I was trying to find my birth certificate this morning. It’s funny that we are supposed to live in the joined up digital world and yet …… we still need to find a bit of paper which is many years old to try and sort stuff out with the government. Grrrr.
So countless shoe boxes later, still no birth certificate (haven’t seen it in years) but I did find some old parent photographs. Black and white photos just have a special quality to them. Feels like history in your hands. Our son can look at them for hours. Tonight he will sit and drink all the history in. The sadness is that I won’t be able to add much detail to them.
It’s still hard to imagine that my dad took part in the Second World War as a young man. I really wish that I had asked more questions. Now our son if he had the opportunity would have been fantastic, he would have probed every little detail from his grandad.
But we still have old photos as our little gateway into the past. The one below is his grandad with the platoon taken during the war in Iceland.
I expect you know you can get a copy birth certificate (quite easily, I think). Those old photos are priceless. My Mum can still tell us about her wartime
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Sadly the ones with the priceless info have now left us in our case.
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Yes – sad
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It is sad.
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It is annoying to keep track of that old original! Recently To Renew mydrivers license I needed my original BC and marriage license. It’s crazy! 😊. Have a good day!
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You to. I’ve just found it but now for something else I need my NHS number. So back searching again,
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Hehe, these are so nice! ^^
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Thanks
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Wow! You must be really proud to have someone interested he family who served into he great war, isn’t it. 🙂 One of my dad’s cousin was a pilot during the war. The war was almost at the end and he had one last round to make, to click photographs or something, to make sure that the enemy is not in the territory. And his plane crashed. I have heard stories of how good a man he was. And I have seen his photograph and a letter, the one he sent to my grandma days before his death.
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It’s particularly sad about the ones who tragically died so close to the end of the war.
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Great find! It’s pretty neat to see things from past generations like that.
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It was a great find. Thanks
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I love old photos – I agree – it is like holding history in your hand. Thanks for sharing yours!
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Thank you for looking at it. 🙏
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Old pictures have so much to tell
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They do
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Laminate the picture
Keep it safe. These are going to be treasure for rest of your generation.
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Amazing find.
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It was. Thanks
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These are amazing! And I don’t think I know where my birth certificate is, but then I don’t know where I put my keys 30 minutes ago, either.
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List items are usually close to the pets in this house. But unfortunately can’t blame them for the birth certificate.
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Tell me about certificates any kind of birth, school, college…but these old photographs are really priceless.
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They are priceless. Going to start scanning them in to preserve them.
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That’s better!
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You just gave me the idea for the song I will post tonight!!! Thanks!
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Will it involve you signing? Hopefully it’s not about me, not sure I could cope with another Muppet Theme. Seriously will look out for that.
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Hah! Trust me, when I start singing, my girls immediately put their headphones on so that they cannot hear me! I even disgust myself, but it doesn’t stop me. Nope, no Muppet song, although I am partial to Kermit the Frog’s Rainbow Connection and have even posted it a couple of times. 😉
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It was a great choice. My son keeps telling me I’ve got a weapons grade singing voice. He won’t even let me sing at loud rock concerts.
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😊
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I’ve never heard that song before. I love the lyrics. 🙏 Thank you so much.
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My grandfather died far too soon to share his experiences in WWII with my kids. He rarely, rarely spoke of it with us–well, me, anyway. I’m a girl. I was stuck having fabric patterns pinned to me and visited craft stores. Sigh…
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That’s such a shame. I never really met my grandparents, certainly not my grandfathers. Very sad.
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It is. I didn’t realize how unique it was that I had four grandparents in my childhood. Bo’s parents died before the boys were born, and my father died when the boys were a year old. They’ve only a grandmother, something I just can’t fathom…
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At least he’s had quality time with his grannies. But reading about a relation is nothing like meeting them. This will be a test for him (still being so young) and having his first Christmas without having a grandparent there. The table is going to be so much smaller. Maybe we give a seat to the dog – that would liven this up.
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I bet the dog would love that. 🙂 We have three Christmases this month, one of which we host because it’s the day our children are in the church Christmas program. No clue how many relations from my side we’ll see, but Bo’s side’s pretty small. Small doesn’t equal quiet, though, because my sons are LOUD. 🙂
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Loud is better than quiet at Christmas. My family is quite a distance away (and they have there own family groups) so suspect it’s seeing how much noise two of us and pets can make.
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I’m sure you can make a good deal. 🙂 My kids have a knack for inspiring relatives to leave early, so we’ll see how things go this year.
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It will be fun just a different kinda fun.
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Three Christmases sounds scary and kinda fun at the same time.
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the kids love it. to me, it’s so, so bloody draining, especially since I have to lock up pieces of myself around the in-laws.
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I suppose I was lucky apart from my partners lovely mum and twin, the rest of the family didn’t really want to know us.
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What? Well, my side’s like that, too. I never see my cousins, or most of my uncles and aunts, and we never communicate. My godmother’s kin have been more like family to us, and they’re, like, third cousins? They actually WANT to hang out with us…and they don’t drive Bo nuts, which is a bonus…
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That’s good that they want to hang out with you, plus they don’t upset the applecart. No my family are great but have their own circles now and live miles away. My partners family with a couple of exceptions have never really wanted anything to do with me and worryingly our son.
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Now that is heartbreaking.
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It’s their call, even when his mum was still with us apart from a couple of notable exceptions they wouldn’t even send a birthday or Christmas card. Kids notice that sort of thing.
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Damn right they do!
Say, what if my daughter Blondie became a pen pal with your son?
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I think he’d like that a lot.
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Does she want a pen pal?
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Looking at your dad’s photo and pondering about identifying people in photos sparked an idea – that paid off.
When my nan died we found some old photos. One was of Clark Gable with unintelligible writing on the back and another two were of a dashing young man in uniform.
She died 1996 and since then I’ve tried unsuccessfully to identify him.
Showing the photos to a mate, who is into thing military, he worked out that one of the uniforms was RNAS – the navy air branch that was merged with the RFC to create the RAF.
From your post I went over to Ancestry, who, I found, have put on the Royal Navy records. Lo and behold, there is her brother’s Navy record card – with ‘Engt to RAF’ stamped on it.
Hopefully 2 + 2 ne 5 and I’ve finally identified him.
Chris
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That’s brilliant. It’s great when a Story reopens after all these years. Going to have another push soon to find more out about Dad.
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