The virus and stuff

We walked around the city centre today, for a change. There were some other people around, but not many, and there were far, far fewer parked cars. Which was, frankly, an improvement. 

This, by the way, for anyone who reads Ian Rankin's Rebus books, is the Oxford Bar. It's closed, of course. 

It was rather dull, but at last the ice has all melted, which is good. 

In the little streets behind the main streets there are a great mixture of buildings of different ages. 

Quite a few buses were still trundling around with one or two passengers. 

Ho hum.

We went to the Botanics yesterday - it's still open, thank goodness, although our great leader is muttering about further restrictions. (The statistics are not encouraging - though hugely better than, say, London's.) She'd have been muttering more loudly if she'd been there yesterday. 

We're not supposed to meet even outside in groups of more than two people in total (excluding children under 12) from more than two households, but there were quite a few not adhering to this - though frankly I think it would be hard to pass on the virus outside, in a large, quite empty area. 

I've probably posted this before, but I came across this photo again in my bid to impose order on the archives. These ladies are our grandchildren's great great great great grandmother and great great great great great grandmother, which I do find quite mind-boggling. The older lady was born in 1829, in the reign (just) of George IV. 

I’ve got all my parents’ and also my Norfolk aunt’s photos (not to say ours) to deal with. I'm writing the names of the people on the back of every photo that I can, and there are a lot of them! - and sorting them into categories. I have an envelope full of photos of as-yet-unidentified Boyds - my granny was a Boyd and was the third youngest of 11 so my dad had 28 first cousins and they all looked much the same, or at least they look the same in small black and white photos - the men especially because they tended to go bald quite young. Quite a few of them are familiar to me from other photos, a few of which have been written on the back by earlier family members, so I'll eventually get them all together and try to match faces with names. Because my granny was the third youngest, most of  Dad's cousins were much older than him so I met very few of them, which doesn't help. The second youngest emigrated to the US and her descendants are almost the only ones we're still in touch with - those were the people we were planning to visit in April. The very youngest was killed in WW1, without issue.

 One question is, of course, whether my descendants will really care which of my dad's cousins was Tom and which Willy Boyd. Maybe it doesn't matter, but I feel I should try. 

This is a really good picture of one of them. They all look very like this and share names too: lots of Toms, Willys, Jameses. So helpful. 

The children are not hugely interested in their GGGGG Granny at the moment, but I'm sure they will be later. I would LOVE to see a photo of mine! Mind you, one has a lot of 5 x great grannies (32, is that right?) and I imagine the gene pool gets fairly diluted by the time it reaches this far down. Still, I think I have that particular GGG Granny (of mine)'s mouth - which isn't very good but at least it's better than her nose.

 So… just plodding onwards. Quilting was great therapy for my spirits so I’m missing it. But not as much as I’m missing the kids. And my friends. And... you know. Stuff.