Heathrow - coming home

What a melting pot is Heathrow airport! So many people, so much purpose. All shapes and sizes, clothing largely casual but varied, so many languages. Only weight restrictions in my carry on luggage stops me from spending every last pound. I finally finished the 900 page Irish famine family saga in the style of ‘Gone with the Wind’  - ‘The Big Wind’. I was never sure whether there was going to be a happy ending or not.

I am so looking forward to going and being home. I did think about going to the QANTAS lounge, but I felt very happy facing a bookshop - a compromise between milling crowds and some peace and quiet. I was wearing my mask.

But being here also has me thinking about my travels back into the past of my family, the present of my DNA family and why traveling is so ‘cool’ to use a 20th century accolade. I am not a natural traveller in the real world, much happier in the realms of the intellect (and books). My thanks go to Kelly and Nick for whom this opportunity would never have happened. It seems I was good at bringing in the ‘philosophical’ when it was needed. Kelly had some amazing genealogy moments.

My amazing moments were to do with the three DNA matches I met over here. Each was someone I had done a great deal of DNA work for, and although I had always said, ‘I learned so much about the research process by tackling their problems’, and although it was hugely satisfying ‘solving’ their question and having the emails back and forth, each person clearly conveyed how meaningful it was to have some stranger from the other side of the world help them and that the DNA worked. 

Mike in London, Janice in Edinburgh and Helen in Newbattle - I really like them as people, as well as relatives. That was a surprise, not sure why. 

I started my day, skipping the Fawlty breakfast which was my wont, to check out Dalkeith Cemetery as the last chance I had. I had the coordinates of my Buchan headstones. But lacking enough preparatory work, a printer to give me a map of the locations would have helped, I did wander around for an hour, finding nothing. Section F - no markers anywhere. So as I checked the very last row, I found two. There were more.

Look carefully because the main name is George Buchan, patriarch of the late 1700s. There is a George in every generation, and so maybe that is why he called his son Everard, whom this headstone laments died at the Dardanelles.

I just had to have one Buchan headstone for the blog, but I got the details of about 30 burials from the Local Studies Centre books. Many of these, like my Robert’s headstone are no longer in existence or if there, are illegible.

Spoiler alert for my family, I caught a cold. Maybe it was the day I went to another cemetery after several days of heavy rain. Remember my wet sox? That I had on all day in the Records Centre, and I was a bit surprised to find them still wet when I got home that evening. Wearing wet Sox were not supposed to give me a cold. I actually blame those crowded Edinburgh trains and platforms. maybe Dublin Airport?

Here you see demonstrated, my Scotland-true method of drying clothes in hotels and B&Bs. 

First I do the outside of the clothing item, and then turn it inside out. And then because of the nature of sox and of shoes, I inserted the hair dryer INTO the sox, not fully shown due to the limitations of holding the phone in one hand and the dryer in another.

Works a dream if you are ever in that predicament.

Yes they are special Irish Sox, actually bought at the Trinity College 'Book of Kells' shop. I could have spent up big there but it was early in the trip.

I leaned this technique in Edinburgh in 2008 when Daniel and I were drenched for several hours ‘enjoying’ the Military Tattoo. Seeing that Daniel only had one pair of jeans, I spent three hours using a hair dryer to dry them for the following day. Peter, you were catered for.

Because of my cold, cousin Helen offered to drive me to the airport today. I was incredibly grateful, although traffic was slowed by an accident again. We had that in Dublin going to the airport. I had forgotten to get a photo with her on Thursday. Helen and I are descended from Robert Buchan born 1813, through two women. Mine is the mysterious Janet McCray-McRae-McCree who appears on NO Scottish record that I have found. Helen’s is through Jane Drysdale whose baptism, Kirk session records, and census records I was able to find for Helen in 2022. She had been misled by a marriage certificate claiming that Robert was a farmer. Well he lived in the country, and he may have dug a field or ditch in his time. 

All this means that we are half fourth cousins. I’ll write about our day out together, just as I was getting my cold, and why I forgot about the photo, in a later post. Uncharacteristically I was bypassing opportunities to look at houses and exhibits. I am somewhat better now.

So below is the selfie I took at the drop off place at Edinburgh Airport, underground and no helpful young person in sight! So I was fumbling the selfie, when Helen reached out to steady the other side of the phone, and we have it! Teamwork.

Not too sure I have put Janice in the blog yet, so here she is as well. We were helped by a very harried young woman, who we interrupted as she was trying to get her train information.