R & R

I am sitting on the train from Durham back to London in the UK where Rog and I have had some much needed R & R. It has been the most wonderful amazing time I think we have ever had. We had thought for some time we would like to come to Scotland to look up our parents ancestors and follow up and try to find some of the questions we had not solved in our family trees.

We knew we wanted to come to a little now "preserved" village called Carmunnock which is really on the outskirts or part of Glasgow. This is where Roger's great grandparents were born and emigrated to Australia round early 1900's. My grandmother on my Mum's side was born just three or so miles up the road in the village of Shettlestone so it seemed appropriate to look for both sides of the tree.

I wanted to see a show in the West End and amazingly upon asking for advice re hotels etc from a friend who had lived in London for some time, we found out from him that some other friends from Australia were currently in London. Colin and his wife Genn were there because she was playing the role of Mrs Wilkinson in the musical "Billy Elliott". There began a series of events for our trip that we could never have planned or imagined. For those of you who don't know I grew up in professional theatre in Australia and have recently returned to that part of the industry. I had worked with Colin and his first wife Lennie, but didn't know Genn. Before we knew it we were booked to go to Billy Elliott and had arranged to meet Colin and Genn at the backstage door after the play.

We thought we would then hire a car and drive up to Scotland, but I then remembered that a "lost" cousin had turned up in the last few years and I thought he lived in Northern England. I was right. He lived just 130 miles from "Carmunnock". A phone call and an email had us arriving at his place the day after we arrived in London and had been to Billy Elliott. The car turned into the very fast convenient train service and there we began our incredible journey.