Why not unlock your
ATTEMPTING to eke out any kind of positive from this Covid-19 pandemic, Sue and I have come up with a free plan for all members of this now isolated and getting bored quickly community – turn back time and discover the family members you have never met.
With a “wartime community spirit” we are learning to pull together, however the lengthy isolation could be quite difficult to adjust to; what on earth are we going to do with all this spare time?
Many of us have recently been able to highlight the importance and love of our immediate family unit and the special bond with close friends, as well as the kind gestures and concern many have shown to the elderly in general, plus those not as fortunate as ourselves.
Now we have an opportunity to bond with our loved ones.
Our simple plan is one that many of you may be interested in taking up – an antidote to social distancing that will help you keep in touch with your kin, including an attempt to suggest some inspirational home-schooling.
Why not have fun and trace your past – start a family history project or research the history of your house, to connect with your ancestors.
Then have some nostalgic party sessions for all the family – reminiscing about the happy days in your lives and collating and writing down your adventures and good times.
We are here to help you, if need be, in your exciting journey back to the “good old days”’
For some unification and solidarity, we have started our new Facebook page – Southport’s History Hunters.
This will also be our local and family history platform to communicate with like- minded souls and those interested, where we can offer help, free advice and guidance, to all those researching their house or family history – or to research and compile projects professionally for those unable to do them, for whatever reason.
We will also, of course, publicise this weekly nostalgia column and, to launch (somewhat belatedly) our family and house history research business.
Family connections are precious at this testing time, so why not get your children involved and make good use of time during this dismal period.
We think everyone should all be at least aware of where they come from, as it gives people a more rounded view of themselves and perhaps leads to the discovery and some understanding of how and why we have certain inherited traits in our genes; you might even become inspired when you discover more about your relatives and maybe this will allow you to explore new possibilities.
This community-spirited idea will hopefully allow you to stem the boredom and put the worry of isolation to one side, and let’s help each other, safely online; let’s become sleuths with the enforced spare time that we have and become history hunters – turn a big negative into a positive.
Put on your rose-tinted, nostalgic glasses and whisk yourself back in time – and hold a nostalgic family session/party or two, or with your children (to stop them, however briefly, from getting tetchy) and reminisce about your happy childhood days, growing up when the sun always shone, and recall the adventures you got up to in your youth.
It could be fun!
Put the jigsaw to one side and start a new, different kind of puzzle – find out who, what, when, where and how you came to be here.
You could
perhaps expand your venture and turn it in to a sociable family game, go through the alphabet and each discuss a topic – turn the TV off and talk, get to know each other a bit better, and start jotting down your life events.
While not being schooled, you could perhaps get your children to recall their favourite things they have done sofar in life; draw, collate, write – create a life scrapbook – this home schooling would tie-in nicely with your overall family history project.
Perhaps you could ask your children to create a basic family tree template design, even drawing each member or using photographs.
Use your imagination and have some fun.
Start your new pastime by digging out and sifting through all your old family photographs, birth, marriage and death certificates, christening and wedding invitations, school photos and reports, scrapbooks, society membership cards, etc, and sort them out into individual family members, duplicating some for others.
Then, begin gathering information and details about your immediate family members to add to their photo.
From this you can begin researching your family history, with individual life studies, plotting a rough tree; we are here to help you with any local or family history questions you may have, and will continue to do so with free impartial advice and guidance, to enable you to keep sane during these trying times.