Interlude

It has been a frantic week mostly spent dealing with an elderly woman who is determined to starve herself to death. She neither wants to eat nor drink nor let anyone help her. It is sad. After discharge from hospital last week things got worse. Today it all came to a head and finally a patient, kind district nurse with the temperament and voice of a sergeant major finally got our lady moving again and mobilised the troops so from tomorrow the long suffering family will not have to cope alone. My sister in law is beyond words, barely able to speak after daily, in fact hourly battles of wills, unable to fathom how someone could let themself go in this manner. Serious illness has been ruled out. A perverse desire to be supremely awkward is the consistent diagnosis.

Meanwhile I have taken refuge in my genealogy, odd moments at the ends of the days where I can think about something else. I was researching some Romany family. Well what a surprise that turned out to be and no picnic either. It seems amid the depths of the message boards and history web sites, dark forces are lurking and nasty comments and messages lead to massive fallings-out, board wars and worse. Some sites have all but closed. People I thought were friendly are revealed in their full-blown nastiness. I can't believe the things that were said about squabbles several years old and obviously involving people who know each other away from the internet. I am sad, disillusioned and disheartened and began to wonder if it was all worth it. I had some of my work plagiarised in the past, in one instance several years ago a whole family tree I passed to someone for their perusal suddenly turned up all over the net. A couple of more recent things have turned up too but nothing on such a scale as then. Discussing this recently in general on a website I was astounded to be almost hounded to say who had done it. It seemed my interrogator had a guilty conscience but I desisted from getting involved. This then followed me to another website where I had seen none of the embattled for days and was gaily chatting about something completely different. Those who did get involved were followed all over the net by individuals who feel that they have an axe to grind and a point to make but their logic and grammar is so hard to follow, no-one can really tell what it's all about. I don't care, it was the principal that was at stake and in future I won't be sharing anything.

So genealogy hasn't given me any respite at all. One thing that will however begins tomorrow, we finally return to Greece and our lovely Kalamos. The weather there is 30 degrees and sun is forecast for weeks. I'll think of you on the beach on Wednesday. See you in June.