Review of the Year

The year has been shaped by family concerns, to the extent that we have made less progress on 'the Street' (as local usage sometimes calls a row like 3 - 9 Clees Lane) than we would have hoped at the beginning of the year.

Nina's godfather Martin, one of her late mother's cousins, died suddenly in February, and we have been drawn into much closer contact with his surviving sister Barbara, with whom we now find ourselves somewhat in loco filio filiaeque. Nina took a lot of the responsibility for clearing Martin's cottage, and Barbara has not always been in the best of health. So there have been regular trips down to the New Forest and Gosport.

Emily gave birth to a daughter, Angharad, our second grandchild, in May, and Nina spent a month with them in Melbourne around June. And the autumn has been taken up by the renovation of no. 2 for my Mum (see previous blog.)

Nonetheless, the demolition of the old back extension of no. 4 and the clearing of no 6 (see two blogs back) has at least set the stage for positive progress next year, and our work in no. 2 has also reminded us what we are capable of , whetting our appetitite for our own spaces.

2007 has also been the year when I finally got into exploiting the computer for music purposes, allied to a strong burst of new interest in jazz. Again, at the moment it's a highly hole and corner business, setting up where I can, but the development of new spaces will give me the chance to set up a dedicated space.

We are currently looking forward to Jenny's book launch at the National Gallery, which we will combine with a pre-Christmas festivity with Jenny and Alex in Guildford. More of that when it's happened!

One of the curiosities of the year has arisen from 'the family' giving me a DNA (y chromosome) test for my 60th. It turns out that I am (haplogroup) I1a U-N in which the U-N stands for Ultra Norse. In other words, my n times great-grandfather (and thereon back) came from Scandinavia, probably Sweden or Norway. Or to put it crudely, I am (distantly) a Viking ! This may ('non-paternal events' - i.e. an unfaithful grandmother (not you, Dora !) - permitting) link with my surname i.e. Graham. Graham is generally derived from 'de Grantham' or 'de Graeg Ham', the name borne by a Norman lord who went north to Scotland in the 1120's. His father or grandfather was one of William the Conqueror's closer associates, so is quite likely to have been of Viking derivation. The finer details of this, which I won't go into, also mean that Tankervilles and Chamberlain(e)s may be very distant cousins. There was a Chamberlain(e) in my Methsoc group at Cambridge.................Hello, John !