Fýra, fimm, seks, sjey

I have joined a new Welsh class, refreshing my knowledge of the language by redoing some of the course that I finished back in 2020. I am enjoying it, but I have hit a snag a few times when trying to remember numbers. 

I get started alright - un, dau, tri - and then something funny happens. An old memory of numbers in a foreign language overwrites the Welsh. The next numbers that come to mind are fýra (pronounced foira), fimm, seks, sjey (shay). Then my brain stops counting because it knows these numbers aren't Welsh.

I blame my Grandma.

Me and Grandma, Cardiff Bay, 2006

My Grandma, Ragna, came from the Faroe Islands to the UK when she was 19. She lived the rest of her life on the outskirts of Wrexham until she passed away aged 89. Despite living over three quarters of her life in North East Cymru and having a greater English vocabulary than many people born in this country, she always counted in Faroese. And when she counted she often counted out loud. 

I was grandchild ein

If she rolled a six in a game and was moving a piece she would count ein, tveir, tríggir, fýra, fimm, seks. I'd forgotten ein, tveir and triggir. 

Clearly there were also times she was counting up to seven because I automatically go up to sjey. I'm trying to think when she would have been counting to sjey. She used to count the plates on the table to make sure she hadn't forgotten to lay a place for anyone. That could have been when she used to count to sjey. We often took friends to see them. We crowded round her tiny table no matter how many we were in number.

Fýra, fimm, seks, sjey. I remember when I was a teenager, playing a card game with Grandma, my mum and some of my friends. It was a game called Racing Demons where you have to get rid of your cards by putting them on piles in the middle of the table. Suddenly Grandma disrupted the flow shouting "Sex! SEX!" She was trying to put down a six. My friends were traumatised.

I haven't interrupted a Welsh class by shouting "SEX!" at least not yet. I have apologised for not remembering saith when all I could think of was sjey. I explained it was all my Grandma's fault. 

But I'm grateful in a way that she embedded those numbers so deep in my brain. It's a legacy she left me along with so many other memories. 

BONUS family photo - after my Grandma passed away we went through her photo albums. I found this photo of her with my Grandad at a wedding before I was born. Grandad is trying to sneak a cheeky kiss. I love this photo so much.

September 2022 review

We are now three quarters the way through 2022 and September felt like a busy month, both personally and in the wider world. 

Towards the end of the month I had my fourth anti-covid vaccination, and this time I got a sticker!

Unlike some previous jabs, I felt the effects of this one, spending most of the following day feeling poorly with flu-like symptoms. Still, it's worth it to be (sort of) covid-proof as we head into winter. 

The main news story this month was the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, which dominated media output for days. I blogged about how I felt out of step with a lot of people regarding it - and I have had some feedback that will probably inspire some future posts. It may have been too soon to ask awkward questions, like I did. 

The state funeral was declared a bank holiday, which added an extra day on to out week's holiday in Caernarfon. I blogged about that too! And here are a couple more bonus pictures.

Conwy's three bridges

Full steam ahead!

After a "decamonth" of football matches in August, I only went to four games in September. Partly this was because all football was cancelled the weekend after the Queen died. This affected our plan to celebrate the birthday of our eldest nephew, Zac, by going to a game with him and some of his friends. If we had made it to that game, I would have seen three successive Shrewsbury games for the first time in decades.  

However, we saw Zac on our way to Caernarfon, and on the way back we got to see our second eldest niece, Iona on her birthday, as my sister and brother-in-law had brought their clan down to stay at my Mum's house. We even got to go with them to see the DC League of Superpets movie (reviewed here). 

The four games I saw included a new record scoreline for me - with Cardiff Corinthians winning 16-0 (sixteen-nil!) in the FAW Trophy. 

The day after the Corries racked up that massive score, I drove over to Nailsworth in Gloucestershire, where Forest Green Rovers were hosting Shrewsbury Town. It was back-to-back Shrewsbury away games for me, having been to Bristol Rovers the previous week. 

Shrewsbury won 2-0, which made climbing up the massive mile-long hill to the ground almost worthwhile. 

Talking of large scorelines, I wore my new Barry Town colour-themed Converse sneakers to Barry's home game against Goytre United. Barry won 5-0!

Despite the reduced quantity of live football, we have started watching the Welcome to Wrexham documentary on Disney Plus. I have found this surprisingly moving, mainly because Wrexham is a place that I know well due to family connections. The strength of feeling the fans have towards their football club underlines the importance of these cultural institutions. The Hollywood owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny, seem to understand that and have come across well so far.

However, it's kind of funny watching the documentary about last season and knowing how the season ended. The documentary editors have been clever at foreshadowing about how difficult it will be if Wrexham miss out on promotion at the end of the season... oh dear!

Delving into the family archive: my great-great uncle, Robert Ivor Bostock

Two years ago we rescued some old family photos from my parents’ garage and scanned them. There was a lot of family history in the albums and I ended up discussing my great-great-uncle with my Dad.

