These are things I only experience when I go to America, but that there should be more of over here. Actually, I'm sure you can find jerky in Britain if you know where to look, I'll have to check it out.
Still, I'm back now. Today was a getting-over-jetlag day (I hate overnight flights, they completely destroy my internal clock), tomorrow is officially the start of whatever I'm going to do with myself for the next couple of unemployed months. I haven't really decided yet, but it's going to be fun.
Las Vegas was completely awesome, if I really need to point that out. It's changed a bit since the last time I was there, with a couple of new hotel/casinos on the Strip which look much too stylish and contemporary to fit in around there, so I don't think they'll last long, but the basic grooviness of Vegas is still very much there. I saw the Cirque du Soleil's "O" for the second time, and it's still completely amazing. There's also a really great magician called Dirk Arthur, who performs in the shabbiest and nastiest casino in town, but has a very close-up and intimate act full of completely impossible magic tricks with minimal equipment and special effects and only a handful of lions and tigers appearing out of nowhere (that's the Las Vegas equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat - no magic show is complete without at least one real tiger). It's not a spectacle like David Copperfield or Siegfried and Roy (who I saw back in 2002, before they retired), but it's somehow even more cool because it looks real rather than like a showbiz performance.
Also, it was baking hot! As I might have mentioned before, whenever I go to America, I always get the hottest weather - everyone told me that it was unseasonably warm all of a sudden, even by Las Vegas standards. Charlotte, North Carolina, where I changed planes en route, was also extremely hot, but in the humid kind of way that you don't get in Vegas. And it's been scorching hot back here today, too! Summer's here!
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Viva!
God, I love this city. It's six o'clock in the morning here, and I've already lost $15 at video poker but won $100 at blackjack while waiting for breakfast to open. Everything about Las Vegas is awesome - the gambling, the lights, the artificiality, the fact that you can come downstairs at four in the morning and find a bustling casino full of gamblers, the serious electric shocks you get from touching anything, the weather, the internet kiosk that's a new innovation since last time I came, the fact that I've still got enough self-control so far to stop playing blackjack for the moment and not bet all my winnings on the next hand...
Anyway, I'm going to go and watch cartoons until breakfast time, then go out exploring. And yes, I could have earned more than $85 by going to my job today, and not paying for expensive flights and the super-cheap but wonderful Gold Coast Hotel, but it wouldn't have been so much fun. See you all next time I drag myself away from the gambling!
Anyway, I'm going to go and watch cartoons until breakfast time, then go out exploring. And yes, I could have earned more than $85 by going to my job today, and not paying for expensive flights and the super-cheap but wonderful Gold Coast Hotel, but it wouldn't have been so much fun. See you all next time I drag myself away from the gambling!
Monday, March 28, 2011
Las Vegas ahoy!
I'm out of here! No more work, lots more play, I'll see you when I'm back in the country!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Census Day
The 2011 census is a 32-page booklet, full of questions about everybody in the household. A hundred years ago, it was just one sheet of paper, with instructions on the back, and a form to fill in on the front. Census day in 1911 was April 3rd, but I'll be away from the computer then, so this seems as good a time as any to subject you all to one final exhaustive summary of the Pridmore family. If nothing else, this is a good place for me to compile all my notes about them...
My great-grandfather William Thomas Pridmore (02/08/1855 - 02/05/1932) and his offspring are the family members who fascinate me the most in all of my family-tree research. For one thing, William's ancestors are easier to trace than usual, just because there aren't many of them - William was illegitimate, whether or not he knew who his father was I can't say, but I certainly don't, and there seems to be no way we're ever going to find out. His mother, Eliza Pridmore (c1835 - August 1886) was also illegitimate, and her father is equally unknown to posterity. William thus has only one grandparent to trace, rather than the usual four - Jane Pridmore (1816 - 1870s). We have to go back as far as Jane's parents, James Pridmore (1777 - 1848) and Elizabeth Ward (1787 - 1867) before the family tree branches out any further. And with the big generation gaps in my own branch of the family tree (I was born 121 years after William), the Pridmores obligingly give me much fewer 18th-century ancestors to research!
Furthermore, William was the one who moved the family in around 1880 to the industrial city of Sheffield from the tiny farming village of Pickworth that he grew up in. And he produced a vast legion of offspring who almost all stayed in Sheffield for the rest of their lives and produced hordes of children themselves. William had 13 children and 36 grandchildren, though he didn't live to see all of them born, and researching them has been no end of fun.
They all seem to have individual personalities bursting from the dry records of births, marriages and deaths, so much so that I almost feel like I know them. There are plenty of things that the records just don't tell us, obviously - given the time and place that he lived, I'd say William was probably known as Bill to his friends, but there's no record of that. I don't know if it was his idea or Eliza's to move the whole family to Sheffield, just that they all lived there together for a while; Eliza, her husband and her four children, including William who had grown up with his grandmother while Eliza moved away with her new family. The records tell us that William struggled to find work for the first few years in the city, was a boiler firer at the ironworks for eight years, spent a few more years floating from job to job and then settled into a successful and long career as a bricklayer, but I don't know whether that was the job he'd always wanted or something he ended up doing without really meaning to.
I do know that William outlived the majority of his children. Three of them - Beatrice (06/05/1887 - 01/04/1889), George Richard (06/11/1890 - 29/09/1891) and Percy (16/07/1898 - 28/07/1899) - died in infancy, then four sons were killed in the First World War, followed by William's wife, a daughter and another son in a pneumonia epidemic of 1920-21. Just four out of thirteen living to old age is a low ratio even by the standards of Sheffield in those days.
Here's his census form from one hundred years ago:
The Pridmores had only recently moved into 34 Hunt Street, within the last couple of years. A five-room house was something of a luxury compared to the places they'd lived while bringing up their large family. They'd got it, I'm guessing from circumstantial evidence, with the help of the money of the Palmer family William's daughter Florence married into. It remained the family home until at least the forties, passing to Oswald (he being the only child of William's who had never married and left home) after the parents died.
William and Sarah had married in the rural wilds of Rutland when he was 21 and she was 17. She was also five months pregnant at the time - this seems to have been the rule rather than the exception in all the marriages I've seen in that area at that time. How well they got along is something we can only speculate, but Sarah continued to have a baby every couple of years on average until she was over forty years old. She died of pneumonia in 1920, aged 59.
Starting with the youngest, the ten surviving children of the marriage were:
Sydney Pridmore (06/05/1900 - early 1982), called 'Sidney' above, but changed it to Syd by the 1920s, determinedly followed in his father's footsteps by living and working in Sheffield his whole life, first as a general labourer like most of the rest of his family, then becoming a railway porter in 1923. He stayed with the railways forever after, by 1940 moving from porter to shunter. Also in the early twenties, he and his wife Catherine (nee Millership) moved to 72 Robey Street, which became the family home for decades. He followed the Pridmore tradition by having an army of sons, the last of whom was my dad, and also one daughter just to show that the Pridmore y-chromosome isn't completely infallible. After Catherine died in 1960, daughter Cath took over the 'woman of the house' duties. Syd passed a passion for trains onto his offspring, and must have been a pretty contented man, all in all. He died when I was five, I just barely remember him. His children, without the hardships and diseases of the first couple of decades of the century, lived long lives - with the exception of Philip, who died of diptheria aged five, they all lived to see the 21st century.
They were: William Thomas (Bill, born 18/09/1922), Arthur Edward (Ted, 08/11/1923), Sydney (Syd, 07/03/1926), Catherine (Cath, 24/07/1927), twins Michael (Mike) and Philip (02/11/1929), Lawrence (Lol, 27/01/1931), Samuel Bernard (Bernie, 08/03/1934), Cyril (08/01/1936), Robert (02/01/1940) and George (28/09/1946).
The reason behind the names is intriguing. William Thomas was obviously Syd's father's name; the traditional way to follow it would be to call the second son Sydney, but instead they went for Arthur Edward, who I suppose must have been Syd's favourite older brother - one of the four who died in the war. It's not a Millership name, certainly. Then, after Sydney junior joins the family, we move on to Catherine junior and then a more random selection of names for the subsequent sons. Samuel Bernard was one of Catherine's brothers, while George was another of Syd's. Whether it was a deliberate naming or just for want of any other boys' names left that hadn't been used, I don't know, but I think it was appropriate. Both Georges were the brains of their families, from what I can see.
George Harry Pridmore (23/06/1896 - 31/08/1918), who was in what seems to me the awkward situation of being named after a dead brother (recycling of names of dead infants was very common in those days), an errand boy in 1911, later became a labourer at the steel works, but only until he was old enough to join the army. The first world war broke out shortly after his eighteenth birthday, and it was both the making and the death of him. He was on the front lines from 1916, quickly promoted to corporal, was wounded in action and was then sent to Scotland for officer training, while the rest of the family remained in the rank and file. On leave in 1917, he went back to Sheffield and married May Foster, then was commissioned Second Lieutenant and posted back to the fighting in France. He might have gone on to life in an altogether higher social circle than the Pridmore family had experienced before, but he was killed in action, aged 22, two months before the end of the war.
