Who do you think you are?

We’ve just had a Friday afternoon office chat about family trees and ancestors (one of my colleagues has been researching his family). Whilst I know fairly well where my mum’s side of the family come from/ lived due to the family bibles we have; I haven’t really got the foggiest on my dad’s side.

I know my surname isn’t that frequent, in most cases the members of my extended family are the only ones in the telephone directory with the surname (the topic of telephone directories had come up in the conversation). Although in a slight freaky moment the only person with my surname in the aged aunts/ gran former stomping ground (they’ve all popped their clogs now) isn’t related and shares my mum’s name and profession (they have met each other at a conference quite a few years back and found they’d both married to gain the surname).

So I’m sort of intrigued as colleagues asked the obvious questions that have been asked before .. is anything to do with Little or Great Barford (both villages) or Aveling-Barford (the makers of traction engines in days gone by, my colleagues said you never know it might be a Jeremy Clarkson/ Kilner Jar history). It would be nice to know these things. But its getting beyond about 3 generations that requires some delving with dad/ research. I know there is a connection to north London (hence vague family allegiance to Arsenal football club) and that my grandad had a builder’s yard (the family trade it seems) off Brick Lane (which I only found about when I went on my GOLD trip to Bangladesh, as that’s now Banglatown).

Hmm maybe a day out in Kew is in order? At least with as infrequent a surname as I have it’s easy to search … unlike Dr T and his common surname. He thinks I should like my fairly unique surname more than I do …. at least his doesn’t get mis-spelled as often as mine (which it seems is all too often), hence I make a point of trying to get people’s surnames correct on letters etc. as it really annoys me! My sister likes it more than me I think as she's double barrelled it to her hubby’s common surname (and also ‘cos otherwise she can’t find her name in lists as she looks in the wrong area of the alphabet!).