5th May: Bristol with Chrissie

Chrissie put today aside to help me discover Bristol. This was extremely generous of her, as she had already spent a day touring me around Bath etc, and was now going to host my discovery of my / our ancestral roots. We walked around the river area and enjoyed lunch there, then visited St Mary’s of Redcliffe, where she been a bridesmaid for a relative – I think it was her uncle Billy Hazell, but I am not sure. The church was spectacular – high Gothic and wonderful stained glass windows. We also visited Small Street where my grandparents lived and where my father was born, as well as Heber Street, where our great grandfather lived. We photographed the house opposite where number 29 would have been, next to a panelbeater’s yard. We could see the shape of the houses as most were still intact, so it was not difficult to imagine our great grandfather coming home to work after a day working as a cooper; I bet he smelt awful. We tried to visit an address picked up from a genealogist interested in our family (Gillets) but found there was no such address. I wrote to my contact later that night and asked them to check their information. I felt quite important and knowledgeable, sort of ‘at the source’. My paternal grandmother was Rose Gillett, descended from a Huguenot called Jacques de Gylet. The Gilletts went to America at some stage, so my 13^th great grandfather is John Billington, a passenger on the Mayflower. I must remember to mention this when I am in America - no-one seems impressed in New Zealand. Billington had the honour of being the first man to be hung for murder in America, but as my daughter Rosie says, it was probably an act of self defence. Never-the-less, I suspect it pays not to cross the Gilletts.

I tried to buy wine for dinner but they said they had plenty, so we sat down at their beautiful long table and enjoyed yet another meal with the lovely linen. The next morning Chrissie took me to the station for my train to Accrington, in Lancashire so I could visit places my mother’s family lived. I felt very sad to say goodbye - she and all the other cousins had given me a truly wonderful time, and I just wasn't sure when I would see them again.

4th May: Bath, Wells and Axbridge:

I went for another early walk, this time along a narrow country lane and eyed up a house I wouldn’t have minded buying. It was very large, built of stone, and would make a fabulous hotel. I pretended to be a buxom eighteenth century maid hurrying home after a night of indiscretions. I am sure the countryside looked exactly the same. Silver birches, nettles, ivy, spring flowers of clematis and wisteria, stone houses, and stables. I tried to ignore the asphalt road and the occasional lorry bounding past. A rooster crowed loudly, so I spent some time wondering if chooks were around in eighteenth century England. I decided they probably were.

Breakfast was a simple affair – croissants and coffee in the conservatory, accompanied with beautiful white linen. I love my cousins. I am easily won with a bit of Egyptian bedlinen, a French breakfast, and an English table setting. Furthermore, these cousins, perhaps knowing my difficulty with names and similar inconsequential details, had the courtesy to share one name, which meant I never had to wrestle with the problem of learning two. They were both Chris, but the lady cousin was called Chrissie for the purposes of familial differentiation. They took me to Bath and treated me to a tour of the Roman Baths, after which we had lunch at Sally Lunn’s house. Sally’s house was very small, but she baked a good bun. I love anything old and interesting, so the baths were right up my street. Apparently the Romans had come to England several centuries ago, not knowing about the problematic food and climate, and immediately set about turning parts of it into Italy, just as the English later tried to turn India in England. As a result, the Indians and Pakistanis now play cricket better than the English. The town of Bath was the first tourist destination in England, as until people travelled there for a bit of a spa or a rub down, the only travel and overnight stays were for business purposes, such as perhaps popping up to Lancaster to sort out trouble at the mill. Because of my interest in hospitality, I was therefore able to turn my day into a business trip, and photographed the exterior of some old hotels which I thought might evidence the start of the western hospitality industry. Somehow they have dropped off my phone, or I would incldue them here. I particularly enjoyed a crescent shaped street of old Regency houses, which Chrissie explained always have five stories. So does my mother, but of a different type.

They also took me to Wells, another town based on the local springs, and then to Axbridge, where they used to live. The roads were very narrow, and although I thought they were very pretty, I could see this became a nuisance later in the day as they filled up with commuters trying to go home. Everything looked very European with houses all clustered tightly together, and very narrow streets. Still, Starbucks and McDonalds were keeping a low profile, and it looked quite rustic and (wait for it) English.

That evening I tried to arrange a meeting with some Poulstons, but they are becoming a rare breed (my niece Tahlia’s observation), there being just 76 on the British electoral roll, and only three entries in the local white pages, all of whom I knew. I telephoned a cousin that my daughter Rosie had met on Facebook, and got her grandmother’s number. Unfortunately she could not see me the next day, but she seemed pleased to hear from me. However, I knew the Bristol Poulstons would not solve my genealogy problems, which were located in Stroud in 1826, when my great great grandfather, Edwin Poulston was born. I had not been able to find evidence of his parents until a relative suggested his mother might be Celia Poulson, who gave birth to an Edwin Poulson (there is an Edwin Poulston in each generation of my family except my brother, who is Russell Edwin) in a Stroud poorhouse. I suspect poor Celia did not record the father of her child, but I still have to check out this link by tracing Edwin Poulson to see if in fact, he turns out to be a Poulston, and therefore, one of us.

