Don't believe everything your mother told you

If I could be bothered - which I can't - I could easily find out when I first met Sue. I know it was shortly before she and I, along with several others, accompanied a relief convoy to Bosnia just after the Yugoslavian civil war. Sue is a member of a Lioness Club just along the coast from here so the Old Bat and I have had occasion to meet a good many times since then. The latest occasion was at the beginning of last week and Sue was telling us how she has only recently discovered that she has two half-sisters. A bit like my sister-in-law, who discovered a couple of years ago that she has a half-sister. Of course, all this knowledge only comes to light after the death of everybody who could tell us the stories behind the facts, stories which we would dearly love to know. It just goes to show that not only do we not ask the questions when people who can give the answers are still around to do so, but in fact half the time we don't even know the questions to ask.

When I started researching my family tree there was only one person left alive from earlier generations: my mother. It seemed natural to ask her to tell me all she could and she did so willingly. She told me that somebody on her side of the family had done some research which showed we were descended from a naval captain. That proved to be untrue. She also told me that one of my father's uncles was a fisherman who was thought to have been lost at sea in the early years of the 20th century. I have just found out that Great Uncle Ambrose was indeed a trawlerman, but he died in 1922 (hardly the early years of the century) in a sanatorium of enteric fever.

I wonder how many of the other things she told me will prove to be false?