Shaking more branches on the family tree

Until a recent family crisis which I may write about later, I have continued to pursue ancestors. On my mother’s side, I discovered someone had methodically put together a family tree of those Tremaynes whose roots sank into the fertile earth around Constantine, Cornwall all the way back to 1240.



Constantine is about five miles southwest of Falmouth.

At about that point, Peter (Perys) Tremayne, possibly a Knight Templar, produced two sons, John and Peter. My relative is John and his descendants are undoubtedly buried in this graveyard:



St. Constantine's was built in the 15th century on the remains of a Celtic monastery.

John married Margery, whose mother was Claricia Peverell and hereby hangs another tale.  Apparently, Claricia (and Margery, for that matter) were related to William the Conqueror.

It seems William married not only Matilda, daughter of a Norman baron, but had also linked himself previously in a secret marriage  to one Maud Ingelrica,  a Saxon princess. According to one genealogist, she was one of the “most celebrated beauties of her day.”  Born in 1032, the fair Ingelrica, was the daughter of the noble Saxon Ingelc, himself an “unrecorded son” of Aethelred the Unready, who seems rather well-named in these dubious circumstances, but he was unprepared (or, as other translators suggest,“ill-advised”) for other reasons as well, I'm sure.

Anyhow, William the Conqueror and Maud apparently had a son William. However, Maud  later married Ranulph Peverell who gave his surname to William. William the Conqueror, the real father, apparently wanted to spare his son the misery of being taunted ,as he had been, for illegitimacy. He was known as Bastard by his detractors, for his father Robert I, Duke of Normandy, was not married to his mother.  Goodness, the things you find out!

William the C., embroidered in the Bayeux tapestry, is lifting his
helmet to show he is alive after the Battle of Hastings (Source: Wikipedia).

As an aside, it is also intriguing that the Wikipedia entry about William the Conqueror ends by asserting clearly that in no way shape or form was William ever an unfaithful husband. A millennium later, these things still heat up people’s collars.

The Bastard/Conqueror gave his natural son William so many lands that, in the Domesday Book, he was recorded as having 162 manors, making him one of the major landholders in England. It probably helped that his adopted father had fought on the right side in the Battle of Hastings:

Horses and riders in disarray in the Battle of Hastings (1066) 
are depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry (Source: Wikipedia).

William, known as the Elder, to distinguish him from his son, the Younger, not to mention his half-brother, William Rufus, and his father, William the Conqueror, was a bit of a bounder. One source says he had “three wives and many concubines.” One of his wives produced William the Younger who was six generations removed from Claricia Peverell whose daughter married my Tremayne ancestor.

And 27 generations later (calculated by Ancestry.com, not me) I am here to write about it! Wow!

Embarrassments then and now

So much has been happening recently. Today, his Holiness the Pope resigned.  I resigned myself to donatng three books to the care and keeping of the Diabetes Association — but for pick-up tomorrow in case I change my mind. I also sent consolatory greetings to my daughter-in-law after she posted a note on Facebook about the death of one of their family dogs. However, it was an anniversary remembrance of their pet, who, I failed to recall, died a year ago. That reminds me of the time I asked after my son’s cat who had left this feline realm many months before.  I knew that but had forgotten. So embarrassing.  Maybe I should resign too.

Nevertheless, there are some events that crystallize things for me as a sniff of smelling salts awakens a swooning person. I was pleased to hear that the bones of poor Richard the Third were identified as his. His mortal remains will now be given a proper burial, and I hope the Sarum Rite is used. There is a precedent; it was used in 1984 for the funeral mass for the crew of the Margaret Rose, which sank in 1545 in the Solent off Portsmouth, England and lay buried in mud there for over 400 years.

Anyhow, what amazed me was that the clue to his former majesty’s identity was found in DNA belonging to a female descendant  (and not, as one excited CBC announcer claimed, an ancestor) of his from London, Ontario 17 generations on.

