Weekend at the seaside

We spent the bank holiday with the two youngest grandchildren, and their parents of course

They had the greatest fun with their fishing nets in the rock pools while we sat in the sun and talked and enjoyed the lovely weather and the beach. Then they walked back to the caravan and we strolled back to the car and drove there to find the boys washing the sand off their feet while watching CeeBeebies .
A smashing weekend.

Uncle Steve and Aunty Doreen

I have just received this picture from Seth DeGeer, grandson of Uncle Steve and Aunty Doreen.

Isn't that wonderful? Now you can see just how beautiful Aunty Doreen was. That beauty was still so evident even in old age and she maintained her elegance too.

Aunty Doreen and Aunty Chris

Most of you know through my emails that Aunty Doreen passed away at the end of April. Sandy (daughter of Stephen Henry and Doreen) and Bob were able to be with Stephen (son of Stephen and Doreen) and Annette and with her so that was a little comfort to them.

I searched my pictures file but I don't have a single picture of Aunty Doreen to share with you. I wonder if Sandy or Steve have a picture of their wedding?

We didn't see Aunty Doreen much when I was small. We visited them in various houses around Cardiff. There was one rather wonderful place that I remember as a country cottage. Steve was just a little boy then and Sandy and I - and I think cousin Bernard or perhaps it was Yvonne and Jacky - anyway we went across the field to the stream where we picked some watercress. We all thought it would be rather wonderful to have it for tea and carried it back triumphantly.

The leaves were washed thoroughly and when we all sat down for tea I noticed that everyone tried the watercress except me and Aunty Doreen. My Mum asked me why I wasn't eating it and I replied "Sheep walked in that water." everyone except Aunty laughed and carried on munching. Aunty caught my eye and gave a little tiny nod of her head as though she too knew about the sheep and their dirty feet.

Then came the news from Cousin Pete in Canada that Aunty Chris had died on 11th May and with her passing we, that's all the grandchildren of Frederic GIBBON became the older generation.

sometime in the 1950s

I have several memories of Chris, mostly they are memories of Chris and Val and Kath because it seemed that until Chris left to work in Africa the three of them came as a package.
I know this isn't true but it did seem that way. to a small person. Chris worked in the offices of an architectural firm and one of the reasons she went to Africa was because she had fallen in love with her boss. It's amazing what you can overhear when you are lying quietly on the hearthrug "reading".

I don't know details but I do know she came to my mother for advice and my mother told her to find a new job because he was married and never going to leave his wife and family or risk losing his reputation, while at the same time not giving a fig for Chris's reputation.

Cornwall 1952/3

 My mother was usually right. As a result of this advice Chris got a job in the Crown Services and went to Nyasaland, as it was then. From there she went to Borneo and places east and eventually she found a job in the Yukon in Canada.

She was always full of fun when she was young, although she could be the responsible big sister to the other two.

I don't have any up to date pictures of Chris so if anyone does please could I have a copy for the blog and for our website. That's the website we have had for a year and not done anything with yet.

Chris, Val and Kath with Ma standing behind them

Mai Jones and the Royal College of Music

You might remember that I said I would begin the research into the life of our famous relative, Mai Jones. We all know, through the Welsh Dictionary of Biographies that she was Born in 1899, went to school in Newport and played the organ at the Methodist Church on Stow Hill. She gained a scholarship to the College of Music in Cardiff and, it is said, she then went to the Royal College of Music in London.

I was idly surfing this here intarwebby and put the RCM into the search engine. I looked at the website and there was a little thing that said "contact us". So I did. I Explained that I was researching my family tree and that one of my father's cousins had been a student at RCM. I gave the probable dates, her name and her year of birth. Several days later I received an email telling me that the very kind lady had searched the registers from the opening of the RCM until today and there was no entry for Glady May Jones or May Jones.
There is a list of External students who just take the exams but don't actually attend the college. On this list there is a Gladys M. Jones in July 1941. It says she gained an ARCM Diploma in Piano Performing.
The very kind lady suggested that I try the Royal Academy of Music as the two places are very often confused. I thanked her.
I had already tried the Royal Academy of Music a couple of years ago and she is not on their registers as a student or anything else there.

My father once remarked that we would probably discover that she had gone to the RCM to visit once and ever after she allowed people to believe she had studied there when all she actually said was "I went to the Royal College of Music in London". A fellow researcher once told me that his mother used to travel on the same train to London as Mai, when they were "going back to college" I have added the emails to the information on the family tree. I wonder if anyone has a picture of her. I only have a couple of poor photocopies from the BBC archives.