Oswald Pridmore (18/12/1893 - 24/10/1967) was a bachelor boy. While his brothers and sisters married and moved away from home one by one, Oswald kept on living with his parents, a single man. Whether he fought in the war, I don't know. He would have been called up in January 1916, like all single men, but two-thirds of the army records from that time were destroyed during the second world war, and the paperwork that would tell us whether Oswald was fit for military service seems to have gone up in smoke. He worked at the gasworks for most of his life. After his mother died in 1920, he and his father were left to rattle around the big house in Hunt Street for another twelve years. When William died in 1932, Oswald inherited the house and lived there alone.
Then, in 1944, at the age of fifty, Oswald married Annie Askham, a 42-year-old spinster. What persuaded them to take the plunge at that late age I can't imagine, but the marriage lasted until Oswald's death 23 years later. After the war, they moved to the Park Hill Flats, finally leaving the Hunt Street house behind.
Wilfred Pridmore (12/03/1892 - 08/03/1921) moved around from one job to another for all his short life. A labourer in 1911, a carter when he married in 1913, a soldier for a short time before leaving the army on a pension, presumably in ill health, then a file stripper at the time of his death from 'pneumonia and asthenia' just before his 29th birthday. Wilfred married Chloris Gertrude Moorhouse at the age of 21 - she was the daughter of a jeweller with a penchant for unusual names; she had a sister called Dacier. They had no children. I'm assuming that it was because of Wilfred's poor health that his death certificate records him as living with his sisters' families at 10 Brough Street, while Chloris (who registered the death) was living on Silver Street, but it's not impossible that they had separated. Chloris also died quite young, of cancer in 1933.
Lilian May Pridmore (12/05/1889 - 02/06/1968) was a servant in 1911. Many women of her class and generation were already married and a mother several times over by the age of 21, but Lilian was 28 before she married John Charles May in 1917. They must have known each other for many years before that - John's older sister had been living with Lilian's older brother since 1900 - but their first child was born a respectable ten months after the Christmas Day wedding, so there was no urgent need to tie the knot at that time. John was thirty and not in the army, so he must have been unfit in some way.
Lilian May May, as her marriage renamed her, had four children: Charles William (04/11/1918 - the birth was registered on Armistice Day), Florence (08/11/1919), Lilian (31/03/1921) and Mary Ann (25/10/1922). The Mays lived at 10 Brough Street along with Lilian's older sister Florence and her family, also taking in younger brother Wilfred. They moved away in 1926, I don't know where they went, but by the time of her old age Lilian had left Sheffield and even Yorkshire behind, and was living in Droylsden, Lancashire when she died at the age of 79. Her daughter Florence was still in Sheffield to witness Oswald's late wedding in 1944, so I assume the big move to Lancashire came after the war.
Florence Pridmore (08/04/1885 - 13/05/1920) married John (or maybe James) William Palmer at the age of 23, and he seems to have been quite a catch. The Palmers lived at first at 34 Hunt Street, all five rooms of it, before apparently swapping houses with Florence's parents and going to the slightly smaller house on Daisy Walk that the Pridmores had lived in before. Four rooms to themselves was still above the norm for Florence's siblings.
Florence's husband, with the unusual profession of 'mineral water carter', seems to have had a strangely fluctuating name. He was born John, was married under that name, but at the birth of their first child nine and a half months later, had changed his name (and that of their son) to James. He's still James in the 1911 census, but by the time their second son was born, later the same year, he's John again, remaining a John until 1914. He joined the army and fought in the war. Florence moved into Brough Street with Lilian, and James (as he was now calling himself again) joined them there after the war was over, working as a stableman. Their children were James William (17/05/1909), Norman (17/10/1911) and Jennie (17/06/1914).
Florence died of pneumonia in May 1920, aged 35, just seven days before her mother died of the same illness. James and the children continued to live with Lilian and her family, even after James remarried in early 1926.
Arthur Edward Pridmore (01/04/1883 - 18/10/1914) was a soldier. It was something he did for his whole life, from joining the army at 18 to fight the Boer War, to dying at Ypres at 31 years old. His active service and career as a recruiting sergeant took him away from the family home in Sheffield - when he married the widowed Annie Ashworth in 1909, he was in barracks in Southampton. Maybe it was the distance from the rest of his family, maybe it was the fact that Annie's father had been a sergeant-major, or that he was Irish, maybe it was just a creative imagination, but Arthur gave his father's occupation as 'master brewer', as opposed to 'bricklayer', on the marriage certificate. They had no children. Soldiers of his rank marrying was tolerated by the higher-ups, having children was unofficially somewhat frowned upon - distracts them from their duties, you know. Who their baby visitor recorded on the census form was, I have no idea. But when war broke out, Arthur was in the British Expeditionary Force and in the thick of the first fighting. Sadly, though, he didn't last long.
John Thomas Pridmore (23/02/1881 - 14/10/1914) seems to have struggled to find a direction in life. He was the first of the family to join the army, and fought in South Africa throughout the Boer War. Despite his 1899-1902 medal, he never moved up the ranks like his younger brother Arthur. Posted to York in 1907, he met and married Harriet Annie Myton (in the register office, the first non-church wedding in the family), leaving the army after the birth of their first son. He took his wife and baby back to Sheffield, moving in with his ever-accommodating oldest brother Ernest (after whom the baby had been named) and drifting from one job to another rapidly over the next few years - railway labourer, porter, steelworker and then soldier again when war broke out. Still a Private, he was among the first British soldiers killed as the army slowly advanced towards Ypres.
John and Harriet had three children: Ernest William (13/03/1908), Gladys (03/05/1910) and Frederick (14/07/1913).
Albert Pridmore (01/05/1879 - 22/06/1917) wasn't married, despite what the census form says. He had been living with Margaret May since 1900, she was known as Margaret Pridmore, and they had had six children, but they had never tied the knot. Margaret (and her younger brother John, who married Lilian) were born Richardsons, out of wedlock, and changed their surnames to May when their mother married. Perhaps that's why she and Albert didn't see it necessary to get married. Nonetheless, in December 1913, with Margaret seven months pregnant with their seventh child, Albert belatedly made an honest woman of her in the register office. Why then, after thirteen years of common-law marriage, I can't imagine.
Their children were: Albert (24/03/1901), Frederick (16/08/1903), Lily (22/11/1904), George (11/01/1907), Ernest (04/11/1908), Harold (13/12/1910) and Mary (05/03/1914). Frederick and Lily died in infancy, and Albert junior met a tragic end in 1915. At the age of 14, he was working as a wagon greaser on the railway when he was run over by a train and killed. The death certificate records "Accidentally killed, his leg being cut off by his being run over by a railway engine or a goods train." That they didn't know which train had done it, and the nature of the injury, makes me think the death wasn't quick or pleasant. This makes me wonder about my grandfather Syd - although he and Albert were uncle and nephew there was less than a year in age between them, they lived in the same area and their fathers had worked together as bricklayers. Syd's life on the railways came after losing his close relative in that way when they were boys.
Albert senior thus had a more tragic Great War than most. He joined up shortly before his son's death - at the age of 36, with a wife and five children to support and his two brothers already killed, I can't imagine he was enthusiastic about it. When he died, it wasn't even quick; he was wounded on 2 May 1917, shipped back to Bradford hospital for treatment and died on 22 June. Margaret, with her four remaining children still all very young, worked as a charwoman, and in 1919 had an illegitimate son, John - who carried on the name Pridmore, despite not being a blood relative. Who his father was I don't know, but I hope he at least helped Margaret out with some cash.
Ernest William Pridmore (28/07/1877 - 06/10/1948) seems to have been a well-respected oldest brother - Albert and John both named sons after him. Unlike his brothers, he came through the war without joining the fighting, probably for medical reasons. He was within the upper age limit for conscription, just, but throughout the war and afterwards worked at the steelworks. His school records twice show him absent for long periods due to medical certificates, but whatever his infirmity was, it didn't stop him producing a big family. The juggling act of fitting all his children and various boarders into his three rooms doesn't seem to have bothered him either - the lodgers shown on the census are his wife's father and brother, and the previous year he had accommodated his own brother John and family when they returned to Sheffield. That small house on Shepherd Street had been their home for nearly ten years, and Ernest remained there until at least 1928.
He and his wife Elizabeth had eight children: William (29/12/1901), Eliza (04/11/1903), Nellie (06/03/1906), Lilian (20/07/1908), Elizabeth (06/06/1911), Ernest (02/06/1914), Hilda (28/02/1916) and Rose (02/07/1918). The preponderance of girls, unlike the usual Pridmore boy-centric families, makes me wonder if Elizabeth was cheating on him. Eliza and Ernest junior died in infancy, but Hilda just passed away last year, at the age of 94.
