An Invitation

I got an invitation yesterday, to the wedding of my cousin Clare to her fiance Nathan. They get married on 12 April - in Australia, that being where they both come from. Clare is actually something like my third cousin twice removed, but some of the Aussie rellies and my family have kept in touch throughout our lives, and have visited each other in our respective countries. When I first met Clare she was a baby, and her younger sister and little brother not even the proverbial twinkles in their parents' eyes!!
My photos of that time are all prints and I haven't got round to scanning them yet, but I'll show you a layout of Clare's and Nathan's visit to Scotland last year. In this photo we had just had lunch at South Queensferry looking out at the Forth Bridges, before they headed off on the next stage of their journey to visit rellies on Clare's mum's side. It was great to see them.
However, back to the invitation.... much as I would love to go over to Oz and be at their wedding - and incidentally, also at her sister's wedding the following month - I just cannot afford the time off work, at least part of which would have to be unpaid, as I have already got some of my holiday entitlement earmarked for the summer lacemaking week in Knoydart and a trip to Ireland a little later.
Here's another layout... of Sally and her fiance this time.
They came to Edinburgh for a few days in the summer where Sally had talks with some medical people about the possibility of doing some work here. Watch this space!
They are both lovely girls, Claire and Sally, with gorgeous guys as future husbands. It would be so lovely to share their special days with them, but I will have to be content with seeing photos, and perhaps I can do them a scrapbook page each as a present.
Meant to say about that Spanish group I was off to the other day.... There were only three of us, Helen, Tony and myself. The other two have been studying together for a while, self taught I would think, as from my memories of school their pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired. Tony wants us to speak Spanish ALL the time which is ok when you have the vocabulary, but at this stage, I haven't, so I will do my best and use English where I have to, to ask questions that need a bit of explanation, for example. Despite his obviously frequent visits to Spain, I don't think he 'hears' the correct pronunciation or inflection, so that his conversation is very hard to follow. At least Helen speaks slowly and clearly and is easier to follow. She has been kind enough to lend me some books and papers that will help me to revise! After all it is 40 years since I left school, and I have hardly used any Spanish since then. Despite all the problems, I felt I acquitted myself pretty well, and am looking forward to the next meeting.
Tomorrow morning is the Genealogy group! I missed the first meeting so mustn't forget this one! It's English genealogy we are doing, as the people who have organised the group are English, but that's fine as my mother's mother and her family came from the north east of England. Maybe I should set up a group to do Scottish genealogy though, as there are big differences in the way that data was collected and how and where it is to be found.
I laughingly say I could bore for Scotland on the subject of my family tree, but surprisingly people seem to quite interested in the stories I can tell about the ancestors! I am really lucky in that I have manuscripts from two branches of the family giving lots of historical and social details about themselves and their families. However I have also researched a lot about my other families - mother's, grandparents', great grandparents, etc....... so not only do I have a family tree, but a small forest of them!

This is a direct line tree, made up of individual layouts I have put together. I had it printed 20x20inches, a copy for my sister and one for myself, earlier this year. We have both had them framed now and they now hang in our respective houses.
Well, I had better be off to put all my notes together for tomorrow!

Talk again soon.