My cousins cheered me up by pouring me plenty of wine. They are very good cousins and I hope they visit me one day.

3rd May, London to Bristol

Having rested up from my journey, I set off for Bristol, my father’s birthplace. I was surprised to be so tired after travelling, which was conducted in a sedentary position except for a few short journeys through the paperwork places at the airports. I find it odd that one can travel so far sitting down, yet still feel tired on arrival.

Anna and Kieran dropped me at Richmond station. I went through the turnpike and promptly lost my ticket, which put me in a mild panic. I practised my slightly confused senior person look in case I needed it on the train, but it turns out that I had so many tickets with seemingly similar information on, that one of my other ones was okay. I still don’t understand what happened – maybe I lost my seat reservation or something.

Bristol station (Templemead) is a beautiful stone job sort of arching out to the town. I looked for my map of Bristol and directions to my cousin Stella’s place, but couldn’t find it. I bought a map of Bristol for a pound, but Stella’s street wasn’t on it – I didn’t know that before I bought the map, as it was in a slot machine. I phoned Stella and asked her which bus to get to her place, and she gave me directions to a place where she would meet me, and take me there herself. Stella is an elderly cousin of my father, and she normally gets about on a mobility scooter, so I was a bit dubious about this. Furthermore, her directions were rather perplexing. “Go outside the station and walk away from it as if you are leaving the station (um - could I be doing anything else??). Turn right and keep going until you see the Evening Post building, which is black. It’s at a roundabout. Look for some shops near the roundabout – there aren’t many shops around there, so they will be easy to find – and keep going right until you see some black gates. I’ll be waiting in there for you.”

I went outside the station and walked as if I was walking away from it. That part was quite easy. Then I turned right, and kept walking away from it, looking for the Evening Post building. Couldn’t see it, so I went back the other way. I asked a few people but none knew where it was. Then a beggar asked me for a few pence, so I said of course I would give him some money, if he would tell me where the Evening Post building is. I’m not very smart. He told me to keep walking back the way I came for at least ten minutes, and I would find it. As it turned out he was correct, but I walked away wondering if he had lied for the money. After about ten minutes I still couldn’t see the Evening Post, but found a bus with the door open, so asked the driver where it was. He was very nice and took me there for nothing. Of course there were no shops anywhere near, and it started to rain. I walked around the district for an hour or so, up and down various side streets admiring all the black gates. Eventually I took shelter in an archway not far from the roundabout and phoned Stella again. She appeared quite quickly from some gates across the road and took me to her little flat in Red Cross Mews, across the road from the old Red Cross School dad went to when he was a little boy (check out the two pictures). It was wonderful to see her. She introduced me to her grey squirrel and gave me a blue piece of glass with S.S. Great Britain on it. We took photos of each other outside her flat, and I recorded her as she talked about her child-hood and about my grandmother, her aunt. She also called some other cousins, Pat and Francis Gillett, who duly arrived to take me to yet more cousins, Roger and Doreen Pitman (Doreen was a Gillett) and we all pored over our family trees and asked each other questions. It was fabulous. They kindly offered me sandwiches and wine, and I accepted both, as by now the after-effects of the poisoning episode had subsided and I was finally able to contemplate food again. Sadly, the sandwiches were stuffed with ham and beef, so I had to own up to being a vegetarian, and possibly therefore, someone to treat with great suspicion, in case I launched into a series of insults about meat eaters, or worse still, performed magic spells on them. Happily for both them and me I did neither, and one of my cousins was pleased with the extra beef. They were all very kind to me and it was a wonderful thing to meet so many members of my father’s family, and to be welcomed so thoroughly. Of course I use the word 'cousin' loosely - some of them were 2nd cousins. Maybe 3rd even. Pat even gave me a jar of marmalade, which I suspect I should have given to my mother.

After we had finished playing happy families they took me to yet anther cousin, Chrissie Bryant (nee Gillett again) who had volunteered to accommodate me in her home in Somerset, just south of Bristol. This particular cousin had stayed with my parents, and apparently been given a good time by them, as there is nothing she could have done to make me feel more welcome than she did. She even asked me from time to time, if there was anything else I either wanted or needed. In fact I was given the right royal treatment, which occasionally had me wondering if I had the wrong family, and if she had stayed with someone famous and interesting like the Queen, or Helen Clark. I checked a couple of times, but no, she had stayed with my parents, and found them kind. My parents can be quite beguiling at times. My room had not just the usual commodities such as bed and pillows, but also a tea tray in case I got thirsty in the night, melatonin pills to correct my jetlag, and biscuits for the night munchies. But best of all was the satin smooth Egyptian sheets. I am now saving up for some, and have contacted my bank manager to arrange a second mortgage.

Their house was a recently built stand alone house with a large garden – about half an acre at a guess. Chris said he hated gardening, and had a lot of trees and plants taken away, but it still looked beautiful. I was amused to find they had not just a conservatory (this is a new addition to English houses since I was last her in the 1970s), but also, a sitting out area. Clearly global warming has its advantages in England.