Which seems like a positive note to end on. I really like this family!
My great-grandfather William Thomas Pridmore (02/08/1855 - 02/05/1932) and his offspring are the family members who fascinate me the most in all of my family-tree research. For one thing, William's ancestors are easier to trace than usual, just because there aren't many of them - William was illegitimate, whether or not he knew who his father was I can't say, but I certainly don't, and there seems to be no way we're ever going to find out. His mother, Eliza Pridmore (c1835 - August 1886) was also illegitimate, and her father is equally unknown to posterity. William thus has only one grandparent to trace, rather than the usual four - Jane Pridmore (1816 - 1870s). We have to go back as far as Jane's parents, James Pridmore (1777 - 1848) and Elizabeth Ward (1787 - 1867) before the family tree branches out any further. And with the big generation gaps in my own branch of the family tree (I was born 121 years after William), the Pridmores obligingly give me much fewer 18th-century ancestors to research!
Furthermore, William was the one who moved the family in around 1880 to the industrial city of Sheffield from the tiny farming village of Pickworth that he grew up in. And he produced a vast legion of offspring who almost all stayed in Sheffield for the rest of their lives and produced hordes of children themselves. William had 13 children and 36 grandchildren, though he didn't live to see all of them born, and researching them has been no end of fun.
They all seem to have individual personalities bursting from the dry records of births, marriages and deaths, so much so that I almost feel like I know them. There are plenty of things that the records just don't tell us, obviously - given the time and place that he lived, I'd say William was probably known as Bill to his friends, but there's no record of that. I don't know if it was his idea or Eliza's to move the whole family to Sheffield, just that they all lived there together for a while; Eliza, her husband and her four children, including William who had grown up with his grandmother while Eliza moved away with her new family. The records tell us that William struggled to find work for the first few years in the city, was a boiler firer at the ironworks for eight years, spent a few more years floating from job to job and then settled into a successful and long career as a bricklayer, but I don't know whether that was the job he'd always wanted or something he ended up doing without really meaning to.
I do know that William outlived the majority of his children. Three of them - Beatrice (06/05/1887 - 01/04/1889), George Richard (06/11/1890 - 29/09/1891) and Percy (16/07/1898 - 28/07/1899) - died in infancy, then four sons were killed in the First World War, followed by William's wife, a daughter and another son in a pneumonia epidemic of 1920-21. Just four out of thirteen living to old age is a low ratio even by the standards of Sheffield in those days.
Here's his census form from one hundred years ago:
The Pridmores had only recently moved into 34 Hunt Street, within the last couple of years. A five-room house was something of a luxury compared to the places they'd lived while bringing up their large family. They'd got it, I'm guessing from circumstantial evidence, with the help of the money of the Palmer family William's daughter Florence married into. It remained the family home until at least the forties, passing to Oswald (he being the only child of William's who had never married and left home) after the parents died.
William and Sarah had married in the rural wilds of Rutland when he was 21 and she was 17. She was also five months pregnant at the time - this seems to have been the rule rather than the exception in all the marriages I've seen in that area at that time. How well they got along is something we can only speculate, but Sarah continued to have a baby every couple of years on average until she was over forty years old. She died of pneumonia in 1920, aged 59.
Starting with the youngest, the ten surviving children of the marriage were:
Sydney Pridmore (06/05/1900 - early 1982), called 'Sidney' above, but changed it to Syd by the 1920s, determinedly followed in his father's footsteps by living and working in Sheffield his whole life, first as a general labourer like most of the rest of his family, then becoming a railway porter in 1923. He stayed with the railways forever after, by 1940 moving from porter to shunter. Also in the early twenties, he and his wife Catherine (nee Millership) moved to 72 Robey Street, which became the family home for decades. He followed the Pridmore tradition by having an army of sons, the last of whom was my dad, and also one daughter just to show that the Pridmore y-chromosome isn't completely infallible. After Catherine died in 1960, daughter Cath took over the 'woman of the house' duties. Syd passed a passion for trains onto his offspring, and must have been a pretty contented man, all in all. He died when I was five, I just barely remember him. His children, without the hardships and diseases of the first couple of decades of the century, lived long lives - with the exception of Philip, who died of diptheria aged five, they all lived to see the 21st century.
They were: William Thomas (Bill, born 18/09/1922), Arthur Edward (Ted, 08/11/1923), Sydney (Syd, 07/03/1926), Catherine (Cath, 24/07/1927), twins Michael (Mike) and Philip (02/11/1929), Lawrence (Lol, 27/01/1931), Samuel Bernard (Bernie, 08/03/1934), Cyril (08/01/1936), Robert (02/01/1940) and George (28/09/1946).
The reason behind the names is intriguing. William Thomas was obviously Syd's father's name; the traditional way to follow it would be to call the second son Sydney, but instead they went for Arthur Edward, who I suppose must have been Syd's favourite older brother - one of the four who died in the war. It's not a Millership name, certainly. Then, after Sydney junior joins the family, we move on to Catherine junior and then a more random selection of names for the subsequent sons. Samuel Bernard was one of Catherine's brothers, while George was another of Syd's. Whether it was a deliberate naming or just for want of any other boys' names left that hadn't been used, I don't know, but I think it was appropriate. Both Georges were the brains of their families, from what I can see.
George Harry Pridmore (23/06/1896 - 31/08/1918), who was in what seems to me the awkward situation of being named after a dead brother (recycling of names of dead infants was very common in those days), an errand boy in 1911, later became a labourer at the steel works, but only until he was old enough to join the army. The first world war broke out shortly after his eighteenth birthday, and it was both the making and the death of him. He was on the front lines from 1916, quickly promoted to corporal, was wounded in action and was then sent to Scotland for officer training, while the rest of the family remained in the rank and file. On leave in 1917, he went back to Sheffield and married May Foster, then was commissioned Second Lieutenant and posted back to the fighting in France. He might have gone on to life in an altogether higher social circle than the Pridmore family had experienced before, but he was killed in action, aged 22, two months before the end of the war.
Oswald Pridmore (18/12/1893 - 24/10/1967) was a bachelor boy. While his brothers and sisters married and moved away from home one by one, Oswald kept on living with his parents, a single man. Whether he fought in the war, I don't know. He would have been called up in January 1916, like all single men, but two-thirds of the army records from that time were destroyed during the second world war, and the paperwork that would tell us whether Oswald was fit for military service seems to have gone up in smoke. He worked at the gasworks for most of his life. After his mother died in 1920, he and his father were left to rattle around the big house in Hunt Street for another twelve years. When William died in 1932, Oswald inherited the house and lived there alone.
Then, in 1944, at the age of fifty, Oswald married Annie Askham, a 42-year-old spinster. What persuaded them to take the plunge at that late age I can't imagine, but the marriage lasted until Oswald's death 23 years later. After the war, they moved to the Park Hill Flats, finally leaving the Hunt Street house behind.
Wilfred Pridmore (12/03/1892 - 08/03/1921) moved around from one job to another for all his short life. A labourer in 1911, a carter when he married in 1913, a soldier for a short time before leaving the army on a pension, presumably in ill health, then a file stripper at the time of his death from 'pneumonia and asthenia' just before his 29th birthday. Wilfred married Chloris Gertrude Moorhouse at the age of 21 - she was the daughter of a jeweller with a penchant for unusual names; she had a sister called Dacier. They had no children. I'm assuming that it was because of Wilfred's poor health that his death certificate records him as living with his sisters' families at 10 Brough Street, while Chloris (who registered the death) was living on Silver Street, but it's not impossible that they had separated. Chloris also died quite young, of cancer in 1933.
Lilian May Pridmore (12/05/1889 - 02/06/1968) was a servant in 1911. Many women of her class and generation were already married and a mother several times over by the age of 21, but Lilian was 28 before she married John Charles May in 1917. They must have known each other for many years before that - John's older sister had been living with Lilian's older brother since 1900 - but their first child was born a respectable ten months after the Christmas Day wedding, so there was no urgent need to tie the knot at that time. John was thirty and not in the army, so he must have been unfit in some way.
Lilian May May, as her marriage renamed her, had four children: Charles William (04/11/1918 - the birth was registered on Armistice Day), Florence (08/11/1919), Lilian (31/03/1921) and Mary Ann (25/10/1922). The Mays lived at 10 Brough Street along with Lilian's older sister Florence and her family, also taking in younger brother Wilfred. They moved away in 1926, I don't know where they went, but by the time of her old age Lilian had left Sheffield and even Yorkshire behind, and was living in Droylsden, Lancashire when she died at the age of 79. Her daughter Florence was still in Sheffield to witness Oswald's late wedding in 1944, so I assume the big move to Lancashire came after the war.