And in my own small way, I have made equally surprising finds. I have been working on the family tree using Ancestry.com and other sources I have serendipitously found via Google. 

At one point I thought I was related to an Englishman transported to Australia for stealing cloth, then marrying after his seven-year sentence was up and fathering a quiverful of children there. He also seemed to have returned to England, married and fathered several children there as well. Descent from a bigamist thief was a slightly embarrassing notoriety. Fortunately, I do not have to worry about it.

Someone put incorrect information into their tree; it was copied by many others until a bright light puzzled why, before the days of jet travel, John Noble was fathering a child a year in Australia as well as doing his part populating Mother England.

Same name and death date on the tombstone, but it was in an Australian cemetery, not an English one (first clue).  Wrong date and place of birth, it soon transpired, and I was left with an unblemished ancestor who lived all his 74 years in Fylingsdale, Yorkshire.

However, and this is the cliff-hanger, there was another find: more to come, once I prune some overhanging branches from the family tree.

Me and my bursa — strolling down the avenue

I have been having various adventures in the healthcare system recently. Some of them have involved my delicate lady parts, so I have eschewed writing about that, as I do want to remain relatively prim.

My hip, however, is a different story. It has been bothering me for years as a result of mishap at an office picnic held by the insurance brokerage where I worked many years ago.  I was playing volleyball, called out that I would get the ball, leaped up and was knocked to the ground by a much taller team-member who either didn’t hear my call or didn’t care. Rumour had it she was angling for one of the romantic attention of one of partners, and I have since thought, nastily, that she was just showing off for his benefit. Whatever her motive that day, her on-going ploys did not end well — for her, but that is another story.

However, she certainly got my attention. My hip hasn’t been the same since. I did not get proper medical care at the time, figuring I was too busy and the pain would just go away. It didn’t. I now have serious arthritis in that hip, but oddly it is not the cause of my pain and limping. It is my hip bursa – something I did not even know I had.

So welcome to bursa world. And yes, it is derived from the same Latin word which gives us burse (the little case which carries the chalice linen to and from the altar at the Eucharist services) and bursar, not to mention bursary:  you can look those up yourself in the unlikely event that you need to. It seems, however, to have nothing to do with a town of the same spelling located in northwestern Turkey.

Bursa means little sac or purse and is a cushiony fluid-filled item between the tendon, muscles and bones around a joint.  There must be lots here and there in the human body, but the one I am concentrated on is on the point of my hip, site of that ancient collision: the trochanteric bursa.

chttp://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/sport-injuries/hip-groin-pain/hip-bursitis

I became a fan of bursae when both my family doctor and the orthopedic surgeon he referred me to concluded independently that I had bursitis. My pain did not resemble hip pain: No referred pain to the groin, but lots on the surface of the hip joint.

Thank goodness, I would not have to undergo my much-researched hip replacement.  Although everyone I have talked to says their hip replacement was just the thing, I have had my doubts. As a massage therapist I did not return to said to me enthusiastically during our one and only session together, “When I was in training, I was allowed to watch a hip replacement operation, and it’s just like de-boning a chicken.”

Since coming to Parkhill, I have discovered a wonderful deep tissue massage therapist. Because of the pain, my muscles have become twisted and taut, and I limp when I walk. She has pummeled the adhesions in those muscles to a fare thee well and has encouraged me to do exercises to stretch those muscles out.

I hate to admit I have not done them as faithfully as I know I should chiefly because they require being on the floor a good deal of the time. The bedroom rug is always a bit linty to lie on and hard to arise from. I’ve been too lazy to get my yoga mat from wherever it is in the basement.

In any event, during my annual health review (apparently we don’t get annual physicals anymore), my family doctor and I discussed bursitis, and he gave me a sheet of exercises, several of which I discovered I was already doing.

There was one, however, which I had not done and which immediately attracted me because I did not have to get down on the floor to do it. I looked at the sketch; it showed someone hanging their bad leg over the edge of a bench.

 



Even if not in doubt read the directions; I know this now.

