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Ernie got some transfers for staying in bed all night last night (he had a big nose bleed in the middle of the night, but it didn't seem fair to punish him for that). And when I say all night, he still woke me up at 6.15am, but that now counts as the morning apparently. Last night I had gone to sleep thinking, "The fact that we become adults and have disposable income and don't spend any of it on transfers is one of the biggest betrayals of our childhood selves". It seemed so profound that I almost got up to write it down.
I didn't though, so the reported thought may be an approximation.
I stand by it though. I used to love transfers and though I wasn't actually sure that they still did them until Catie bought some, I can't believe there was a time when I could have bought transfers any time I wanted (for myself, not my kids) and still didn't.
Transfers were an occasional treat of childhood - I by no means did them regularly, but the thrill of placing figures from a sheet of plastic on to any part of a background that you thought they might go was one of life's great pleasures. Second only to placing them on a place where they definitely didn't go.
I should have woken up, gone to Amazon and bought every transfer set they have - I bet I could afford to own all of them - and spent the rest of the week doing them. But in the morning, doing transfers didn't seem as important as it had as I was falling asleep.
Don't get me wrong, It was still important, but self-consciousness had kicked in.
Ernie was delighted to get his transfers and did them straight away. He was right to be pleased. There will come a time when he is older and it's time to put away transfers. And one day, when he's 58 he might lie in bed wondering when he last did transfers and why he stopped and why he isn't spending 50% of his wages on transfers.
And he won't have the answer.
Thanks very much to Substack subscriber
GoldmanT who (within about half an hour of me publishing yesterday's blog) commented,
"Due to the marvel that is public records and genealogy
websites, I can confirm that Margaret (and likely Mary) was a spinster.
She was born in St Petersburg, Russia, to Scottish parents, both of whom died when she was aged 37. Her younger siblings and some nieces and nephews were born in Russia so seems like the family were established there for a while. And Margaret and Mary must have had a lovely trip to Finland in 1920, aged 60, as they were recorded re-entering Southampton via Copenhagen. Or perhaps the Arctic cold is what finished Margaret off, as she died four weeks later.
Who knows what a Scottish family were doing in St Petersburg - maybe you were drawn to the gravestone of someone who actually spoke to Rasputin....
If the trip from Finland was actually the return from Russia then it's possible that Mary and Margaret met Rasputin and vaguely possible that they were drawn in by his sexual magnetism and had relations with him (though they'd have been in their fifties by then and we all know that it's disgusting if anyone in their fifties has sex - although I don't think Rasputin was that fussy).
Anyway with readers like this (and others also provided me with the same info) it's possible that the Richard Herring show "Who Do I Think They Are?" could come to fruition. Which Hitchin stiff shall we do next? If you have any more info on the sisters then do let me know!
The internet can be beautiful, my friends. Imagine if we used it for education and coming closer together, rather than racism and trying to destroy the planet Earth.
