Much better kip. Woke up in time for the Shipping Forecast followed by Prayer For The Day and then Farming Today which was all about carrots being sold in supermarkets for 8p a kilo. The kids will not go hungry this Christmas. Switched off when the today programme came on. Harsh reality is not my thing.
Off to York today for the annual pub crawl wi’t t’internet lads from oop north. Staying over this time as I need one more stay to reach gold with Hilton. Bit of a come down as I’ve been diamond for the last six or eight years. Sokay. If they dropped me lower than gold I’d stop bothering with hilton and just book the nicest hotel. As it is I’m building up the points for a big freebie somewhere. Posh like. It’s a lot easier staying the night anyway than having to make my way back to Lincoln after having a skinfull.
Booked on a lunchtime train home so plenty of time for ambles through the Shambles. Pop in to the railway museum maybs. Hey baby, what’s the hurry…
Spent almost an hour at the opticians yesterday. They do all sorts of tests these days. The upshot is I’m getting a new prescription for which I handed over four hundred and thirty notes of King Charles’ finest. They probably mostly featured his mum the late queen. Not sure I’ve seen em with Chuck’s mugshot yet. In reality no physical transaction was made. My phone went ding and the new lenses were paid for.
When I was sat in the chair trying out all the different incremental lens options it made me think about my 7th great grandfather John Jones, Maesnonni. I’m just building up an economic model of his farm at the mo. Anyway the point is had I been around at the time, he died in 1731, I’d probably be blind by now or at least going around with a permanent squint in my eyes as I scrunched them up trying to see things.
Old JJ died with only one child afaik and there was no mention of his wife in the will so she must have predeceased the lad. Even though he was relatively wealthy there was a lot of mortality doing the rounds. Smallpox outbreaks, TB. Looking at my own family history, large families didn’t seem to come in to being until the nineteenth century – see screenshot. This was when society started to get to grips with the causes of death and a time where modern medicine began to emerge. In the eighteenth century people had a lot of kids. It’s just that they didn’t survive. I read somewhere recently that Sir Huw Owen’s wife had twenty one children, only one of which survived childhood.
Even Griffith Jones, Llanddowror and Hywel Harris bore the scars from having contracted smallpox as children and the latter’s daughter died of it.
No fox news to report.