 

The bed would do just fine. I hung it over for the recommended 35 to 45 seconds. Easy peasy, I thought until I decided it was time to stand up.

Riveting red-hot pain coursed through my leg from my hip to my ankle. Greg chose that moment to ask me about going to the post office. I gasped and said I really couldn’t answer just now. I was at an angle of 45 degrees over the bed on my one good leg with my other leg suspended in immobile agony. I pondered having to go through the rest of my life in this state: both boring and utterly tortuous. Greg made an attempt to rub the worst pains. That helped a bit. After what seemed like an eternity, I notice the pain was slowly subsiding. I was able to return my right leg to the floor and stand up.

I must have torn every tiny little muscle fibre down my entire leg.

Only then was I up to re-reading the instructions. Apparently, you should do this first on the floor with the bad leg drooped over the good leg, giving a drop of inches, not feet.  Then graduate to what I did in one fell swoop.

But wonder of wonders, I was able to walk more freely. I did not limp as much. Later during my walk at the community centre, I was able to walk over the imaginary log – with both legs one after the other!! What a breakthrough!

Also try not to fall off the bed - or bench. (pictures by Greg)

I would not recommend plunging into any new exercise without fully reading the directions. Trying out and asking questions afterwards, my preferred way of learning, is not always a good idea. However, in this case, I am happy to say it has had amazing unexpected results so far. No pain no gain, indeed! It has all worked out in the end. And I have new motivation to keep up my floor exercises — as well as to vacuum more frequently. Plusses all around.

A new discovery in the world of staples

I received some nice presents for Christmas. Mind you, Greg and I don’t go overboard with the gift-giving, as we have so much stuff already. Where we do go overboard is in the food-eating, but that’s another story.

 

One of my favourite presents this year — until extremely recent developments — was a stapler. It’s a Swingline with a rather aerodynamic profile and a nice heft. Greg gave it to me because he thought I might like one of my own. Before I clarified this with him, I thought it was so I would not keep using his.




And it even has a low staple indicator.
 

My new office friend takes regular-sized staples.  This fact was essential, both to my stapling habits and to writing this blog, until only a few moments ago when I made a stunning discovery about my existing stapler. As a result, I have had to change the whole tenor of this blog, as you shall see ...

Yes, I still have my first and (up to now) only stapler. Greg said I must be one of the few people in the world who remembers getting their first stapler.

It is a small Apsco which I bought in the 1960s at the Oxford Book Store located in Wellington Square before Wellington Square was tarted up and renamed Galleria, in the forlorn hope that it would be an upscale shopping mecca. However, Galleria now contains an insurance company, a Rainbow Cinema, a few dollar stores and an annex for the local community college with an extensive food court. But that is beside the point now, as any planned analogy with my old stapler no longer holds true (Writing is a difficult art).

 

My  Apsco reminds me of a cricket - very eager.

 

My little orange stapler, by contrast is still relatively perky. It is in more or less in working order although it doesn’t stay closed. Made by a company called Isabergs Verkstads‏ located in Hestra, Sweden (which I shall have to find on the map), it is a model A 10.  According to the imprint on the finger rest, Apsco in “Toronto Ont. Can.” distributed it here. It could continue to function were it not for the fact that no one makes staples for it anymore. Or so I thought until, after squinting to see where it was made, I came across these stunning words along the staple-holder part: “loads standard staples.”

What a surprise that was! Years ago in the mid-90s when it was getting low on staples, I went back to the Oxford Book store (at its Richmond St. location as the Wellington Square/Galleria incarnation had bitten the dust) to find more. I was told there were none for such a tiny stapler. Both the clerk and I had these wee staplers, and together we bemoaned the apparent lack of the wherewithal to continue their useful existence.

Here the plot thickens – so much so that you might want to go get lunch, watch a re-run of As the World Turns or listen to somebody boring saying something pointless about the fiscal cliff.

