A letter to the woman I imagined I would be…

Dear Kate,

Your name was always so much more sophisticated than mine. You dropped the ‘i’ at University where you became a cooler version of me. I never quite pulled it off.   

And the award goes to….me?

So I’ve been nominated for an award…!! That was unexpected!! Thank you so much for nominating me Katherine of A Hansen Chronicle. Being very new to this blogging lark it really is a boost to know that a few people are reading, and even enjoying, what I write 🙂 The best thing about this nomination is that it encouraged me to read other blogs so that I can pass on the award, so thank you. I also need to apologise for my tardiness in posting this as I have been travelling for the past month. You can find out more about the award, my reflections and my nominations below.

Here’s looking at you kid

It’s probably not a coincidence that I have started looking into my family’s past now that I’ve created a little human of my own. It’s funny what these little people do to you. The nappies and sleep deprivation are a cliched given. Blah blah. But no one warned me that today I would be trapped on the sofa for an hour while my 2 year old used me as a human slide. That I would voluntarily hop around my son’s ballet class like a bunny rabbit. That most days I am outsmarted by said 2 year old. And that I would love every (ok, almost every) second of it.

Lest we forget: The courage to care

Today is a significant anniversary, but chances are you won’t have heard of it.

If I told you that 3000 men, women and children were massacred on the night of 2 August within the last 100 years in Europe would it surprise you that it’s not well known?

What about if I told you that hundreds of thousands of others died alongside them within a few short years? Surely you would have heard of that right? Actually, maybe not.

Spilling the beans: Family secrets

I’ve been on a hunt for my family. For our history and our culture. The names, the dates, the places. But most of all I have been hunting for the secrets. The juicy stuff.

I guess every family has them, but I reckoned there were a fair few secrets lurking in our past. The rumour mill was rife with them. A family name change that swept a generation, Romani roots and the silence of the older generations.

Life in the rotten barrel: Romani gypsy discrimination and the police

My Romani gypsy great-grandfather was charged with being drunk in possession of a horse and cart in 1907 when he was 18. I laughed last week when I found the article in the British newspaper archives and sent it round to family members.

Gypsy Feminist

I’m a feminist and part of my ancestry is Roma. I am proud of both of these aspects of my identity, but both remain controversial in their own right. So what is a gypsy feminist? Maybe I’m being deliberately provocative in putting these two words together. But this gypsy feminist creature must be exotic, right? Traditional meets modern with her copy of ‘The Feminine Mystique’ poking out from under her headscarf.

What’s in a name? GYPSY

This post is how I wanted to start my blog. A good researcher always defines her terms. But I keep wimping out. It’s personal this time. It’s taken me a while to really get to the bottom of why I’m finding it hard to write about what it means to use the term gypsy and whether we should even use it at all.

Panning for ancestral gold

It’s a random weekday evening. I sink into the sofa with my laptop and subconsciously flick through the usual suspects..facebook, the news…back to facebook again. My mind drifts back to work and I flick faster, searching for something that will take my mind somewhere else. But I’m back at work again…until I remember that my colleague was talking about researching her family tree at lunchtime. I’d love to do that I’d said, but doubted I’d get far with written records of a travelling family.

The mythical gypsy past

My Romani gypsy heritage isn’t something we talked about much growing up. My grandmother died long before I was born and the whole family had settled and integrated into mainstream society. For my dad it’s part of his childhood- the smell of the grass, the sounds of the horses hooves, the sight of the wagon off to market. But for me it’s a mythical past that I can’t smell, taste, touch or see.