Twelve

Pennybun was coming across to the east for a visit today, but I decided to spend another day indoors and not coughing so much. Mr Dave went to meet her out at Musselburgh - I was sorry not to join them. Managed to get quite a bit done though; got completely bound up in writing a long email to the genial genealogist of Carlow.

In the process I discovered a census entry I hadn't previously noticed; great-grandma Bridget in the 1911 census. Living alone by then (although only a few streets away from her daughter and family) - but the 1911 census has more detail than in previous decades. Patrick had died over thirty years earlier, but she'd been married to him for 18 years and had twelve children of whom seven survived. She lived long enough for my dad to remember her as a slightly scary visitor, always dressed in black. She once offered him an apple from one of the bags that she'd just bought at the market - her sight was failing and it was in a dark hallway - and the toddler grabbed one and bit into it to find that it was his first.....tomato. Imagine the trauma - my dad avoided raw tomatoes for the rest of his life.