Still with me? Then move the clock forward 10 or 12 years and find me at the check-out counter of the Parkhill Home Hardware store (before it also closed). Behold boxes,  each containing 5,000 standard-sized staples at the  unbelievable price of only one dollar. I bought three. 15,000 staples and only one stapler in which to use them … until today. With trembling hands I put those standard staples into my little Apsco. They fitted. I tested them on a sheet of paper. They work!

Suddenly we became a three-stapler family:

Greg's is an Ofrex Anglia II made in Great Britain.

 

I am not going to take the new stapler back, for it promises to staple up to 20 sheets. I don’t want to overtax my little Apsco; I’ll use it for up to five.

What has this episode taught me? The world is full of surprises. One should never jump to conclusions. Nostalgia is a good thing especially if it preserves what only appeared to be a useless little item.

Happy 2013!

Jingle all the way

Well, Christmas has come and while not yet gone (there are twelve days after all), the pot-lucks my waistline and I have been enjoying have drawn to a close for now. The last one was on Boxing Day with Greg’s family; they are all quiet adults and fortunately, as you will appreciate later in this ramble, I can tell them apart. Not only that but we enjoyed our wine, without anyone one accidentally dropping a bottle on the kitchen floor as happened in a previous year, even before we had imbibed.

However, blame it on the darkness of the season, but other things have been going a bit haywire around here. Accidents have abounded.

I may have mentioned our neighbour who is so closely in touch with nature that, in warmer weather, he walks au naturel  in his garden — like Adam in Eden and not nearly as pretty a sight, I venture to say, though I haven't seen Adam. Anyhow, his love of the feral extends to feeding the multitudes of stray cats and kittens in our neighbourhood.



Cute but doomed

He recently had the misfortune of being scratched by one of his protégés the second time he sprayed it with an antiseptic — in a vain attempt to cure its ear mites. His subsequent plea for better cat by-laws was written up in the paper just before Christmas and dismissed as impossible to enforce by the local authorities who noted that “people” should stop feeding the cats.

A couple of days later he himself contributed to cat control when, sad to say, he accidentally backed over the only cat I had named (it used to visit us at suppertime when we ate out on the deck). Our somewhat clueless ‘answer to Adam’ said wee Bollifer had been sleeping under his car and didn’t get out of the way in time. Nature red in tooth and pick-up truck, I guess.

On a happier note, the Hort’s Christmas potluck dinner was both well-attended and deliciously provisioned. However, the woman who guards the tea and coffee bailiwick at all our meetings had set everyone into tizzy earlier in the day when she fell over her own threshold and broke both arms.  She joined the ranks of the other fallen, including a choir member who slipped on grass and fractured her knee.  All these calamities and it was not even snowy yet (well, not on the night I began to write this!)

Greg, a volunteer hanging basket waterer, proved handy on two other accounts. He is a dab hand at making vast amounts of coffee to the correct strength and at “offering the blessing” before meals. He mentioned both the staggering amount of food and the incapacitated members in a prayer which was both heartfelt (he was hungry) and empathetic (he fell on ice two years ago and broke his shoulder).



And this is just the dessert table

Alas, our Prince Philip (you may remember him from our Diamond Jubilee celebrations in September) had suffered a stroke the day before and was recovering in hospital (but happily has since returned home).  Nevertheless at the time, his wife the erstwhile Queen was understandably distraught.

I am not by nature a very touchy-feely sort of person. It does not come naturally, and I have to think very carefully about what to say to those who have suffered a misfortune. I usually try to rehearse using myself as the recipient of my words. If I like them, then, chances are, others will. 

With this in mind, I approached our Queen Elizabeth after the meal to offer a few words of support, as I hadn’t had a chance to do this when she’d arrived.  I was a bit disconcerted when my words were not received as I expected.  In fact, I was subjected to a rather quizzical stare. Then she began to laugh.  Thanks goodness she has a sense of humour: I had fallen victim to another weakness of mine. I am absolutely unable to tell people from around here apart. I try hard and fail, fail, fail.  

