I’d just been looking at celebrating the 150th post in a couple of days’ time when to my astonishment I realised that it’s actually a year since I started posting!

For anyone who may not have been around then, the justification for this blog is as follows: I have inherited, as well as a lot of family history paperwork, ten years’ worth of letters between (mostly) my parents and my grandparents. I am posting the letters now on the 60th anniversary of the dates they were written, although in due course there will also be some other family history related articles on here. I’m acutely aware, for example, that I’ve pretty exclusively stuck to the Atkins family (as well as their Chinese associates) so far; I also have Baker, Fewings, Mullinger and Macord in my family tree – the last two of which I have researched myself and come up with some fascinating snippets.

I have newspaper clippings, theatre and concert programmes, photographs going back to the mid-nineteenth century, and goodness knows what else. The aim is gradually to reduce the amount of storage needed, which is why I’m posting all these letters online – and yes, destroying the originals. They are valuable not for themselves but for the information they contain, after all.

I’m sorry to have to report, however, that I got short shrift from the second cousin who had previously indicated that she had a lot of family history memorabilia in her loft. She now denies having said any such thing, and reminds me that her father died in 1986. (I knew that, actually.) That was not so much a door closing as a blast door slamming shut and a detonation taking place on the other side of it; there is no route, now, leading in that direction, and although I think that is a terrible shame I have no alternative but to accept it. Her loss, I feel, but clearly this stuff has more value to me than it has to her. I shall at least not feel obliged to consult her about any of this in the future, which is something of a relief.

And so we enter our second year; I know there are a few people reading this now, and I’m not just whistling into the void, so we’ll keep posting and just see what happens. I feel I have an obligation to the people who amassed all this information in the first place to make some attempt to preserve it and share it with anyone who may be interested. I can’t imagine who you may be, or why you’re here, but I know you’re out there somewhere – to quote the words of a song – and even if you weren’t I’d probably still be doing this because I Am Really Just That Sad. 😎