Mai or May, is the daughter of Thomas JONES, station master at Pontypool Road Station, and Beatrice May GIBBON daughter of James GIBBON and Mary FRANCIS. I still haven't narrowed down which is the correct birth. I have bought a couple of certificates but they were the wrong ones I will have to go to the register office and ask them to search.  OH and here's a spooky thing. Cousin Andy GIBBON and his lovely wife Jayne spotted a delightful house in New Inn and decided to buy it because it was so quirky and old. They told Andy's Dad, Fred GIBBON and he said "The Station Master's house? that's where Uncle Tom and Aunty Beat lived - it's where Mai Jones lived for years"
So now Andy and Jayne live in Uncle Tom's house. Isn't that weird?

Reunion 2012!

It was a good reunion. Really good. There weren't as many people as we hoped for but those that were there really had a good time and ate a lot.
It was wonderful to see the youngest generation getting to know their cousins and to be able to introduce our beautiful cousin Katherine (Granddaughter of Val) to some of the family was great. She has inherited that aura of serenity that Val had and it soothes and calms people around her. Fascinating to watch the effect and so lovely so see so man family traits passed on. What do I mean? Well, Katherine walks like us. NO really, she has the same walk that Aunty Muriel had and Cousin Pat walks that way as do Yvonne and her daughter Michelle. I am told that I have the same walk and so does Andrea, and now Katherine has too!

The first picture shows you the cake you missed - a Costco Celebration cake. There is a beautiful sponge hidden under that frosting and aren't the flowers just superb?


 Cousin Colin is NOT doing the actions to the song Y.M.C.A and I don't think he was describing the fish that got away either but it does look really funny. The white-haired person facing him is Cousin Andrew. My Colin is tickling our grandson Matthew, the son of my Michael who is sitting on the floor. Next to him is his youngest boy, Joseph.

The fat lady is not singing, honest. I am simply cuddling my new great grandson - Bleddyn Francis - who is just 13 days old and is just so scrumdiddlyumptious. The baby clothes they have these days are just fabulous. Those jeans are so soft. Isn't he just a peach?

The last picture is Cousin Leonard and a decidedly biblical Cousin Andrew putting the world to rights before we packed up all the picture albums and the family history files and adjourned to our house where we sat around the table and talked and ate and drank cups of tea and coffee.
Leonard's daughter Debra managed to join us this time and immediately became overwhelmed with information as the names of relatives long departed were tossed and parried across the table. It was so good to be able to introduce her to Katherine and to little Bleddyn too.

These reunions are such a good idea because we don't have to maintain a sombre face, like you do after a funeral and it is good to just sit and talk and revive the old stories. To listen to Cousin Pat as she remembers things her mother told her - Pat is the oldest of us. The only disappointment was that Cousin Colin's laptop took ill and we didn't have the means to Skype our relatives in America or Australia.
All in all a really enjoyable afternoon, made so special by the people who managed to be there. A thank you to
Colin and Ann, Andrew and Jayne, Leonard and Brenda and Debra, Pat and Tony, Andrea and Simon and Emily, Michael and Jane and Matthew and Joseph, Katherine and her lovely baby Michael, Mark, Kerry Ann and Rory and Anwyn and Bleddyn, and my lovely Colin.

I have just realised that while it seemed that there weren't as many people there this time, the numbers are pretty close - 26 including me and that's about the same as last time, so that's even better than I thought. Well done us!!!

My Dad

I have just realised it is father's day. I knew it already, but I just realised it and thought that I would write down some stuff about my Dad. Bernard Francis Gibbon.

Age about 12 in the garden at 81 Redland Stret

He was born in 1914, the fourth child of Frederic Gibbon and Margaret Annie Guilfoyle. He told me that when he was three he was knocked down by a tram on Malpas Road and was caught under the cow-catcher on the front. He didn't really remember his mother because she died when he was four and a half. He remembered sitting on a bed that had a woman in it. His big sister was there and his two brothers. He remembered a window in a high stone wall and Fred saying, "Our Mam is dead and she's in there on a slab." He remembered being at a grave with flowers on it. He grew up with Ma taking his mother's place and he always told me that she treated them all the same. It didn't matter if you were her step-children or her children if she took the boiler-stick to one she would use it on all. If she threw the carving knife at one you knew she would equally throw it at any of the others.

