Family history

The Kid Brother, who is the family historian, having traced back the family tree some distance at least on my mother's side, has intervened to correct some information I put out in an earlier post. I claimed my father was the sire of two sons but in fact he had three sons. Unfortunately my older brother,Michael Patrick, caught pneumonia at the age of six months and did not survive. When I caught pneumonia at six months and nearly died (perhaps a reason for my smaller lung capacity?), except for the persistence of my mother against medical complacency, in the days when that sort of thing was not expected of working class mothers, I was given the saint name of John rather than Patrick. My mother did not want to name another child after St Patrick, a saint who failed to look after her firstborn. She must have relented when my Kid Brother was born, as he was named Andrew Patrick, a name already in currency in the family as one of my father's brothers was also named Andrew Patrick.

My Kid Brother also texted me this week to report that he was awoken at 1.00 a.m. by his bed shaking and his roof timbers creaking. It was the Market Rasen earthquake. The epicentre was also in Wombwell, which is a name from our family past.

The Kitten referred me to an episode of "Lark Rise to Candleford", so I watched it, wondering why she thought I would find it interesting. I found it intriguing as it seemed to revolve around a young couple with family and the husband, susceptible to drink, had given his wife a black eye. The wife of the local Liberal workman had taken an interest in their case and he utters the immortal line, "Now I begin to understand what it must be like for you to be married to me." I wasn't sure what I was supposed to get out of the episode. Kitten replied that the drunken married couple (not a reflection of her mother and I fortunately) had made her think of "Nelly and Patrick". Now these are the names of her paternal grandparents and shows that my stories of family history have made an impact on our younger daughter. The strange thing was I failed to recognise "Nelly and Patrick" in her description.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, I never referred ever to my Mam as Nelly. I knew that was her Christian name and heard other adults call her that. However to me she was Mam. In Alan Bennet''s wonderful "Untold Stories", he recounts a moment when he heard his parents call each other by their Christian names. He realised then that he had only ever heard them refer to themselves as Mam and Dad, and rarely by their Christian name. Parenthood is a strange occupation and surprisingly time consuming.

Secondly, my Da was never referred to as Patrick because all the men in the family could claim that name as their own as well. His brothers, sisters and sisters in law called him Seamus. Aunt Lucy, the Mrs Corrigan, being married to the eldest brother, called him James, which sounded like an admonishment. Everyone else called him Jim or Jimmy, even the Bradford police. He was Big Jim or Big Jimmy, although in stature he was not much bigger than my brother or I are now. However he was a man who talked with both fists to make his points. Big Jim was a mark of respect from those who had felt those points being made on them. Jimmy was the epithet of those who wanted the fists behind them or who had reason to call Da a friend.