Most of us will never be a Churchill, Princess Diana, or a John F Kennedy, but our contribution to history is just as important. Here is my story, perhaps send me yours.
I have partly red/ginger hair. It is heavily disputed but in 2001 Oxford University scientist Dr Rosalind Harding announced she had deconstructed the ginger gene in Europe to 100,000 years ago. The situation is that Homo Sapiens, Cro-Magnon only arrived 40,000 years ago & co-existed for 10,000 years. Basically we inherited ginger hair from interbreeding with Neanderthals. (1)
It may explain why we tease ginger people today as we viscerally see them as Neanderthals. Apes first built beds in the trees 5 million years ago to escape predators. We still build our bedrooms upstairs today.
My surname is Atherton. A town in the Greater Manchester area, it means Æthelhere's settlement." First recorded in 1212 the spelling implies strong Anglo-Saxon roots. In 410 AD the Roman legions returned to Rome to defend the country from Germanic tribes from the north.
Fearing attacks from the Scots & the Picts Angles, Saxons, & Jutes were invited in as mercenaries & of course settled here. Most of Britain's place names are Anglo-Saxon or Norse. My DNA test said I am 20% Scandinavian. Essex means East Saxony, Middlesex Middle Saxony etc. Norse names include Rugby, Grimsby & Skegness.
The Norse influence lasted from the 8th century to September 25, 1066, near the village of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, when King Harold Godwinson emerged victorious.
Alas they were to be replaced by the Norman French at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066. So in 19 days Godwinson's army marched from Yorkshire to Hastings, it may help explain his defeat. William the Bastard was not expected to win.
My nan, God bless her, never said twenty-five past 11 or twenty-five to 12. She said five-and-twenty past 11 and five and 20 to 12. It is a Yiddish idiom. Our family tree traces us back to the Jews invited in by Oliver Cromwell in the mid-late 17th century for their finance skills.
The first Jews arrived under William I in 1066 but were all expelled by King Edward I through the Edict of Expulsion in 1290.
My oldest known relative is Solomon, probably a Marranos/Sephardic (Spanish) Jew who was a goldsmith in the city of London 1680. A street just off Cheapside in the is called Old Jewry & is a reminder of the past. The first Synagogue was built in 1657 & Bevis Marks a superb Baroque building called Bevis Marks from 1699. Solomon must have prayed there. (2)
They say you have fully assimilated when you start complaining there are too many foreigners in the country.
I went to preschool from the age of 4 in 1964. It was an old Nissen Hut from WW2. We had the vile 1/3rd pint milk bottles & putrid food brought in on a Bedford van. We shared books & wrote on slate with chalk. Mrs Watson would give us a smack if we were naughty.
Going to Ascot Heath Junior School we got smacks from the Headmistress Miss Mabel Corry. "This is going to hurt me more than you". 🙄
Probably born at the turn of the century apparently she never married. She would have been in her 20s in the 1920s, just after WW1. 880,000 British soldiers died representing 6% of the male population. The shortage of men meant many women were to remain single. The aging spinster was a feature of life in the 1960s.
I met a relation of Emily Pankhurst in the GMB greenroom. Women were granted the vote in 1918 after doing sterling work in factories, while men were at the front. I asked why were the "flappers", women under 30 years of age not allowed to vote until 1930.
So many men died in WW1 it would have led to an unbalanced electorate. It wasn't sexism.
The other theory is that she may have been LGBT. Homosexual acts were not legal until 1967, being a headmistress she would of been wise to be discreet.
I might have an issue with the LGBT lobby, but not with consenting adults. I am pleased we live in more enlightened times.
My father's side of the family have been at the forefront of aviation. My paternal grandfather was an airframe fitter for Imperial Airways in the 1930s, which became British Airways. I believe he was at Croydon Airport in 1938 when Neville Chamberlain, after his meeting with Adolf Hitler, naively declared "peace in our time". I know my father's birth certificate says he was born in Croydon.
Grandad was moved to RAF Leuchars on the east coast of Scotland to be the chief engineer of the de Havilland Mosquitoes. Working for British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), now British Airways, from 1943 - 1945, the planes flew over to Sweden to collect, literally ball bearings but also take over diplomatic bags.
It was not a part of the RAF but a civilian air service. Despite stripped of all arms, the Luftwaffe still saw them as a target & launched Messerschmitt 109s & Focke-Wulf Fw 190s against them. So quick, they were made of wood, with Rolls Royce engines, not one was ever shot down.
Also brought back were escaped POWs & people of interest. The most prominent was Danish theoretical physicist Prof Neil Bohr. A 1922 Nobel Prize winner for Physics he was sent to America to work on the Manhattan Project, the development of an atomic bomb.
Meeting the projects head Robert Oppenheimer he made an invaluable contribution to modulated neutron initiators. "This device remained a stubborn puzzle", Oppenheimer noted, "but in early February 1945 Niels Bohr clarified what had to be done".
My dad was an electrical engineer with British Airways for 40 years. One of the first aircraft he worked on were requisitioned Junkers Ju 52 transport planes from the Nazis & converted to carry passengers.
My uncle was Foreman of Avionics for Concorde and retired from British Airways soon after it's last flight in November 26, 2003. What a waste of engineering expertise. He helped rebuild the Concorde on display at Brooklands, Surrey.
On a lighter note @Nigel_Farage was recently teasing @KemiBadenoch about lunch, with a generous glass of red in his hand. We're about the same age & after the Winter of Discontent in 1978/9 the election of Baroness Thatcher came as a relief. Unleashing the city & private enterprise, she turned the country around.
I worked in recruitment in the 1980s & the Thursday night p*ss up, people left early on Friday, & 3-12 hour (yes 12) Friday lunch was born. People had hope, people had money. They were great times. The arrival of appalled Americans damped celebrations down.
It is good to see I & Nigel are keeping this excellent tradition alive.
During the Covid Pandemic people stopped taking people like delivery drivers for granted. They were an essential cog of our economy & well being, not that you could say the same about politicians.
The analogy is that no matter how apparently humble we are we are all a vital part of life & history, let's celebrate what we have achieved.