Sitting at my piano - obviously outside
 a few glasses of whiskey

 He left home after she did exactly that, she threw the carving knife at him and it stuck in the door next to his head so he decided that the time had come to leave. He moved into the flat in Clytha Square where Steve was living with two mates. He said he didn't last long there because they were pigs and never cleaned up or washed a dish and he was doing it all. They also never bought food but if Dad bought any they would eat it. He joined the Army by mistake around this time, that's a whole story on it's own so that'll be another blog.
Steve was in the Merchant Navy so he stayed with Muriel when he was ashore.
I thought I had told the tale of how he met my mother but I see that this is in a back issue of the Gazette. I'll tell it another time.

Most of you know that Dad lost his right leg at the end of WW2 and spent the rest of his life proving that he was just as good as any man. What he actually showed was that he would have been impossible to live with if he had two legs because Mum and I spent our whole lives trying to keep up.

He built the Nissen hut so that we had somewhere to live and then ten years later he built the bungalow in front of it so that we had a proper house to spend the rest of our lives. Then WIMPEY built a whole estate of houses in the fields next to us so Dad sold the bungalow and bought Llandowlais Farm. It had no electricity, no running water and no drains but that was no problem. We lived upstairs in the bedrooms using bottled gas for cooking and lights and until the water was brought into the house we made do with carrying it from the cold tap in the yard.

Then there was a brief stay at a post office on Cardiff Road - he often said it was the worst mistake of his life but from there he bought Rhiwlas Mill and we spent a very happy nine years there before my marriage fell apart and Dad could not accept this.
We fell out over it because he told me I just wasn't trying hard enough.
After I met Colin things got worse because Dad was convinced that Colin was after my money! I moved out and even though my mother was hoping to live in the Mill until she died Dad decided to sell it and spend the money on himself so that Colin wouldn't get it.

Ironic then that it was Colin that suggested they should come live with us after Mum had the stroke. That it was Colin that got up in the night to lift Mum back into bed when she fell out. Colin that drove them wherever they wanted to go.

But that's my Dad. Eventually they had to go to a nursing home because I didn't have the strength to lift Mum on my own and if she was going to a nursing home then he was going with her.
He was the Bravest, stubbornest, idiosyncratic man I ever knew. I loved him for being my Dad and I hated him for being that also. I miss him every day since he died in 2003, but I am glad I don't have to put up with him. I feel guilty for them having to go into the home but I know it would have put me in a strait-jacket to have continued caring for them.
Just for today I can remember all his good points and I can say Thank you Dad, I love you

More family stuff

Cousin Sandy has asked several times for more explanations about who fits where into this complicated family of ours. As Cousin Travis has now been dragged into our web I thought I should, perhaps, take another look at some of our ancestors.
I have ummed and aahed about putting names and dates on simply because of the paranoia that people happily share about identity theft. I will put a little bit about it in the next edition of the Gazette and then I will expect answers.
In the mean time let's take a look at the next generation of the Nathan family.

John Nathan, son of Samuel, married Sarah Green, daughter of Abraham HaLevi, at the Great Synagogue, London 20th August 1845.

Sarah was the granddaughter of Efraim Levi Green, who I am told be descendants came to England from Amsterdam in 1796 on a herring boat with his wife and two children.
I have not researched the Amsterdam connection yet, in fact I am hoping that someone else in the GREEN family will do that.

John and Sarah had quite a few children - 15 altogether.
Hannah born abt 1847
Rachel born 1848 married James Jacobs 1877
Samuel born 1851 died 1928 Melbourne Victoria, Australia. Married (1) Rose Waterman (2) Belle Minton
Sarah born abt 1852. married Alfred Bishop 1874
Silva born 1853. married William Linley 1882
Elizabeth born 1855. d 1930 London. married (1) Charles John Guilfoyle Seymour 1879 (2) David Waters 1920
Abraham born 1857. d 1938 Melbourne Victoria. married Emma Ottolangui 1884.
Jane born 1860 died 1865. cause of death, house fire.
Un-named child born 1861. died 1861
Fanny born 6 Sept 1863. died 7 sept 1863. according to the family prayer book she was born "with a quantity of black hair" died 10 past 5 in the afternoon.
Leah born 1865. married Samuel Lyons.
David born 1867 died 1940 Melbourne Victoria
Benjamin born 1868 died 1952 Melbourne Victoria
Henry born 1870 died 1871
Amelia born 1872. married George Basaglia 1894