Still dragging on

I did one of those things I should have learned not to do. I looked back over past blogs. I didn't read them - well, just a few - but what I did see was one I wrote seven months ago. What I wrote was:

I have now set myself something of a challenge. It's all very well having this magnificent database full of names and dates, even other information like addresses and occupations where I have managed to trace them, but it is a trifle cumbersome and difficult to follow when trying to see how the different strands link up. It also needs rather more meat on the bones. So I have decided to write it out in narrative format together with explanations of how people lived and worked at various points along the time-line. This, of course, means doing a lot of research. I hope the internet will prove up to it - and that I will not get half-way through and decide to junk it all.

That, if you haven't guessed, referred to my family history. I made a start. In fact, I finished the first draft of chapter one. I even started on chapter two. But then I realised I needed to confirm the date on which my two x times great-grandparents William and Phoebe married. I ordered a copy of their marriage certificate - and found that Phoebe's parents were not who I thought. That meant I had quite a large number of names of people who were actually not related to me (at least, as far as I knew) and I had to set to to trace others. Chapter two is still on hold.

I'm quite pleased with the start of chapter one:

To somebody with a vivid imagination, the outline of Suffolk might suggest a clenched fist with a raised index finger. That index finger is a spit of land in the north-east corner of the county with the North Sea to the east and, across the River Yar, Norfolk to the west. In that spit of land, that admonishing finger, lies the village of Blundeston. Not a great deal has ever happened in Blundeston, unless one discounts the possible visit of Charles Dickens. He used the village as the birthplace of David Copperfield having seen the name on a signpost during a visit to Great Yarmouth.

It is in Blundeston that the story of the my family begins with William, my 3 x great-grandfather. It was here, in St Mary's church, that he married Rebecca Raven on 22 April 1788. Rebecca was a Suffolk girl and was aged about 20 when she married, by then eight months pregnant with the couple's first son, named William after his father, who was born on 22 May.

One day I'll get back to chapter two. Who knows? I may even get onto chapter three.