8 Keeling brothers

Imo the Winner

On Saturday Imo ran in the South West Schools cross country Championships at Exeter, in a 3 km race. She was in the U15 girls race (she is still twelve, for four more days). There were 70 runners and she finished 19th. She was the second fastest in the Somerset team. Next month she will run in the national competition.

A week ago she had another great race and made history at her school. In the Kings Hall cross country she finished first, beating all the boys and finishing one minute ahead of everyone else. Cool!

END TO END WITH ARTHUR

On Thursday 21st July Arthur completed his bike ride from Land's End to John O'Groats. He rode 916 miles in thirteen days (average 70 miles per day). Siobhan, Tom, Edward, Imogen and Flora drove in the support vehicle and occasionally needed to provide directions through some towns or shelter from the headwinds north of Ayr. We were very lucky with the weather and only had one morning of torrrential rainfall. At the end of each day Arthur still seemed to have a fair amount of energy left, even trying to water ski on the Moray Firth east of Inverness when we met up with his godfathers one evening. Our last night in Scotland was spent with Cherry and Bill at Latheronwheel which was a huge treat for all of us. We arrived safely home last night after after a twelve hour slog on the south bound route. It was a great trip and of course our congratulations go to Arthur. But also praise is due to Edward, Imo and Flora for their patience sitting in the car for day after day as we tracked Arthur's route.

Keeling Family Narrative

For the last ten years or so I have accumulated notes on our family which have been the result of chatting with Mum and Dad about relatives who have slipped into the history books. The living family have also received a mention and one or two letters have also contributed to the story. Eventually I have typed out my notes and put them into some sort of order which has formed the basis of a family narrative. There are one or two family trees shown in the narrative but these are really only branches or twigs because I am not a good enough typist to compose big family trees on an A4 sheet of paper. At the same time as the narrative being available there is also my file on which there are more notes and manuscript family trees with further records of our family. I even have photos of the family tree which lives in Simon's old bedroom at Jacobs, to help with producing a potted history of the Finucanes' descent from a Spanish king (apparently). This is very much a work in progress and a never finished task because there will always be more information to add. Hopefully I will now attach my family narrative whichDownload The_Keeling_family_narrative_Oct_2010 runs to about twenty pages. Love Tom

Eton reunion

Last Friday I went up to Eton for a 1979 leavers party. I was a little surprised to find myself doing this as I have been far from good at keeping in touch with my contemporaries from school since I left and with one exception had never attended a similar event. Maybe because I hadn't been invited to many of them....

The evening was helped by meeting Anthony deNormann en route and another pal joining us who conveniently drove us from Ant's house to Eton and back!

Everyone suffered slightly from needing to peer through the mists of time at faces that had changed in many respects, although there were a couple of 'Dorian Grays' who appeared exactly like they did thirty years ago. That was a bit spooky compared to others who looked like their dads, which seemed more natural. All the 'boys' were in great heart and the school looked after everyone very well and gave a delicious dinner in College Hall which was pure Hogworts as far as I was concerned.

Mainly for Dad:-Beforehand I had mentioned to Dad that I was going and he had told me that he had nearly but not quite attended an older version of this event. I did let this slip to the Provost who said that there are some reunions for older OEs and their wives at lunchtime nowadays.

The purpose of this post is general info, as usual. But also to say that the evening was very enjoyable with a lot of people who seemed mellowed with the years and happy to have a laugh with each other and at themselves. The rich and well-known were there as well as a self-employed carpenter who had got married for the first time this year. So quite a variety. I know of one or two who had needed a bit of persuading to turn up and even they had smiles on their faces at the end of the evening.

I've nothing to sell but I would recommend it to all of you if the chance arose.

Tom

Moving home

As some of you may know, Siobhan and I had been planning to try to get planning permission to convert our barns at The Old Rectory into a couple of houses. Then we would have sold the barns with the benefit of their planning consent. Frustratingly this plan has been thwarted by the existence of a right of way that was reserved by the Crown when they sold the barns to one of our predecessors about twenty years ago. We had hoped to get round this somehow but it was not to be. Since the object of the plan was to raise some money, we needed to scratch our heads a bit to work out a Plan B.

