

8:40am we’re standing on the playground waiting for the teacher

8:45am we go into the classroom, he hangs his coat and bag up and goes to play with jigsaws

8:50am he shows his teacher his homework and gets a sticker

8:51/2am i get told i can leave now (so i do)

He is now on his own for the day.  hope he has fun!

just found out today that my 4th grt grandmother (on the haylock/bigmore line) was in the lunatic asylum in 1861.  she was at melton suffolk.

 now i think this is quite cool, and i said so to hubby and he said “only you would think thats cool, most people would be embaressed”.

BUT it does explain why i am as i am!

FAMILIES!!!!!! WHO WOULD HAVE THEM???

if i had the option of not having a family i would choose this option.  believe me i’m not just saying this.

“my grandparents” lied to my mum all of her life as to who they were and even when she only had a few days to live they still wouldnt tell her the truth.  the same people have forbidden me to trace the family tree - well they have tried but i have done it anyway.

my sister is ok at times but thinks she is better than everyone else and therefore doesnt speak to me very often.

the in-laws dont particularly like me, but then they dont like their son much more, so what can i expect.

i have ancestors that had relationships with mothers and daughters, that married 2 or 3 sisters from the same family or didnt even marry at all.  i have got people having affairs and ending up with children as a result of it.

 of the few remaining living relatives 2 have forbidden me to do the tree, 1 doesnt care if i do it or not, and the last handful have been brainwashed by the 2 not to give me any information if i ask for it!!!

“nan and grandad” have been together since 1957, everyone believes that they are married - they are not!

*****skeleton 5 - lies about a marriage*****

hi and welcome.

with this being the first post it is going to explain about me and my tree.

i’m amy, a stay at home mother of 2 boys.  this means that i have the time to dedicate to my tree and finding people and records.  i have always been interested in history and spent many weekends as a child going round museums and such places with my mum.  i studied history at school and took it for GCSE.

as well as tracing the family tree i am actively involved with St John Ambulance (sja) and have been since 1994.  whilst i was a sja cadet we did a short course on geneaology.  i had quite a few problems as i wasnt allowed to trace my mums side due to family skeletons.  i traced my dads back to my 2 grt grandparents. 

doing this course made me want to trace as far back as i could.  there was only 1 problem i didnt have a computer or the internet and from what i had already found out most of my ancestors came from durham and the surrounding areas.  i wasnt old enough to drive and so the tree was put on hold.

when i moved into my own flat i bought a cheap computer and had the internet.  i was on dial up which was expensive and i couldnt afford to subscribe to family history sites, so the research was very slow.

i moved to the house and my now ex-husband had bradband internet installed.  this meant that i was able to carry on with the tree.  still only on my dads side.  the mariage ended and so did the internet so the tree was on hold yet again.

shortly after i was divorced my new man moved in and the internet was conected once more.  i picked up where i had left off.  however, my mum was criticaly ill and dying so i decided that i was going to look into her side of the family.  sadly i didnt get very far before she died.  although i wasnt able to tell her what i had found out i believe taht she knows and is pleased to know the truth.  it is in her memory that i am continuing to trace the tree.

just after she died the tree was put on hold again, this time so that i could organise my wedding.  after the wedding i started the tree again slowly but it soon gathered speed.

i was told by “my nan” that i wasnt allowed to trace my mums side of the family.  for anyone that knows me, they know that telling me not to do something is a bad idea.  i went ahead and carried on searching.  i asked “my nan” for her parents names.  she gave them to me (or so i thought) and i traced them and their children and partners etc back to the 1800’s.  i decided to buy a birth certificate for 1 of the children to find out that THEY WERE NOT MY RELATIVES!

i could have given up at this point but due to being given the wrong information made me more determined to find out what the family were hiding.  haloween has nothing on the skeletons that i have found on mym mums side of the tree.

at the time of writing this i have 1348 people in the tree and 136 photos added.

the person listed on my mums birth cert as father is correct.  i have pictures of them both and they are very alike.

this gentleman, my grandfather, was in the army and was married with 2 children who were born in the 1930’s.  he had an affair adn my mum was the result.  he also had a relationship with “my mums mum” (half sister).

*****skeleton 4 - lets have relationships with mother and daughter whilst i am married to another lady*****

following on from skeleton 2.

my mums real mum was supposedly married.  everyone thought that she was married, but there is no marriage record listed.  half of her children are under her married name and the other half are under her “husbands” name. 

this lady had ”an affair” so to speak, and as the result ended up pregnant with my mum.  the story goes tha she went away to see friends for 2 months and took her eldest daughter with her.  when they returned the eldest daughter had a 2 year old son (hers) and a new born baby (my mum, not hers but her half sister).

*****skeleton 3 - non marriage and affairs*****

following on from skeleton 1.

the lady listed on my mums birth certificate as her mother ISN’T.  she was my mums half sister, who took mum to be registered as hers. 

my mum was the result of an affair (so to speak).  my mums real mother WASN’T married as everyone was lead to believe.  but she had an affair and my mum was the result.  her eldest daughter (my mum’s “mum” as we know her) took my mum on to save any problems.  she had a son 2 years older than my mum, they moved area and started life as a family.  who is going to question a 20year old married lay with 2 children under the age of 2 in the 1940’s?

*****skeleton 2 - mum is not mum*****

my mum was always told that she was either the first child in the new kings lynn hospital or the last in the old kings lynn hospital.  kings lynn didnt have a maternity hospital until the 1950’s.  mum was born in 1949.  also on her birth cert is an address of a house. 

however, the person listed as her mother ISN’T.

*****skeleton 1 - not being born where told*****