Florence Pridmore (08/04/1885 - 13/05/1920) married John (or maybe James) William Palmer at the age of 23, and he seems to have been quite a catch. The Palmers lived at first at 34 Hunt Street, all five rooms of it, before apparently swapping houses with Florence's parents and going to the slightly smaller house on Daisy Walk that the Pridmores had lived in before. Four rooms to themselves was still above the norm for Florence's siblings.
Florence's husband, with the unusual profession of 'mineral water carter', seems to have had a strangely fluctuating name. He was born John, was married under that name, but at the birth of their first child nine and a half months later, had changed his name (and that of their son) to James. He's still James in the 1911 census, but by the time their second son was born, later the same year, he's John again, remaining a John until 1914. He joined the army and fought in the war. Florence moved into Brough Street with Lilian, and James (as he was now calling himself again) joined them there after the war was over, working as a stableman. Their children were James William (17/05/1909), Norman (17/10/1911) and Jennie (17/06/1914).
Florence died of pneumonia in May 1920, aged 35, just seven days before her mother died of the same illness. James and the children continued to live with Lilian and her family, even after James remarried in early 1926.
Arthur Edward Pridmore (01/04/1883 - 18/10/1914) was a soldier. It was something he did for his whole life, from joining the army at 18 to fight the Boer War, to dying at Ypres at 31 years old. His active service and career as a recruiting sergeant took him away from the family home in Sheffield - when he married the widowed Annie Ashworth in 1909, he was in barracks in Southampton. Maybe it was the distance from the rest of his family, maybe it was the fact that Annie's father had been a sergeant-major, or that he was Irish, maybe it was just a creative imagination, but Arthur gave his father's occupation as 'master brewer', as opposed to 'bricklayer', on the marriage certificate. They had no children. Soldiers of his rank marrying was tolerated by the higher-ups, having children was unofficially somewhat frowned upon - distracts them from their duties, you know. Who their baby visitor recorded on the census form was, I have no idea. But when war broke out, Arthur was in the British Expeditionary Force and in the thick of the first fighting. Sadly, though, he didn't last long.
John Thomas Pridmore (23/02/1881 - 14/10/1914) seems to have struggled to find a direction in life. He was the first of the family to join the army, and fought in South Africa throughout the Boer War. Despite his 1899-1902 medal, he never moved up the ranks like his younger brother Arthur. Posted to York in 1907, he met and married Harriet Annie Myton (in the register office, the first non-church wedding in the family), leaving the army after the birth of their first son. He took his wife and baby back to Sheffield, moving in with his ever-accommodating oldest brother Ernest (after whom the baby had been named) and drifting from one job to another rapidly over the next few years - railway labourer, porter, steelworker and then soldier again when war broke out. Still a Private, he was among the first British soldiers killed as the army slowly advanced towards Ypres.
John and Harriet had three children: Ernest William (13/03/1908), Gladys (03/05/1910) and Frederick (14/07/1913).
Albert Pridmore (01/05/1879 - 22/06/1917) wasn't married, despite what the census form says. He had been living with Margaret May since 1900, she was known as Margaret Pridmore, and they had had six children, but they had never tied the knot. Margaret (and her younger brother John, who married Lilian) were born Richardsons, out of wedlock, and changed their surnames to May when their mother married. Perhaps that's why she and Albert didn't see it necessary to get married. Nonetheless, in December 1913, with Margaret seven months pregnant with their seventh child, Albert belatedly made an honest woman of her in the register office. Why then, after thirteen years of common-law marriage, I can't imagine.
Their children were: Albert (24/03/1901), Frederick (16/08/1903), Lily (22/11/1904), George (11/01/1907), Ernest (04/11/1908), Harold (13/12/1910) and Mary (05/03/1914). Frederick and Lily died in infancy, and Albert junior met a tragic end in 1915. At the age of 14, he was working as a wagon greaser on the railway when he was run over by a train and killed. The death certificate records "Accidentally killed, his leg being cut off by his being run over by a railway engine or a goods train." That they didn't know which train had done it, and the nature of the injury, makes me think the death wasn't quick or pleasant. This makes me wonder about my grandfather Syd - although he and Albert were uncle and nephew there was less than a year in age between them, they lived in the same area and their fathers had worked together as bricklayers. Syd's life on the railways came after losing his close relative in that way when they were boys.
Albert senior thus had a more tragic Great War than most. He joined up shortly before his son's death - at the age of 36, with a wife and five children to support and his two brothers already killed, I can't imagine he was enthusiastic about it. When he died, it wasn't even quick; he was wounded on 2 May 1917, shipped back to Bradford hospital for treatment and died on 22 June. Margaret, with her four remaining children still all very young, worked as a charwoman, and in 1919 had an illegitimate son, John - who carried on the name Pridmore, despite not being a blood relative. Who his father was I don't know, but I hope he at least helped Margaret out with some cash.
Ernest William Pridmore (28/07/1877 - 06/10/1948) seems to have been a well-respected oldest brother - Albert and John both named sons after him. Unlike his brothers, he came through the war without joining the fighting, probably for medical reasons. He was within the upper age limit for conscription, just, but throughout the war and afterwards worked at the steelworks. His school records twice show him absent for long periods due to medical certificates, but whatever his infirmity was, it didn't stop him producing a big family. The juggling act of fitting all his children and various boarders into his three rooms doesn't seem to have bothered him either - the lodgers shown on the census are his wife's father and brother, and the previous year he had accommodated his own brother John and family when they returned to Sheffield. That small house on Shepherd Street had been their home for nearly ten years, and Ernest remained there until at least 1928.
He and his wife Elizabeth had eight children: William (29/12/1901), Eliza (04/11/1903), Nellie (06/03/1906), Lilian (20/07/1908), Elizabeth (06/06/1911), Ernest (02/06/1914), Hilda (28/02/1916) and Rose (02/07/1918). The preponderance of girls, unlike the usual Pridmore boy-centric families, makes me wonder if Elizabeth was cheating on him. Eliza and Ernest junior died in infancy, but Hilda just passed away last year, at the age of 94.
Which seems like a positive note to end on. I really like this family!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Clean me
Working where I do, you see a lot of dirty lorries and vans. Why do people always write "Clean me" and the like on them? One time I saw "All I want for Christmas is a clean", which is really tugging on the heartstrings to an unnecessary degree.
The thing is, nobody writes "Clean your van", or "This lorry is really dirty". It's always first-person, written from the point of view of the vehicle. I suspect that the lorries exert a hypnotic influence over passers-by, and compel them to write these messages.
Note - I saw David Cameron and Nick Clegg today, and the above is the most important thing I can think to write about.
The thing is, nobody writes "Clean your van", or "This lorry is really dirty". It's always first-person, written from the point of view of the vehicle. I suspect that the lorries exert a hypnotic influence over passers-by, and compel them to write these messages.
Note - I saw David Cameron and Nick Clegg today, and the above is the most important thing I can think to write about.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Normal service
Once I'm satisfactorily unemployed, I'll resume posting something trivial, long and fascinating in this blog every single day. Well, after I'm back from Las Vegas, anyway. Thanks for sticking with me until then!
Friday, March 18, 2011
Sky 1 announcement
"As it's Comic Relief night, our Comedy Friday is taking a break this week..."
Anyway, I'm only watching Sky because I'm taking a break from trawling through my spare room. I've got at least three credit cards that were last seen lying on the floor in there, about a year ago, and it occurred to me that I should find them and put them somewhere safe in case I need them. Trouble is, I think I might have done this exercise six months ago, and if so, I have no idea where the somewhere safe was. So the good news is that it's extremely safe, but the bad news is that if I ever find myself in a position of needing to use credit cards (which, when you're voluntarily jobless, can sometimes happen), I'll just have to get a new one. Or steal one from someone else. Or make a fake one using an old video box. That'd work.
Anyway, I'm only watching Sky because I'm taking a break from trawling through my spare room. I've got at least three credit cards that were last seen lying on the floor in there, about a year ago, and it occurred to me that I should find them and put them somewhere safe in case I need them. Trouble is, I think I might have done this exercise six months ago, and if so, I have no idea where the somewhere safe was. So the good news is that it's extremely safe, but the bad news is that if I ever find myself in a position of needing to use credit cards (which, when you're voluntarily jobless, can sometimes happen), I'll just have to get a new one. Or steal one from someone else. Or make a fake one using an old video box. That'd work.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Are Amazon spying on me?
They sent me a recommended-reading email with Moonwalking With Einstein and a lot of similar memory-themed books this morning. But I've never bought a memory book from Amazon - I don't buy memory books, as a rule, I just wait for people to give them to me. It's worrying.
Anyway, let's all congratulate Nelson Dellis for winning the US Memory Championship at the weekend! The first US Champion to be a regular reader of my blog without the regular reading being at least partly in order to write a book about it! This would also be a good time to remind everyone that Nelson is climbing Mount Everest, just like his namesake famously climbed that big giant column in Trafalgar Square. Go and wish him luck! And give money to the Alzheimer's Association!