Our Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth sisters

The woman I was being so solicitous towards was the sister of the afflicted woman, and worse, she has been widowed for many years.  Not only that but I have confused her with her sister before. Mortified, I tried to disappear into nearest door jamb.  

I must say that after those rather dubious beginnings, Christmas itself turned out just fine. We had our own Christmas dinner at home in Parkhill the weekend before with one of our sons. I remembered to thaw and serve the shrimp ring. Aside from agreeing that next year I will follow his suggestion and have carrots, not turnips, the vegetables were a success.



mmmm ... shrimps

 

We were well lashed with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and mince pie by the time we set out for my mother’s retirement home in Toronto. We had to miss the Christmas dinner at Christie Gardens because they hold it at lunch and we couldn’t get there in time and still have Greg’s Christmas Day service. Mother scooted down for it, but at supper we enjoyed salmon. It took two days before turkey reappeared on the menu, this time as a sandwich.

The Toronto families came over on Boxing Day. When our five-year-old grandson opened his Star Wars Lego, he exclaimed in wonder, “Oh my goodness!” However, his reaction to his Star Wars calendar was, “I’ve got one of those” as he dropped it on the floor (I had been prepared for this by one of my Friends on Facebook who had it happen to her with a six-year-old nephew).

My two-year-old granddaughter was entranced with a giraffe puppet because “it has a mouth,” and the 10-month-old ignored her new toys and blissfully teethed on an old Tele-tubby from great-granny’s play basket.

Greg and I gave the adult children large jingle bells — Christmas decorations for the tree or so we thought, completely forgetting what it is like to have very small children. Truly, we did forget; this was an accident.  Immediately, the three little ones in the midst of a crescendo of Christmas bags, gifts, tissue paper, ribbons and cards, fell upon them and shook them to their heart’s content while we all joined in singing Jingle Bells.  No doubt, they will have many hours of fun doing this again later at their own homes.

In the meantime, home once more, I will write thank-you notes.  Greg will fire up the snowblower and add its roar to the charm of the season. It won’t be jingle bells, but the driveway will be passable. 



And the snow is blowing on our front lawn not the neighbours'

 

Aging faster than I think

Here is an exchange of e-mails from earlier today between me and my old friend John:

> Subject: Many happy returns
> Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:51:06 -0500

>
> I thought you might be interested to know that on my Skype wall there appeared a notice that you, Lorna Harris, were born on 12/12/1912
>
> This would have made you 100 years old yesterday. I would have pegged you as younger but maybe it is the years of living in Parkhill that have aged you faster than one would suspect.
>
> Best wishes for another 100.
>
> J
>

 

On 2012-12-13, at 2:49 PM, lorna harris  wrote:

 

After the totally bizarre day I have been having, I'm not surprised to hear that I have aged!!

First was choir concert at the nursing home here in town - to make a long story short it reminded me of that IODE meeting in high school where we couldn't stop laughing after we had, among other things, marched the flag into a closet.

So this morning at the home, between someone sliding unexpectedly to the floor in a spell of some sort, some residents arriving late in wheelchairs and walkers and then getting tangled up, a visitor bringing her dog which also got tangled up, the choir director helping to untangle, other residents pedalling out in their wheelchairs for no particular reason, a sleepy guy snoring, a song we weren't planning on singing being announced (by Greg!), the recreation director thanking us before we had finished, and being requested to sing Silent Night after we had just sung it ... I just couldn't stop laughing.

I was wearing the only Santa hat, so I guess that was in keeping with jollity. As I said to the choir director afterwards, this was one concert where I didn't have to think about remembering to smile. Also, five people were sick or had fallen and weren't able to be in the choir so I had to sing the soprano part - much of it new to me. However, I did hit high D and E thereby proving that even though I am an alto I can try harder and be a soprano; the others were just ever so slightly under the pitch.