When my Dad was little he lived with his Grandma, who he called Ninna, in New Broughton just outside Wrexham. Ninna’s brother, Robert, had left the Wrexham area early in the twentieth century to seek his fortune in America. When my Dad visited New York and went to Ellis Island he found his great-uncle’s name in the vast arrivals logs that the US Immigration Service has open there.

Robert Ivor Bostock was born in 1877. He was adopted by the Roberts family of Brymbo, my great-grandmother’s family, but kept the Bostock surname. I’m glad he did because there is a website dedicated to tracing Bostocks and it has a lot of information about him, and his family, on it.

For example, thanks to that website I know that in the 1901 census he was registered as a clerk in a brickworks in Brymbo. The next census he appeared in was an American one, in 1910, by which point he was living in Long Beach, California.

What happened in those 9 years? Well in 1905 he went to America on a ship called the Oceanic. Having gone through immigration at Ellis Island, he then travelled inland to Mahoney City, Pennsylvania. I know this because he had a photo taken there, which he sent back to his sister, Elizabeth (Ninna). Sadly the photo mount got cut to make it fit into a photo frame at some point, so his message on the front has been lost, but the information on the back is intact.

From Mahoney City he made his way to Los Angeles. A couple of years later, in 1908, he got married. His new wife was also called Elizabeth. She was originally from Skipton in Yorkshire and was another immigrant to California. We have a wedding photo.

I think Elizabeth must have emigrated with her family as she seems to have her mum present. Robert went the America alone, although he did already have a cousin who was also called Robert living in the USA. I don’t know if his best man is his cousin or a friend he made in California.

Within a year, Robert and Elizabeth’s first son, Albert Ivor was born. Albert lived until 1995. We have a baby photo sent back to Ninna. Photos like this would have been the only sights she had of her nephew.

In 1911, Robert and Elilzabeth had a daughter called Gwendolyn. I think this photo is of Albert and Gwendolyn as small children, mainly because we have no other photos of children dressed like this in the archive.

The next item in the archive is a postcard sent in 1917. It’s dated 23 May. 

The message on the back is a bit difficult to read. I think it says:

“Dear sister and niece [possibly my grandma, Eliza Jane Richards]

Just a line to say we are all well, hope you are the same. How is [???] boys that are at the front

did you hear from [???] soon

What do you think of the U.S.A. joining in the war

with best wishes

Your brother Bob”

It gives his address as 622 South Hope Street, Los Angeles, California, USA. This is now right in the centre of downtown LA, only a couple of blocks away from the Omni Hotel where Cathy and I stayed on our first ever American roadtrip in 2004.

Robert had applied for American citizenship in 1912, at which point he was an agent of the Metropolitan Life Assurance Co., now commonly known as Met Life. In September 1918 he registered for the army, at the age of 41. A large number of men he would have known from his days in Wrexham would have been fighting in the First World War, and maybe the pull of loyalty to his original homeland persuaded him to sign up once his new homeland entered the war. However, I doubt he would have left the USA as the war was over a couple of months later.

In the 1920 census he was a bookkeeper in a shipbuilding company. By the 1930 census he was back working as an insurance salesman. He died in 1932, aged 54.

The only other photo we have in the archive is this photo of Gwendolyn, or Gwennie as she is called on the note. It’s dated 1927, so she would have been 16 in this photo. She lived all her life in Los Angeles and died in 1992.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert and his journey to America. We forget sometimes what emigration meant in the era before air travel. He left home, travelled abroad, and never saw any of his family again. There was probably an exchange of photographs and occasional letters. His sister only ever knew her nephew and niece through those pictures that arrived in the mail. None of his family from Wrexham was present at his wedding or his funeral, and none of them ever visited his grave.

I feel this small blog post is a belated tribute to someone who went out and changed their own future, swapping Denbighshire for California. 

Car trouble isn't always trouble

We were driving up to Shrewsbury yesterday and just as we reached Pontypool the exhaust decided to break. After an RAC man gave us the all-clear we drove on, sounding like rude boys in a done up car, to Abergavenny. At Kwik-Fit we were told we could go back to the depot in Newport where they had the part. 'Forget that' we thought, and carried on to Shrewsbury, roaring through the countryside like city hoons on a day trip to ruralshire.

After eventually arriving in Shrewsbury I booked my car in with the family mechanic for Monday morning. Today I borrowed the parental Peugeot to drive over to Wrexham to see my Grandma. I wasn't even half way there, when the 'STOP' light came on on the dashboard, the temp guage was banging the side beyond the red, and there was blue smoke trailing from the exhaust.

Another RAC-man, who appeared deceptively young but had done six years fixing motors in the army, arrived and diagnosed that the water pipe had blown and the engine was dry. A jury-rigged fix later and we wended our way carefully back to Shrewsbury (Mum and Dad had driven to the rescue too), stopping for pancakes at a Little Chef first.

On reflection, this was a load of hassle on a weekend I could have done without it. But on the other hand, this could have happened on Tuesday when we were driving over to my Grandad's funeral. And it turned out my Grandma had forgotten I was coming and had gone out for the day anyway, so if I'd made it to Wrexham it would have been a wasted trip. So, the hassle served a purpose, and if it was going to happen it was good that it happened then.