Anyway, let's all congratulate Nelson Dellis for winning the US Memory Championship at the weekend! The first US Champion to be a regular reader of my blog without the regular reading being at least partly in order to write a book about it! This would also be a good time to remind everyone that Nelson is climbing Mount Everest, just like his namesake famously climbed that big giant column in Trafalgar Square. Go and wish him luck! And give money to the Alzheimer's Association!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Library lane
The Oadby Regional is one of life's unchanging constants. Same location (Oadby Baptist Church), same date (always the same day as the US Memory Championship for some unfathomable reason), same people (more or less), same pub for lunch (the Old Library, next door to the new library, which is next door to a small terrace which claims to be built on the site of both a library and a swimming baths), even the same man who's seen me on TV and happened to be in the pub when we went for lunch this year and last. He probably lives there.
I hadn't played in an othello tournament for quite a long time, or played online either, so I suppose I can be happy with coming fourth out of eight players. One of these days, I'll get good at the game.
I haven't heard any updates from New York, meanwhile, but I assume someone's winning the US Championship right now as we speak. Well, as I type and shortly before you read, but you know what I mean.
I hadn't played in an othello tournament for quite a long time, or played online either, so I suppose I can be happy with coming fourth out of eight players. One of these days, I'll get good at the game.
I haven't heard any updates from New York, meanwhile, but I assume someone's winning the US Championship right now as we speak. Well, as I type and shortly before you read, but you know what I mean.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Senseless
Yay, I've got my census form! Boo, census day is March 27th, the day before my last day at work. I'll have to describe myself as a financial analyst, not an unemployed memory-man-cum-vagabond.
I'm mystified by the government's advertising campaign claiming that the census will be used to determine local authority services. Surely this will just encourage everyone to lie on their form in the hope of making their local area seem most in need of a new swimming pool or whatever? Also, why haven't I had any spam emails/facebook messages urging me to put 'jedi knight' for my religion, or whatever? Or whatever.
Anyway, census forms were better 100 years ago. I can say this from genealogical experience.
I'm mystified by the government's advertising campaign claiming that the census will be used to determine local authority services. Surely this will just encourage everyone to lie on their form in the hope of making their local area seem most in need of a new swimming pool or whatever? Also, why haven't I had any spam emails/facebook messages urging me to put 'jedi knight' for my religion, or whatever? Or whatever.
Anyway, census forms were better 100 years ago. I can say this from genealogical experience.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
That went surprisingly well!
I turned up at BBC Nottingham late, having missed the train and cycled in to the city, but they gave me the task of teaching the sports presenter how to memorise royal weddings, and it came out sounding good on the radio.
Also as a follow-up to last night, the prize I won turns out to be a cheque for £1,000. Maybe instead of giving it to charity like I said I would, I'll take it to Las Vegas and attempt to win a fortune. Did I mention that I'm going to Las Vegas? Well I am. So there.
Also as a follow-up to last night, the prize I won turns out to be a cheque for £1,000. Maybe instead of giving it to charity like I said I would, I'll take it to Las Vegas and attempt to win a fortune. Did I mention that I'm going to Las Vegas? Well I am. So there.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Everyone wants me all of a sudden
Tune in to Radio Nottingham at the crack of dawn (7:15ish) tomorrow morning - they're talking about memory for no particular reason, and asked me if I wanted to join in. And since I'm in such a cheerful mood this week, I said okay. Now I just have to remember to get out of bed in time.
I also got a letter today from the bank, forwarding a letter sent to them by Cerebra, a charity for brain injured children that I've been giving small amounts of money to by monthly direct debit since longer ago than I can remember (I sometimes look at the list of direct debits on my account and usually have no idea what half of them are. I should probably do something about that, really - evil people have probably been taking my money every month without me knowing or caring). Anyway, this letter says I've won a prize in their fundraising lottery, and since I never told them my new address when I moved house two and a half years ago (or maybe even the time before that, five years earlier), they went to the trouble of writing to my bank and asking them to forward the letter.
I didn't know they were even doing a 'fundraising lottery', and I'm not sure that I really approve of charities giving money to people like that. If I give money to a charity, I expect it to go to brain injured children, not to fat lazy slobs who can't even be bothered to work for a living and have got plenty of money anyway. That kind of person gets my goat no end. I was going to tell them to keep the prize when I call them back, but actually now I come to think of it, I'll take it and give it to a different charity, one that doesn't give prizes to people. That'll teach them.
The prize is probably gift vouchers or something, donated for free by some business, but that's not the point.
I also got a letter today from the bank, forwarding a letter sent to them by Cerebra, a charity for brain injured children that I've been giving small amounts of money to by monthly direct debit since longer ago than I can remember (I sometimes look at the list of direct debits on my account and usually have no idea what half of them are. I should probably do something about that, really - evil people have probably been taking my money every month without me knowing or caring). Anyway, this letter says I've won a prize in their fundraising lottery, and since I never told them my new address when I moved house two and a half years ago (or maybe even the time before that, five years earlier), they went to the trouble of writing to my bank and asking them to forward the letter.
I didn't know they were even doing a 'fundraising lottery', and I'm not sure that I really approve of charities giving money to people like that. If I give money to a charity, I expect it to go to brain injured children, not to fat lazy slobs who can't even be bothered to work for a living and have got plenty of money anyway. That kind of person gets my goat no end. I was going to tell them to keep the prize when I call them back, but actually now I come to think of it, I'll take it and give it to a different charity, one that doesn't give prizes to people. That'll teach them.
The prize is probably gift vouchers or something, donated for free by some business, but that's not the point.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Things come in threes
My boss, who's been needing a kidney transplant for about five years, has finally got a matching donor and was whisked in for surgery today. So please all send positive vibes in this general direction and hope it all goes well. Also, another colleague has gone off on maternity leave starting tomorrow. Really, the office is going to be empty by the end of the week at this rate. I'm also feeling a million times more cheerful and less stressy ever since I handed in my notice, it's really quite miraculous.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Hooray for me!
Because I've handed in my notice from the job that has been somewhat driving me to distraction for the last few months, and I'm going to be an unemployed vagabond again for a little while, paid for by my memory championship winnings.
This sabbatical is going to be shorter than the last couple of times I did this exact same thing (why people keep employing me is a mystery, but past history has taught me that they inevitably do), I'm only going to leave it two months, three at most, before I start looking for another job. But I do really need the break and change of scene. I've spent too many evenings lately just calming down from a stressful day at the office, and that's really not healthy for a delicate would-be hippy like me.
Also, have you seen that advert for some anti-aging cream or suchlike, that says "Don't take drastic measures - use our anti-aging cream!" And then at the bottom of the screen there's small print saying "Not equal to the effect of taking drastic measures." I didn't know that 'drastic measures' was a quantifiable scientific thing, but I think I'm going to have to take them. I found a white hair in my moustache! I'm resigned to being increasingly white of beard these days, but my upper lip has remained resolutely a luxuriant dark brown up to now...
This sabbatical is going to be shorter than the last couple of times I did this exact same thing (why people keep employing me is a mystery, but past history has taught me that they inevitably do), I'm only going to leave it two months, three at most, before I start looking for another job. But I do really need the break and change of scene. I've spent too many evenings lately just calming down from a stressful day at the office, and that's really not healthy for a delicate would-be hippy like me.
Also, have you seen that advert for some anti-aging cream or suchlike, that says "Don't take drastic measures - use our anti-aging cream!" And then at the bottom of the screen there's small print saying "Not equal to the effect of taking drastic measures." I didn't know that 'drastic measures' was a quantifiable scientific thing, but I think I'm going to have to take them. I found a white hair in my moustache! I'm resigned to being increasingly white of beard these days, but my upper lip has remained resolutely a luxuriant dark brown up to now...
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Moonwalk like a Mnemonist!
I've finally got the advance copy of "Moonwalking With Einstein" that Joshua Foer kindly sent me. Autographed, too! I'm building up quite a collection of signed memory books by other people. Almost but not quite motivates me to write a proper one of my own!
I'll read it properly at a later date, but I thought I should give it a quick plug tonight on the strength of five minutes' skimming - it's a fun, light-hearted account of Josh's year-and-a-bit exploring the world of memory competitions. It seems like the kind of thing that might appeal even to someone who's never heard of memory sports before, so if you fall into that category (I can't imagine how you come to be reading my blog if you do, but you never know), please do check it out anyway.
If you're into the present-day memory scene, of course, the book is five years behind the times, but still fun in a nostalgic kind of way. Judging by the sheer volume of questions the fact-checker bombarded me with, in fact, the last five years have been spent editing ten volumes' worth of words from it, because I think the majority of the 'facts' I confirmed way back when didn't make it into the finished work. Also, having been fact-checked, I feel entitled, even obliged, to sue the publishers for the assertion that I met Josh for the first time in Oxford rather than Germany, or that I was 'temporarily unemployed' during the time he was looking me up on the internet. I was actually in full-time work for the entire three-year period around that point, which is wildly unlike me, I know. Also, it says "principle" when it means "principal" at one point. There's probably a mnemonic for remembering how to get that right. I'll create one and put it in my next book.