Then we had a really suboptimal turkey dinner en masse at one of the seven restaurants in town. If you ever come to Parkhill and we feel hungry, we won't eat there. They had tea which tasted of coffee, there was not enough silverware (I initially had to share my knife)  and the waiter retracted his offer of salad, as they didn’t have any. I won't bore you with the rest.

Shortly after we got home I got a call from someone who obviously knew me but whom I couldn't place at all. I was too embarrassed to admit to this. She was wondering if I'd like to go out for coffee. I put it off until next Friday so I could star 69 her number, then Google map her location and try to figure out who on earth she was so I would recognize her. I think I now know. She is a very nice alto, who lives on what looks like a completely desolate stretch of the Kerwood Rd. If I lived there, I'd be desperate to go to Tim Horton's too, though I am still not exactly sure why with me.

Again, thanks for the b-day greetings and hope you day is making more sense than mine is!!

Cheers,

Lorna (I think)

Sometimes liturgical innovations can go up in flames

This posting is a bit out-of-date because I wanted to include a photo, which I  didn’t get a chance to take until a day or so ago. So here  is my account of what happened at church last week:

I came to last week's service at St. James feeling more exuberant than usual. Maybe because the previous night's snow added a bit of excitement to the air or maybe because, according to the old calendar this was Stir-Up Sunday, but the day seemed special.

I got to church early: not a good thing since being early makes me bored and being bored usually gets me into trouble. After I swept the snow off the church steps and put the broom away, I felt invigorated. Instead of  settling into prayer in the back pew, I cast my eyes on a candle holder, which for several months had been sitting on the window sill of the West (actually north) Window. Eastern orthodox in flavour, having multiple crosses and three candle holders, it had unaccountably never been lit, despite having been donated by a parishioner presumably for that purpose.  

The back of the church could use a bit of cheering up.  And finally,  before Greg retired at the end of December and the opportunity was lost, I had the opportunity and the means to do something about it.  So, as it turned out, we had a service with the unusual addition of “smells and bells,"  incense and bell ringing being associated with a much higher version of Anglicanism than is usually found here in rural Ontario.

Anyhow, there were already three tea candles in the glass holders.  I had to find something to light them with. Greg got me the  official box of matches  (kept in a  plastic margarine container in the credence table by the altar). The candles were hard to light, but I persevered until the smell of wax pervaded the church (that’s the "smells" part).



Bell, books and candles



As the liturgy unfolded, I eyed  them from time to time. When we got to the Creed, the flames in two of the candle holders were about three inches high. By the Prayers of the People, an alto in the choir was making subtle eyebrow raisings in my direction. By the Passing of the Peace, they seemed like a small bonfire. Taking advantage of being up and about, I looked at them closely; the wicks were nowhere to be seen, and the wax was totally engulfed.

A parishioner in the  pew second to the back thought they should be put out. She was worried lest the heat  break the stained glass window. During a hymn, a warden and I had discussed whether the glass  candle holders might also be at risk of shattering.

So we tried to blow the candles out — no luck . We just blew the flames apart. She thought snuffing them with the phone book of Christian businesses would do the trick, but I didn’t thinking using anything paper was a good idea at that point.

The wax showed no sign of running out; the conflagration was really beginning to worry me. Aside from not wanting, on its own merits, to burn down the church, I did not want my main claim to fame as a clergy wife to be responsible for doing so.  I looked around and saw a small brass school bell further along the window sill — a great candle snuffer were it not for the clapper.

Very carefully I placed it over the flames both to snuff them properly and to prevent the bell from sounding.  Greg was saying the prayer of consecration as I was doing this and behold — or alas — depending on how high on the Anglican scale you find yourself, a little bit of chiming occurred. This would be the "bells" part — for anyone who has persevered this far and needs waking up. The flames were no more, but the bell handle was warm to the touch when removed after communion.

All's well that ended well, but I’ll resume my practice of arriving in the nick of time. I’m also going to get some of those battery-operated candles, as I really was well and truly taken aback by the persistence of the flames!