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us coming of age on 16 july so a good excuse for another little gathering of the clan the weather was great for the june birthdays and we experienced a humdinger of a thunderstorm on 16 july very well timed to coincide with the end of our outdoor meal and contributing to making it a memorable occasion anyway severin is a huge devotee of lego and cobi models and is particularly interested in ww2 things so as a birthday present i gave him a flying fortress to build my father flew in b 17 s during his time in the raf and severin has been asking me about his great great grandfather so i also added some information and a few photos this involved a bit of research on my part as i didn t remember everything i d been told and severin has a keen model building partner in the person of his grandfather my son in law a joint present from the family for their respective birthdays is a male bonding outing together to legoland in ulm germany as i figured out the various degrees of consanguinity i found myself looking at our family tree again the genealogy bug bites me every so often and i confess that once i log into ancestry familysearch or geneanet i m away with the fairies or ghosts might be more appropriate and coincidentally last week i was contacted by a distant relative on the german side who wanted my help with some shared swiss ancestors so that led me into re opening doors i had closed a few years ago and shining light on forgotten areas i ll come back to the sommer tree another time but just want to say here that mills and millers figure quite prominently in both my daughter s and my son in law s pedigrees and i found another13th century mill not too far away from where we live that has been lovingly restored and is now a museum this has connections with fifteenth and sixteenth century members of the family possibly even earlier so that s a place we really have to visit sometime on the english side however a couple of rather quirky names in my mother s lineage caught my attention among all the eighteenth century johns williams roberts marys anns and elizabeths i spotted my sixth great grandfather knight whaplock and his daughter tabathea tabitha my fifth great grandmother posh sounding names for lincolnshire peasants whaplock appears to be a surname that has died out probably due to illiteracy it seems to be a variation on white lock whitlock i e fair hair and as that region of eastern england was settled not only by vikings but also by dutch there were likely to have been a good number of blonds around how was it pronounced with a lincolnshire accent my research turned up whaplak whaplatt whaplate and whaplet and there may be yet other alternative spellings please tell me if you know anyone alive today with some form of this name we must be related digging deeper i realised that knight s parents william and mary had been following an old tradition of giving their child his mother s maiden name she had been mary knight however in spite of all my efforts information about knight whaplock remains very sparse he was baptised on 22 june 1704 in barton upon humber and married on 24 june 1728 in willoughton so that instantly brings him into our crowd of june babies his bride was elizabeth hewitt and their daughter tabathea or tabitha was baptised on 15 april 1729 however just one year previously a little boy had been born in a village about 20 miles north of willoughton to a young unmarried woman called mary lawty who named him knight the baptism record plainly states that his father was knight whaplock and his mother seems to want to let everyone know that fact my imagination fleshes out these people and sometimes runs a bit wild here s knight whaplock acknowledging his illegitimate son by mary just two months before he goes off and marries elizabeth i wonder how efficient the grapevine was in those days did these two young women know about one another or was knight whaplock keeping secrets did he share his time between the two after his marriage he and elizabeth also had three more daughters and two sons most of whom died in infancy the trail runs out in 1738 with a record in the parish register of st andrew s willoughton burial 12 may 1738 night whaplock this may be our man but is more likely be his son born in march of that year frustratingly i can t find any further information on elizabeth mary lawty or knight lawty stuff for a novel tabathea or tabitha on the other hand is pretty well documented but it did take some sleuth work her grandfather robert whaplock had married tabitha webster so that is probably where her name came from my difficulties in tracing her were mainly due to the variant spellings of tabitha which seems to have been pronounced tabathy and the fact that she was married three times so appears under various guises also with variations in spelling her husbands surnames her first husband was my fifth great grandfather the 25 year old john hurton also spelt horton and hutton married on 1 july 1754 in saxby lincs i can t find john anywhere else so have no details of his life they had four sons and two daughters including my 4 th great grandmother tabitha dorcas hutton tabitha and dorcas are the same name i think the vicar was showing off his biblical knowledge john died in 1764 and tabitha married the widower william serjant serjentson sergant sergeant take your pick on 8 september 1766 in blyborough they had three children together including a son named knight serjent but william died in may 1784 on 26 march 1786 tabitha then married jonathan woolhouse woolis woollus who died in april 1794 in bransby she herself lived on in bransby until she died and was buried in the tiny village of stow in lindsey on 12 march 1812 oh the joys of genealogy and the frustration of finding so many gaps in the stories none of the people i m descended from achieved anything extraordinary in their lives but they did live love laugh and weep as do we all and sometimes it would be so nice to have an idea of who they really were after all we carry their dna posted in ancestors family tagged ancestry family family history genealogy history 9 replies words of praise posted on june 18 2026 by catterel 15 it s probably the most sincere and certainly the most unexpected compliment i ve ever received and i ve waited 85 years to hear it we all know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and this no doubt explains the exclamation of my gynaecologist as he inserted the hysteroscope sie haben eine schöne vagina you ve got a beautiful vagina this was followed a few seconds later by admiration of my right ovary which was also adjudged sehr schön more or less on the level of i ve got a loverly bunch of coconuts i thought as a stifled a chuckle because my gynaecologist is not a frivolous man and my facetious comments are not appreciated my left ovary came far lower in the beauty stakes but not entirely eliminated well at least it s still all there and in satisfactory condition so nothing to worry about for the time being come back in october this compliment led me to a review of other unexpected plaudits received during my lifetime including a remark from my podiatrist that my big toenails were fantastic and an envious ooohhh from another pigtailed little girl in infant school when i stood on my hands and she saw that my knickers matched my dress thanks to my dressmaker mother my mother was pleased that i had good strong teeth and ears flat to my head