But those are my only complaints! Go on, buy the book! It's well worth reading, and I'm in it!
I'll read it properly at a later date, but I thought I should give it a quick plug tonight on the strength of five minutes' skimming - it's a fun, light-hearted account of Josh's year-and-a-bit exploring the world of memory competitions. It seems like the kind of thing that might appeal even to someone who's never heard of memory sports before, so if you fall into that category (I can't imagine how you come to be reading my blog if you do, but you never know), please do check it out anyway.
If you're into the present-day memory scene, of course, the book is five years behind the times, but still fun in a nostalgic kind of way. Judging by the sheer volume of questions the fact-checker bombarded me with, in fact, the last five years have been spent editing ten volumes' worth of words from it, because I think the majority of the 'facts' I confirmed way back when didn't make it into the finished work. Also, having been fact-checked, I feel entitled, even obliged, to sue the publishers for the assertion that I met Josh for the first time in Oxford rather than Germany, or that I was 'temporarily unemployed' during the time he was looking me up on the internet. I was actually in full-time work for the entire three-year period around that point, which is wildly unlike me, I know. Also, it says "principle" when it means "principal" at one point. There's probably a mnemonic for remembering how to get that right. I'll create one and put it in my next book.
But those are my only complaints! Go on, buy the book! It's well worth reading, and I'm in it!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Memory people have standards, you know
Commendably early in the year, we've got the revised scoring system for memory championships, plus a couple of the rule tweaks that people have been lobbying for! So just to pass it on to anyone not on the WMSC mailing list, and add my own traditional unhelpful commentary, here we go, hot off the presses:
Spoken Numbers – In the World Championships trials will consist of 200, 300 and 400 digits. In National Championships trials will be 100 and 300 digits.
I wasn't really expecting that one - I hadn't heard anyone lobbying for this. Nobody's come really close to getting all 300 digits correct yet, although I suppose it's only a matter of time...
Names used in the ‘Names and Faces’ discipline will consist of a equal mix of international names drawn from a wide range of different languages to include European, Middle and Far Eastern, Asian and African (following a similar formula as used in the World Memory Championships).
First and Second Names shall be combined entirely at random (eg. a person may have a Chinese first name and a Western surname) and assigned to faces at random.
There must also be a full mix of ethnicity, age and gender of faces used.
No bias towards an individual country will be accepted in a national competition. As a result all current National, International and World records in this discipline will be reset to zero since a comparison with previous events is invalid.
Just clarifying the rules, at the request and for the benefit of the Germans, who've tended to be inconsistent in preparing names and faces in their national competitions in the past. This is how things are done in the World Championship at the moment, so no real change there.
Speed Cards – The rule will remain that if a competitor recalls less than 52 cards their time will be taken as 300 seconds and they will receive a score of c/52 points where c is the number of cards correctly recalled.
The New formula of calculation of points for a full deck is as follows:
11180/(time to the power of 0.75)
This gives 1000 points for a deck recalled in 25 seconds.
Nice formula - very clever, and I think sensible. As well as increasing the 1000-point standard up to the current peak, it slightly improves the score for slower times, bringing the overall difficulty curve more in line with the other disciplines. I don't know whose idea this was, but traditionally Gunther was always the one to come up with peculiar calculations like this, so I suspect him. Anyway, I wholeheartedly approve!
Junior and Kid competitors may elect to compete in an adult competition if they desire. Any competitor that decides to do so cannot take part in a Junior / Kids event for one year after the adult event, thus preventing "competition hopping".
Again, this one is strictly for the Germans, and I don't really know why they demanded a WMSC ruling on it, since the only place that has separate kids' competitions is Germany, and the German competitions aren't run by the WMSC. Still, I suppose it can't hurt to have an 'official' rule in place. I also don't get why the ban on "competition hopping" is necessary - can't we allow people to just compete in whichever events they want? - but I can't really pretend to care about it all that much, seeing as I'm 34 and English.
We would like to welcome the new Council Members who have recently been invited to sit on the World Memory Sports Council and to represent the interest of the sport in their countries. They are:
Jennifer Goddard of the National Memory Sports Council of Australia
Simon Reinhard GM, of Memory XL in Germany
Klaus Kolb of the National Memory Sports Council of Germany
Mr Lin Chuxu, Chairman of New Mind Education in China
Guo Chuanwei GM China
We look forward to their help is growing the sport worldwide in the year ahead.
That's cool. I have no idea who Lin Chuxu is, although I've probably met him. You know what I'm like with names and faces. But it's good to have a bigger council with worldwide representatives to chip into future arguments. Makes the whole thing a bit more organised and official.
And finally, the new standards:
Discipline Millennium Standard Calc Factor Original MS Comp Type
30 min Cards 676 1.479 676 International #
30 min Numbers 1200 0.833 1200 International #
10 min Cards 365 2.747 333 National
15 min Numbers 900 1.111 800 National
5 min Binary 1000 1.000 1000 National #
5 min Names and Faces 70 14.286 100 National
5 min Words 125 8.000 100 National
Poem 375 2.6667 375 Old Comp #
30 min Binary 4000 0.250 4000 WMC #
5 min Numbers 470 2.128 375 WMC
Abstract Images 400 2.500 250 WMC
Historic /Future Dates 125 8.000 91 dates WMC
Hour Cards 1300 0.769 1300 cards WMC #
Hour Numbers 2200 0.455 2200 digits WMC #
Names and Faces 170 5.882 200 points WMC
Random Words 275 3.636 250 words WMC
Speed Cards 25 seconds * 30 seconds WMC
Spoken Numbers 204 70* square root (n) 200 digits WMC #
I think that gets it pretty much spot-on. And I'm very difficult to please with this kind of thing, too. But I think these new standards are punishing Wang Feng for being awesome at numbers to almost exactly the same degree that they punish me for being awesome at cards and binary. All of the ones that really needed fixing (images, dates) have been fixed - I'll leave the likes of Boris to judge whether the names & faces turns out to be a fair standard, obviously.
My own training lately has been erratic in scheduling, but successful when I do it - I very nearly got a "perfect" 468 in 5-minute numbers the other day, which is cool, because if Wang Feng can do it then I don't see any reason why I shouldn't. I've dropped the 4-digit system plan for the moment, by the way - it just wasn't clicking in my head as well as it needs to. It's still on the back burner to be dug up again in future, though...
Spoken Numbers – In the World Championships trials will consist of 200, 300 and 400 digits. In National Championships trials will be 100 and 300 digits.
I wasn't really expecting that one - I hadn't heard anyone lobbying for this. Nobody's come really close to getting all 300 digits correct yet, although I suppose it's only a matter of time...
Names used in the ‘Names and Faces’ discipline will consist of a equal mix of international names drawn from a wide range of different languages to include European, Middle and Far Eastern, Asian and African (following a similar formula as used in the World Memory Championships).
First and Second Names shall be combined entirely at random (eg. a person may have a Chinese first name and a Western surname) and assigned to faces at random.
There must also be a full mix of ethnicity, age and gender of faces used.
No bias towards an individual country will be accepted in a national competition. As a result all current National, International and World records in this discipline will be reset to zero since a comparison with previous events is invalid.
Just clarifying the rules, at the request and for the benefit of the Germans, who've tended to be inconsistent in preparing names and faces in their national competitions in the past. This is how things are done in the World Championship at the moment, so no real change there.
Speed Cards – The rule will remain that if a competitor recalls less than 52 cards their time will be taken as 300 seconds and they will receive a score of c/52 points where c is the number of cards correctly recalled.
The New formula of calculation of points for a full deck is as follows:
11180/(time to the power of 0.75)
This gives 1000 points for a deck recalled in 25 seconds.
Nice formula - very clever, and I think sensible. As well as increasing the 1000-point standard up to the current peak, it slightly improves the score for slower times, bringing the overall difficulty curve more in line with the other disciplines. I don't know whose idea this was, but traditionally Gunther was always the one to come up with peculiar calculations like this, so I suspect him. Anyway, I wholeheartedly approve!
Junior and Kid competitors may elect to compete in an adult competition if they desire. Any competitor that decides to do so cannot take part in a Junior / Kids event for one year after the adult event, thus preventing "competition hopping".
Again, this one is strictly for the Germans, and I don't really know why they demanded a WMSC ruling on it, since the only place that has separate kids' competitions is Germany, and the German competitions aren't run by the WMSC. Still, I suppose it can't hurt to have an 'official' rule in place. I also don't get why the ban on "competition hopping" is necessary - can't we allow people to just compete in whichever events they want? - but I can't really pretend to care about it all that much, seeing as I'm 34 and English.