This materialised as selling the entire property and moving somewhere smaller and locally. Therefore we have pursued this over the last month and now we are ready for our house to go on the market at the beginning of September. As you might expect we did have our reservations at first, but the more we thought about it the more it all seemed to be a sensible idea. One thing that features high on the list of considerations was the garden and the amount of time that this takes to keep it in good shape. While this used to be fun (sort of) it really has become a burden and not fun. Indeed the idea of having somewhere simpler to live and look after has become very attractive to us.

When we told the children they were all very supportive and understanding which was very helpful.

So, big changes ahead, but we feel happy that it will be for the long term good of us and all and that Siobhan and I will have more time to spend with the children rather than worrying about the pesky garden.

Now we hope that a buyer falls in love with our home nice and quickly and that we can find somewhere else to buy without a protracted delay.

Tom

Local sporting news from Somerset

Imogen, aged 9, competed in her school's long distance race for her year and the year above her. She finished sixth overall and second within her own year. She was the fastest girl out of both the years. A couple of days later she took part in the Somerset Primary Schools long distance race with about 60 competiitors and finished tenth and was the first girl to cross the finishing line.

Flora, aged 7, is the youngest pupil in her year and took part in her year's cross country race at school. She finished sixth and was the second fastest girl. (The fastest girl was Harriet Fox who is a second cousin of Jim and Emma's children, I think).

This year Arthur is playing in the B team of the Somerest under 14 hockey squad.

Edward should be competing soon in his school cross country race which he has previously won, but is off games, recovering from in growing toenail operations. However 'Fur Elise' is sounding beautiful from the piano at the moment, which Edward is playing (with his fingers).

Tom

Golden Oldies (advice on hearing them)

George has posted a couple of the songs on the blog, after I had sent them to him. However if anyone wants to hear a song from the list then you will need to send me an email with the request and I will send the song back to you as an attachment. Tom

Golden Oldies

Download golden_oldies.xls

Click that link for the list and to hear a couple of sings, click one of the ones below....

She loves you, Beatles 1963

Puppet on a string 1967

You can even hear the crackles from the okd vunyl recording...

Trevor Williams

To answer George's question. Tom wrote the message about Trevor Williams, HMV / EMI and its illustrious recording studios in Abbey Road. However if he meant 'who wrote the booklet?' then it says on the cover that it was edited by Roland Gelatt and wrtten and compiled by Jerrold Northrop Moore. I hope this helps.

Apropos Barbar and diaries

I have just read a brief history of EMI Records, entitled 'A Voice to Remember'. This booklet was supplied as part of a record set that I bought years ago. I picked it out recently as a result of needing to dry a lot of my LP covers which had got wet in the barn during recent storms. On the inside cover the narrative starts 'The first gramophone arrived in London under the arm of an American lawyer called William Barry Owen. Sent by the machine's sponsors to seek capital for launching the gramophone in Europe, Owen encountered difficulty and reluctace before he met Trevor Williams, a Lincoln's Inn solicitor aged thirty-eight'....Williams was unmistakenly interested....Trevor Williams - against the advice of colleagues in the City - put together a small syndicate among his family and friends. And so in April 1898 The Gramophone Company was formed. A year later an artist called Francis Barraud came to the new offices with his painting of a little dog peering into a gramophone and this image was adopted as the company's logo.

In 1931 The Gramophone Company merged with Columbia records to form a new grouping called Electric & Musical Industries Ltd or EMI. At this time the company invested in new recording studios at premises they had recently bought in Abbey Road, St.John's Wood. In the booklet there are some letters written by TW and photos of him with his colleagues. One shows them all standing in their suits, coats and top hats, with TW wrapped up in a bearskin coat, driving hat and goggles 'as betokened his mode of transport that morning' and his motoring enthusiasm.

For any of the younger readers of this fine blog, Trevor Williams was Barbar's Dad.