rather than what my uncle called jug lugs my father s greatest tribute to my beauty was that i had legs like tree trunks that ranked high in his estimation but wasn t what a teenage girl full of self doubt wanted to hear my grandfather was slightly more gallant around the same time when i announced that i wanted my plaits cut off a blunt yorkshireman he eyed me with a connoisseur s acumen and said ee luv no tha hair s tha crowning glory tha dostn t want to be a plain jane alas my crowning glory was sacrificed much to grandad s disappointment he didn t live long enough to see me with it all grown back again later on a chat up line that went down like a lead balloon was i like a woman with love handles i don t think the guy even realised the effect this comment had on me especially as i had just lost about a stone in weight along the same lines the embarrassed husband of a good friend once stammered out an offering that he obviously had to dig deep for when his wife said don t you think cat s beautiful poor man he thought hard and came up with er yes nice eyes and freckles i graciously accepted this compliment as being genuine kind and honest and therefore of value so there we have it my list of physical attributes worthy of comment i think the latest accolade takes the biscuit posted in personal stuff 15 replies sequel to my mother s 100th birthday posted on june 2 2026 by catterel reply consequences of talking to strangers posted in people and places personal stuff leave a reply addendum to my last post posted on may 30 2026 by catterel 4 life has changed so much for me in the past decade and expecting the unexpected has become the norm but if you read my reblogged post from may 2016 please also click on the pingback at the bottom that will take you to my daughter s blog the little washhouse which is well worth a read sadly wordpress locked her out a few years ago and she hasn t been able to continue with this blog if anyone knows how she can get back into it we d be grateful for your tips it s always interesting to look back memory is so selective like the sundial i tend to record only the sunny hours but the dark ones are still there nevertheless i hope you enjoy my nostalgic trip back to 2016 posted in personal stuff 4 replies ten years ago in england and it didn t go as expected afterwards either posted on may 30 2026 by catterel reply roller coaster month of may posted in family people and places personal stuff leave a reply preparing for spring and summer and the blessing of a bath posted on may 23 2026 by catterel 15 watching my nine and eleven year old great grandchildren running skipping and jumping around today i felt a pang of nostalgia that i can no longer turn cartwheels or do a somersault at my age it would be a miracle if i could but as my body stiffens and joints no longer allow me to bend as much as i used to i long for one thing that i know many elderly people miss a bath in my bathroom i have a shower over the bath tub and have no problems so far in climbing in and out but the luxury of a soak lying stretched out in that tub well for a long time that seemed like a totally different prospect no i wasn t even going to imagine how that might feel and then last december my grandson in law brought me a present back from his trip to japan lovely discs smelling of oranges and lemons to dissolve in the bathwater and leave the skin lightly citrus scented that was the impetus i needed i filled the tub and added a disc then very cautiously i stepped into the hot water i lowered myself to my knees with a great effort i managed to manoeuvre myself into a sitting position and from there joy of joys i was able to lie down full length to feel the warm water lapping around me to enjoy it caressing my body in a totally different way from the energising slap of the shower was heaven i could do it could i get out again that was another challenge but i found that by turning over and getting into a kneeling position yes i could climb out unaided since then i ve indulged in a few baths before bedtime and thoroughly enjoyed the experience as well as the triumphant feeling each time i manage to get in and out again today my eldest granddaughter came to assist me in getting rid of all my bags of recycling and to buy soil and flowering plants for my balcony the fact that i need to ask for someone to drive me about and help carry heavy things is another frustration that age has brought with it but she offered and brought along her two youngest kids eleven year old mael and nine year old joline as extra hands my planned colour scheme surprised them a bit but it s based on a couple of lap shawls i ve crocheted that are diagonally striped in red white and blue my balcony is small so i decided to stay with this patriotic vibe and we went off to the plant nursery to select appropriate sun loving petunias and one or two other plants that hopefully will thrive in my south facing flowerbed this day marks the beginning of a minor heatwave so unsurprisingly a lot of other people were out buying plants and things for their gardens and balconies the nursery is part of a diy store so we also wandered the aisles looking for various other necessities i find diy stores fascinating although i don t do any diy myself but i do enjoy looking and there seems to be an inherited gene for this as nobody got bored during this phase of our outing swiss tummies register 12 o clock with no prompting and as a treat we went to subway for a sandwich lunch back home it turned out i had bought far more soil than i needed but that isn t a problem i just have to find a solution to hide the extra bags that will eventually get used we sorted out and planted the flowers cleaned up re arranged the balcony furniture and i gave it all my seal of approval big hugs all round and bye bye till next time many many thanks before after i lay down on my new sunbed and fell fast asleep for an hour i had arranged to leave in the evening to visit my best friend over whitsun pentecost but when i awoke i found that time the enemy had won this battle and i had missed the bus i still felt hot sticky and stiff and grumpy then the bath tub smiled seductively at me and i couldn t resist refreshed and relaxed afterwards i lay down on my massage chair and felt as if i was at the spa sitting with a gin and tonic on my pretty balcony in the evening sun i felt life couldn t be better tomorrow morning i won t miss the bus posted in family personal stuff 15 replies honour your mother posted on may 9 2026 by catterel 8 today would have been my mother s 110 th birthday and tomorrow is mother s day here in switzerland as in many other countries those who have been following this blog for a few years will know how important my mother was to me as she figured in many of my posts between 2011 and 2017 the period i spent looking after her at the end of her long life so it s no surprise that she s very much in my thoughts right now as i get older i am gaining in understanding of my mother in her final years i was sometimes impatient with her when she would allow 15 minutes for something i knew i could do in five but as i become slower and stiffer i realise that i too now take longer over tasks and i admire and appreciate the patience my daughter and grandchildren show me in these instances she was a wise woman and i find myself quoting her regularly i miss her my mother died in february 2017 nine years ago already yet i still feel her beloved presence with me every day...