We would like to welcome the new Council Members who have recently been invited to sit on the World Memory Sports Council and to represent the interest of the sport in their countries. They are:
Jennifer Goddard of the National Memory Sports Council of Australia
Simon Reinhard GM, of Memory XL in Germany
Klaus Kolb of the National Memory Sports Council of Germany
Mr Lin Chuxu, Chairman of New Mind Education in China
Guo Chuanwei GM China
We look forward to their help is growing the sport worldwide in the year ahead.
That's cool. I have no idea who Lin Chuxu is, although I've probably met him. You know what I'm like with names and faces. But it's good to have a bigger council with worldwide representatives to chip into future arguments. Makes the whole thing a bit more organised and official.
And finally, the new standards:
Discipline Millennium Standard Calc Factor Original MS Comp Type
30 min Cards 676 1.479 676 International #
30 min Numbers 1200 0.833 1200 International #
10 min Cards 365 2.747 333 National
15 min Numbers 900 1.111 800 National
5 min Binary 1000 1.000 1000 National #
5 min Names and Faces 70 14.286 100 National
5 min Words 125 8.000 100 National
Poem 375 2.6667 375 Old Comp #
30 min Binary 4000 0.250 4000 WMC #
5 min Numbers 470 2.128 375 WMC
Abstract Images 400 2.500 250 WMC
Historic /Future Dates 125 8.000 91 dates WMC
Hour Cards 1300 0.769 1300 cards WMC #
Hour Numbers 2200 0.455 2200 digits WMC #
Names and Faces 170 5.882 200 points WMC
Random Words 275 3.636 250 words WMC
Speed Cards 25 seconds * 30 seconds WMC
Spoken Numbers 204 70* square root (n) 200 digits WMC #
I think that gets it pretty much spot-on. And I'm very difficult to please with this kind of thing, too. But I think these new standards are punishing Wang Feng for being awesome at numbers to almost exactly the same degree that they punish me for being awesome at cards and binary. All of the ones that really needed fixing (images, dates) have been fixed - I'll leave the likes of Boris to judge whether the names & faces turns out to be a fair standard, obviously.
My own training lately has been erratic in scheduling, but successful when I do it - I very nearly got a "perfect" 468 in 5-minute numbers the other day, which is cool, because if Wang Feng can do it then I don't see any reason why I shouldn't. I've dropped the 4-digit system plan for the moment, by the way - it just wasn't clicking in my head as well as it needs to. It's still on the back burner to be dug up again in future, though...
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Moonie and Broon
In July 2002, I went to Chicago with some friends. And it was a completely awesome holiday, too, I'd recommend it to everyone who's looking for a new place to visit. One of these people, although otherwise a really great person, was one of those people who go to Renaissance Faires and dress up as 'genuine European renaissance folk', and so we all ended up going to the local Faire to see what it was like. It was actually rather groovy, and the best part of it was a pair of brilliant comedians called Moonie and Broon.
They were completely and totally hilarious and extremely talented, and so when at the end of the show they collected email addresses to add to the mailing list, I put mine down, just on the offchance I was ever in a position to go and see them again.
If memory serves, I heard nothing from them for about two years, but then from 2004 onwards, I've received regular mailings, letting me know where they're performing next, what other projects they're working on, and now (technology having moved on since 2002) what's on their latest podcast. I've never really considered taking myself off the mailing list all these years, since I might still, one day, end up in a position to go and see them again. And really, they are by far the most persistent mailing list I've ever been affiliated with - most people would have struck me off the list by now, or lost the original list and recreated it, or something like that. I'm impressed.
So, getting the latest update from Moonie and Broon today has inspired me to give them a plug on my blog. I feel quite bad about them emailing me so many times over the last eight and a half years, and me never replying or going to see them. So if anybody's in the Walnut Creek, California area on March 19th, go and check them out! They come with my heartiest recommendation! Say hi from me!
They were completely and totally hilarious and extremely talented, and so when at the end of the show they collected email addresses to add to the mailing list, I put mine down, just on the offchance I was ever in a position to go and see them again.
If memory serves, I heard nothing from them for about two years, but then from 2004 onwards, I've received regular mailings, letting me know where they're performing next, what other projects they're working on, and now (technology having moved on since 2002) what's on their latest podcast. I've never really considered taking myself off the mailing list all these years, since I might still, one day, end up in a position to go and see them again. And really, they are by far the most persistent mailing list I've ever been affiliated with - most people would have struck me off the list by now, or lost the original list and recreated it, or something like that. I'm impressed.
So, getting the latest update from Moonie and Broon today has inspired me to give them a plug on my blog. I feel quite bad about them emailing me so many times over the last eight and a half years, and me never replying or going to see them. So if anybody's in the Walnut Creek, California area on March 19th, go and check them out! They come with my heartiest recommendation! Say hi from me!
Friday, February 11, 2011
Updates
Sorry to leave you all hanging like this. But it's reassuring to know that there are people out there who will complain if I don't write something inconsequential every night and publish it for the world to see. So here's some sequels to things I've been writing about recently:
Abraham Stapleton, I find after some extensive detective work, was my great-great-grandmother's half-brother. It's confusing, but in brief - Jane Pridmore has an illegitimate daughter, Eliza, then marries William Stapleton and produces Abraham, then William dies and Jane marries Thomas Fowler. The Fowlers bring up Abraham in Pickworth, Rutland, and later take in Eliza's own illegitimate offspring, William Pridmore. Those Pridmore farm women really didn't have much time for the sanctity of marriage...
I've now got two bikes. One cheap second-hand one and one free second-hand one courtesy of Andy at work. Neither are exactly superbikes, but they get me from A to B as long as A is home and B is my office down the road.
I still haven't quit my job, although I'm still thinking of it. I really would enjoy a holiday in Vegas around now. But I've decided to plan something in advance for once and arranged another trip to Pittsburgh in June. Just watch now, a big memory competition will be scheduled for the same weekend. It's bound to happen.
I've let the memory training slide a bit lately, what with all the family-treeing, but when I have done a little bit of memorising, it's been very successful. Hopefully this weekend I can force myself to do some marathons.
I've got a thing with my eye, that I'm having to go and see an optician about. I bet you it ends up with me wearing an eyepatch. Even if there's nothing wrong with it, actually, I might wear an eyepatch anyway. It'll make me look cool and piratical.
I've had some fun with Parcelforce lately - I was sending some toys to a friend in America, and decided to do the new-fangled doing-all-the-paperwork-and-paying-on-the-internet-and-then-conveniently-dropping-the-parcel-off-at-your-local-post-office thing. It turned out to be less easy than the website made it sound. I suppose I can't complain too much about the post office people pointing out that the parcel was 30 grams heavier than I'd said it was, but then even after I'd opened it up, thrown out some unnecessary packaging and re-parcelled it, it took four or five people clustering around a terminal to work out which buttons to press to scan the parcel in. Next time, I'll do it the old-fashioned way.
And then the following day, I came home to a card saying that Parcelforce had tried to deliver a parcel to me, and had taken it back to the same post office I'd spent a lot of time in the day before. I confidently expected it to be the same parcel again, but actually it was some comics I'd bought on eBay, and my parcel is winging its way to Georgia (hopefully the American one, not the former Soviet one) as we speak.
Great comics, by the way - Transformers!
Abraham Stapleton, I find after some extensive detective work, was my great-great-grandmother's half-brother. It's confusing, but in brief - Jane Pridmore has an illegitimate daughter, Eliza, then marries William Stapleton and produces Abraham, then William dies and Jane marries Thomas Fowler. The Fowlers bring up Abraham in Pickworth, Rutland, and later take in Eliza's own illegitimate offspring, William Pridmore. Those Pridmore farm women really didn't have much time for the sanctity of marriage...
I've now got two bikes. One cheap second-hand one and one free second-hand one courtesy of Andy at work. Neither are exactly superbikes, but they get me from A to B as long as A is home and B is my office down the road.
I still haven't quit my job, although I'm still thinking of it. I really would enjoy a holiday in Vegas around now. But I've decided to plan something in advance for once and arranged another trip to Pittsburgh in June. Just watch now, a big memory competition will be scheduled for the same weekend. It's bound to happen.
I've let the memory training slide a bit lately, what with all the family-treeing, but when I have done a little bit of memorising, it's been very successful. Hopefully this weekend I can force myself to do some marathons.
I've got a thing with my eye, that I'm having to go and see an optician about. I bet you it ends up with me wearing an eyepatch. Even if there's nothing wrong with it, actually, I might wear an eyepatch anyway. It'll make me look cool and piratical.
I've had some fun with Parcelforce lately - I was sending some toys to a friend in America, and decided to do the new-fangled doing-all-the-paperwork-and-paying-on-the-internet-and-then-conveniently-dropping-the-parcel-off-at-your-local-post-office thing. It turned out to be less easy than the website made it sound. I suppose I can't complain too much about the post office people pointing out that the parcel was 30 grams heavier than I'd said it was, but then even after I'd opened it up, thrown out some unnecessary packaging and re-parcelled it, it took four or five people clustering around a terminal to work out which buttons to press to scan the parcel in. Next time, I'll do it the old-fashioned way.
