Lower Road circa 1900
I found these this morning - Lower Road where my house is, back at the turn of century.
I have a massive fondness for old photos. I'm not sure why - probably because they do provide this single glimpse into the past.
I went peering for other old photos of where my ancestors were at that period in time - Auchinleck, in Ayrshire, Montreal, in Quebec, and other places of which I know nothing - and found to my great disappointment that the pics looked disturbingly similar and provided no contrast at all - I found other pics of men in peaked caps standing in front of stone houses with a cart or two in the background. As such, I didn't post them up, as I'm not convinced those pics have much to say, which is a mild shame.
Hunting for pics made me ponder why it was that I was so keen on hunting for pics of the places my family came from. I've got a fondness for family history, perhaps coz I worked in it for so long. While I don't believe that you are entirely the sum total of your ancestry, and it is possible and indeed normal for a family to stray a long way from their roots, I do think it's nice to know where you did come from, and who your ancestors were. It's nice to feel part of a continuity, going back as far as you can. It gives another spin on history to be able to read a book and say 'that's where I would have fitted in'. It kinda helps makes sense of the past, and that's important to me.
In other news, I'm in a fairly ratty mood today. pierot has pointed out that this isn't uncommon for me at the moment - I tend to be snarky and tense. I know a lot is to do with the relentless viewings, and the estate agent crap. I'm a fairly territorial person, and I find it very hard to have lost, in some ways, any control over my most basic bit of territory, which is my bedroom. I hate the fact that I can't leave a jumper on the floor, because there's a viewing pretty much every day at the moment. I hate the fact that I can't sprawl in bed on a Saturday morning, because there's a viewing and I've got to be up and dressed and presentable. Without my most basic bit of space to relax in, I wind up feeling more claustrophobic in general, and find people increasingly hard to deal with. I don't have anywhere I can retreat to, so I just tense up a little, constantly, and that does make me a little more prone to grumpiness.
I am trying to figure out ways to deal with this, and I don't quite know how. Bah. And humbug. It's probably not helping that I'm having a lot of nightmares at the moment - vivid, lurid dreams in which people I know stop being my friends and become my enemies, trying to hurt me. I've talked about a few of them, and I've tried to make them seem funny, but it is beginning to lose the humour value to me. When every morning I wake up and have to take a few minutes to tell myself that it was just a dream, it wasn't real...
*tries to put it into words*
It just begins to wear a little at my brain. The lack of sleep brought on by waking up early from a nightmare and being scared of going back to sleep isn't helping either. Not sure at all how to deal with that one. I think my brain is trying to tell me something. I just don't know quite what.
*sighs*
And that's me...
I have a massive fondness for old photos. I'm not sure why - probably because they do provide this single glimpse into the past.
I went peering for other old photos of where my ancestors were at that period in time - Auchinleck, in Ayrshire, Montreal, in Quebec, and other places of which I know nothing - and found to my great disappointment that the pics looked disturbingly similar and provided no contrast at all - I found other pics of men in peaked caps standing in front of stone houses with a cart or two in the background. As such, I didn't post them up, as I'm not convinced those pics have much to say, which is a mild shame.
Hunting for pics made me ponder why it was that I was so keen on hunting for pics of the places my family came from. I've got a fondness for family history, perhaps coz I worked in it for so long. While I don't believe that you are entirely the sum total of your ancestry, and it is possible and indeed normal for a family to stray a long way from their roots, I do think it's nice to know where you did come from, and who your ancestors were. It's nice to feel part of a continuity, going back as far as you can. It gives another spin on history to be able to read a book and say 'that's where I would have fitted in'. It kinda helps makes sense of the past, and that's important to me.
In other news, I'm in a fairly ratty mood today. pierot has pointed out that this isn't uncommon for me at the moment - I tend to be snarky and tense. I know a lot is to do with the relentless viewings, and the estate agent crap. I'm a fairly territorial person, and I find it very hard to have lost, in some ways, any control over my most basic bit of territory, which is my bedroom. I hate the fact that I can't leave a jumper on the floor, because there's a viewing pretty much every day at the moment. I hate the fact that I can't sprawl in bed on a Saturday morning, because there's a viewing and I've got to be up and dressed and presentable. Without my most basic bit of space to relax in, I wind up feeling more claustrophobic in general, and find people increasingly hard to deal with. I don't have anywhere I can retreat to, so I just tense up a little, constantly, and that does make me a little more prone to grumpiness.
I am trying to figure out ways to deal with this, and I don't quite know how. Bah. And humbug. It's probably not helping that I'm having a lot of nightmares at the moment - vivid, lurid dreams in which people I know stop being my friends and become my enemies, trying to hurt me. I've talked about a few of them, and I've tried to make them seem funny, but it is beginning to lose the humour value to me. When every morning I wake up and have to take a few minutes to tell myself that it was just a dream, it wasn't real...
*tries to put it into words*
It just begins to wear a little at my brain. The lack of sleep brought on by waking up early from a nightmare and being scared of going back to sleep isn't helping either. Not sure at all how to deal with that one. I think my brain is trying to tell me something. I just don't know quite what.
*sighs*
And that's me...