Nan's Blog about September.
I began the month with high hopes of a breakthrough in family
history. There has long been a gap in my
charts because I did not know my paternal grandfather's mother's name. Over the years I have spent a fair amount of
time and money in endeavours to find it.
The director of the Tokoroa family history centre, Gladys Nepia, has
recently been called on a part-time family history mission, and was looking for
people she could visit to help them with their research. I invited her to come and help me. I knew the name of Thomas Roberts' father,
and I knew his birth date, and I knew where he was born. What was so hard about finding his birth
certificate to find out his mother's name?
In the old days of Somerset House I sent for it, but it was not found.
Years later I had a professional genealogist look for it. She sent for a birth certificate (for which I
had to pay!) but it was not my Thomas Roberts.
The location was wrong. I have
sent for and read census reports and parish records. No luck.
So when Gladys found on the Internet a list of births in Llanfyllin
in the right year, and saw Thomas was on it, I eagerly took down the details
and sent for the certificate by email to the British Government Records Office, with payment by
credit card. (I might say that was not
the easiest thing to do!) A couple of
weeks later I received a reply. The
certificate was not to be found. What a
let-down. The good news was that they
did not charge for the search and refunded all my money!
However, on the birth record Gladys found was the name of Thomas'
mother, Mary Ann Jones. Following her up I found her father was
Richard Jones. Gladys says I cannot
assume Mary Ann is my great-grandmother without certification, and so I should
not submit her name to the Temple. But
this I am inclined to do. I am of the
opinion that there is a 95% chance she is the one, and why should she and her
husband and son be kept waiting for a certificate that appears to be lost? If I am wrong, they will not accept the
ordinance, and things can be corrected in the millennium.
Back to the present. Ray and
I discovered there was a Book Fair in Tokoroa.
We had an appointment in Tokoroa that day, so inevitably we went to the
Book Fair. I do not much enjoy these
events. There were tens of thousands of
books laid out on trestle tables in a vast barn of the building. I have no idea how to go about looking
through them. I had just found a book I
was going to buy, a Rutherfurd book
about Ireland, when Ray called me to come and help him search through great
piles of National Geographic magazines.
We thought our subscription had run out in 2000, and picked from the
piles all the magazines published subsequent to that date. Ray also found several New Zealand Geographic
magazines. We found a large box and
piled in all our treasures. Then we found
we could not lift the box, so we had to beg another box as well. We paid $5 and off we went with our treasure
trove. (Unfortunately I forgot to get
Rutherfurd!)
Back home we made a list of all the National Geographic magazines
of this century we now have, and a list of those we do not have. Then it was I discovered that we already have
all the magazines up to 2009. We had
thought they finished at 2000! About 70
magazine duplicated! We put them all in
a box and took them – where? To the garage!
Quite the laugh on ourselves on Friday 13th!
Recently we have had a lot of youth speakers at our sacrament
meetings. Some of them have amazing
insights. And their talks are nice and
short! One young man, who is our Ward
pianist, appropriately spoke about music, and the effect of music on the
brain. He had already found out for
himself the value of what he calls sacred music on his studying habits. He is in his last year of school and expects
to go on a mission soon. He told of an
experiment with mice. You know the kind
of thing they do – expose mice to different things and see how well they can
find learn their way out of a maze. In
this experiment they exposed one group to the music of Brahms I think it was,
and another group to popular noisy music.
You guessed it, the classical group did well, the other groups, exposed
to discordant sounds, got totally confused.
I think I know how they felt!
The highlight of September was the visit of Nathan
and Vernice. It was so good to have them
here. We did the usual things – ie. Ray
took them to see some of his 'girl friends', particularly the one at the
Putaruru Information Centre, and we went to the Blue Springs. We also did some less usual things.
Although the weather forecast was bad, we took off
for Matamata, because Nathan and Vernice wanted to see Hobbiton. We called at the information centre and found
the cost of the tour was $75 each. Ray
of course would have none of that, but I decided to go for it. Although I have not seen the movie, and
cannot remember that I ever read the book (Nathan says I read it to him), and
although I could hear but a fraction of what our excellent young lady guide was
saying, and although it was raining, I felt it was worth the price. It took me into a world I would have loved in
childhood, making me feel that world was still there somewhere. I loved all the 'Hobbit Holes', although they
were facades only. A fantasy I could
relate to on some level of consciousness.