And then the following day, I came home to a card saying that Parcelforce had tried to deliver a parcel to me, and had taken it back to the same post office I'd spent a lot of time in the day before. I confidently expected it to be the same parcel again, but actually it was some comics I'd bought on eBay, and my parcel is winging its way to Georgia (hopefully the American one, not the former Soviet one) as we speak.
Great comics, by the way - Transformers!
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Who the heck is Abraham Stapleton?
Subtitle to this blog post: "My great-great-grandmother is a filthy hussy with little regard for Victorian moral standards"
I'm sorry to keep blogging about my family tree, but I'm having a whale of a time researching my illustrious ancestors at the moment and can't really think of anything better to write about. And yes, you can still be illustrious if you're a family of working-class peasants. Everything is relative.
So here's the puzzle I'm struggling with at the moment. It's 1841, census time, and in Star Lane, Bourne ("a star is bourne"?) lives James Pridmore, 60 years old, with a blank space in the 'occupation' column and a house full of other Pridmores. The 1841 census didn't have the oh-so-handy 'relationship to head of household' column that later censuses had, so until I splash out on buying some more birth certificates (I've bought one big batch from the General Records Office already) I just have to guess that 50-year-old Elizabeth Pridmore is James's wife, and the six other Pridmores aged from 20 down to 1 are his children and/or grandchildren. One of these children is six-year-old Eliza Pridmore, my great-great-grandma. And down at the bottom of the list is the unexplained two-year-old Abraham Stapleton.
Fast-forward ten years to 1851. Eliza is now working as a domestic servant, while twelve-year-old Abraham is now living in the household of 87-year-old John Fowler, along with John's son Thomas (40) and Thomas's wife Jane (35). The 'relationship' column has now been introduced, and Abraham Stapleton is described as John Fowler's "grandson".
In 1855, Eliza has a son, William Thomas Pridmore (my great-granddad). There's no father on the birth certificate, which just tells us that William was as illegitimate as Eliza was illiterate (her signature is an X).
In 1861, little William is now living with Thomas and Jane Fowler (John Fowler seems to have died in the meantime), and is described as their "grandson". Eliza, meanwhile, now has a home of her own, describes herself as a charwoman, and is living with another illegitimate son, John W, and her widowed grandmother Elizabeth (probably James's wife mentioned above, although her age is 74 here when it logically should be 70). There's also an 11-year-old "lodger" called Mary Mitchelson, but I'll deal with that mystery another time.
So my original thought was that the Fowlers had a son who got Eliza in the family way and left his parents to bring the kid up. But a) I can't find any trace of Thomas and Jane Fowler having children, and b) What's with Abraham Stapleton? My current working hypothesis is that the Fowler family were kindly friends of the Pridmores who took in various bastardy Pridmore brats over the years and passed them off as grandchildren for the sake of appearances. I've officially downgraded myself from one-sixteenth Fowler to one-sixteenth God-only-knows.
Eliza married William Gilbert in 1862, and I'm guessing that he was the father of her second illegitimate son, since John W Pridmore becomes John W Gilbert after the wedding. Despite the coincidence of names, William Pridmore almost certainly wasn't William Gilbert's son, since he continued to live with the Fowlers while William and Eliza went on to live a comparatively respectable life, having another couple of in-wedlock children along the way.
Nonetheless, Eliza and William clearly kept in touch - the Gilberts moved to Sheffield by 1881 (after living in Boston, Lincolnshire before that, weirdly enough! They lived on Lincoln Lane, in one of the houses that were demolished long ago to make room for the car park) and when William moved there with his wife and three small children, they lived with the Gilberts for a while before getting a place of their own. It's a big happy non-traditional family, and I think it's completely awesome! But I would like to know where Abraham Stapleton fits into it...
I'm sorry to keep blogging about my family tree, but I'm having a whale of a time researching my illustrious ancestors at the moment and can't really think of anything better to write about. And yes, you can still be illustrious if you're a family of working-class peasants. Everything is relative.
So here's the puzzle I'm struggling with at the moment. It's 1841, census time, and in Star Lane, Bourne ("a star is bourne"?) lives James Pridmore, 60 years old, with a blank space in the 'occupation' column and a house full of other Pridmores. The 1841 census didn't have the oh-so-handy 'relationship to head of household' column that later censuses had, so until I splash out on buying some more birth certificates (I've bought one big batch from the General Records Office already) I just have to guess that 50-year-old Elizabeth Pridmore is James's wife, and the six other Pridmores aged from 20 down to 1 are his children and/or grandchildren. One of these children is six-year-old Eliza Pridmore, my great-great-grandma. And down at the bottom of the list is the unexplained two-year-old Abraham Stapleton.
Fast-forward ten years to 1851. Eliza is now working as a domestic servant, while twelve-year-old Abraham is now living in the household of 87-year-old John Fowler, along with John's son Thomas (40) and Thomas's wife Jane (35). The 'relationship' column has now been introduced, and Abraham Stapleton is described as John Fowler's "grandson".
In 1855, Eliza has a son, William Thomas Pridmore (my great-granddad). There's no father on the birth certificate, which just tells us that William was as illegitimate as Eliza was illiterate (her signature is an X).
In 1861, little William is now living with Thomas and Jane Fowler (John Fowler seems to have died in the meantime), and is described as their "grandson". Eliza, meanwhile, now has a home of her own, describes herself as a charwoman, and is living with another illegitimate son, John W, and her widowed grandmother Elizabeth (probably James's wife mentioned above, although her age is 74 here when it logically should be 70). There's also an 11-year-old "lodger" called Mary Mitchelson, but I'll deal with that mystery another time.
So my original thought was that the Fowlers had a son who got Eliza in the family way and left his parents to bring the kid up. But a) I can't find any trace of Thomas and Jane Fowler having children, and b) What's with Abraham Stapleton? My current working hypothesis is that the Fowler family were kindly friends of the Pridmores who took in various bastardy Pridmore brats over the years and passed them off as grandchildren for the sake of appearances. I've officially downgraded myself from one-sixteenth Fowler to one-sixteenth God-only-knows.
Eliza married William Gilbert in 1862, and I'm guessing that he was the father of her second illegitimate son, since John W Pridmore becomes John W Gilbert after the wedding. Despite the coincidence of names, William Pridmore almost certainly wasn't William Gilbert's son, since he continued to live with the Fowlers while William and Eliza went on to live a comparatively respectable life, having another couple of in-wedlock children along the way.
Nonetheless, Eliza and William clearly kept in touch - the Gilberts moved to Sheffield by 1881 (after living in Boston, Lincolnshire before that, weirdly enough! They lived on Lincoln Lane, in one of the houses that were demolished long ago to make room for the car park) and when William moved there with his wife and three small children, they lived with the Gilberts for a while before getting a place of their own. It's a big happy non-traditional family, and I think it's completely awesome! But I would like to know where Abraham Stapleton fits into it...
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Good news, bad news
I've had my bike stolen, which is extremely annoying, not least because I'll have to walk to work for the next couple of days and maybe longer until I can get a new one. That'll teach me to leave it chained up in Nottingham city centre after dark for half an hour.
But to cheer me up, I've got in touch with a super-distant cousin (we've got great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents in common) on a genealogy website and discovered the extensive family tree of the Culpins, whom my great-granddad married into. The great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was Richard Culpin, born around 1675, and the family line from him to me goes through his son Richard Culpin b.1700, his son Richard Culpin b.1727, his son Richard Culpin b.1766, his son Richard Culpin b.1797, his son Richard Culpin b.1828 and his daughter Sarah, who married William Pridmore.
Richard Culpin VI, funnily enough, waited until his fourth son (and tenth child overall) to carry on the chain of Richards, and Richard VII died as a baby. If I was the sixth Ben Pridmore in a family tree, I would've made sure to have had at least eight or nine sons by now, all called Ben, just to make sure the family tradition continued.
But to cheer me up, I've got in touch with a super-distant cousin (we've got great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents in common) on a genealogy website and discovered the extensive family tree of the Culpins, whom my great-granddad married into. The great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was Richard Culpin, born around 1675, and the family line from him to me goes through his son Richard Culpin b.1700, his son Richard Culpin b.1727, his son Richard Culpin b.1766, his son Richard Culpin b.1797, his son Richard Culpin b.1828 and his daughter Sarah, who married William Pridmore.
Richard Culpin VI, funnily enough, waited until his fourth son (and tenth child overall) to carry on the chain of Richards, and Richard VII died as a baby. If I was the sixth Ben Pridmore in a family tree, I would've made sure to have had at least eight or nine sons by now, all called Ben, just to make sure the family tradition continued.
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