We ended at the Green Dragon, and that pub, meticulously created, had a
familiar feeling, not so remote from a few I have entered in England. We were treated to one free drink, given a
choice from four. Three were alcoholic
in varying degrees, and other was ginger ale.
All were especially brewed for Hobbiton.
The ginger ale was good. Had I
been free to do so I would have chosen the mildly alcoholic cider! The pub was built beside an original (as
being there before the movie people) little lake, a lovely setting.
We drove to Hobbiton by bus from the Hobbit Farm, where Ray waited
in the car for the two hours it took us for the tour. Then we returned to Matamata to Macdonalds
for lunch. Nathan's idea for the rest of
the day was to drive to Thames and Coromandel.
Even for me, that sounded a bit much when the forecast was heavy rain
and wind coming down from the north. He
proposed an alternative, Paeroa, Waihi, Katikati and the Kaimais then
home. That sounded good to me. Ray thought it mad. Vern was used to Nathan driving all around
the Wrekin.
It rained hard, but it was good to see that part of the country
once more. These days I tend to think
that each such journey may be for the last time. I found the Tauranga environs not so
appealing as in days of yore, which was a comforting thought in view of my
previous thought. Memories of going to
Tauranga being mostly of Stake Relief Society business probably contributes to
lack of nostalgia. The rain eased as we
drove home, but did not cease.
Nathan was talking of changes in the countryside, it having become
more groomed as it were. I looked
around as we drove over the Kaimais and decided that it was far from groomed,
whereas the farms between Matamata and Maungakawa looked cared for and
peaceful, with white sheep in green pastures, like something from the better
part of old England.
Vernice left us for a couple of days to visit friends and attend a
concert in Auckland. Meanwhile Nathan wanted to walk some of the Waikato River
Trail. The first day Nathan and I walked the trail from the Arapuni swing
bridge to Jones Landing. The next day, after a tour around Whakamaru village, we walked from Whakamaru
to Mangakino. Ray went to visit Denis
Wright before driving to Mangakino to meet us.
I had not walked the trail this way, that is, down river. I found it preferable, because one goes along
the least interesting part of the trail while fresh, rather than dragging it
out when one is tired. This section is
about 12km. It was long enough for Nathan, unused to walking much. Two cyclists
and a runner we encountered, and came upon a couple of walkers sitting having
their lunch.
As we came around the corner, they remarked to me that I must be
fit! I am sure that with my white hair and many deep wrinkles, people think I
am older than I actually am. So we
stopped to talk awhile. They live in
Eltham. Coincidence one. I said my sister used to live in Research, and
that I knew somewhat of the area around Eltham.
Then, coincidence two, the man said he said he
came to New Zealand when young, and was a teacher at Whakamaru school and lived
in Mangakino! Nathan told him that was
the only primary school he had ever attended!
Nathan was long gone before this teacher arrived in the early 1980s.
After our walk we drove to Atiamuri, to see the new road bridge and
have a look at the village, and take some photos. Back in Putaruru we were just too late to
introduce Nathan to PAWS, Ray's favorite Op Shop. (He did not get away with it – we went
another day.)
About 5pm we were just about to leave to try out the Indian
restaurant up the road, when there was a phone call from Vernice, who was on
her way home, having given up her trip to Whangarei. So we waited for her and went out to eat
fashionably late. The Indian food was so
mild one could scarcely taste the spices.
Nathan said he had never tasted milder.
This suited Ray and Vernice. I
could have handled it a little spicier but not much. We got two 'Banquet for Two' orders, which
turned out to be rather more food than Ray and I needed. No worries, we were
asked if we wanted to take the left-overs home, and when we left were given the
food nicely packed with extra rice.
The last day of their holiday was a working morning for Nathan, who
had asked us to save our hard jobs for him!
He fixed the chainsaw, failed to fix the old dehydrator, and fixed
something else I think. He measured the garage for new guttering, which we went
to Bunnings to buy. Then Ray was
awe-struck at the professional way Nathan put up the new gutter. Ray was the gofer, happy in his role.
So September drew to a close.
It was a good month.
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