Hello and welcome to today's podcast by the IntelliTubby.

I'm editor of Family Tree and with me is Nathan Ward.

Hello there.

Hi Nathan.

So how's things going?

Not too bad, thank you.

Full of the busyness as per usual.

That's good.

We've had some podcast emails, which is always really, really nice.

Lovely.

Well, as somebody who flips something that you tend to find a bit confusing, and to be honest, I find it really confusing too.

They flip it on the head and use it, say, it's actually a strength.

It's that, you know, your strength is your weakness thing.

So, you know, you have all your David Hearns.

And I do agree with you, unless you were right in the thick of that bit of research, it's really easy to lose track of which generation you're looking at.

So, for me...

when I have these runs of people all called the same name, which tend to be men, because women conveniently actually change their name each generation, which helps you kind of keep track of them.

So the men who are having these runs of names, even in the file names that I download, censuses and stuff like that, I'll say Thomas Jones, born 1860 or whatever, so to give me a clue which generation one I'm talking about.

Anyway, she said that it's Debbie.

So thanks, Debbie, for making us think about it from this point of view.

Debbie says, Nathan, don't panic.

Don't feel...

confused about all these generations being named the same generation after generation because actually that kind of those strong naming patterns they can be really helpful to help you feel confident that you are with the right family so I like that positive spin yeah I guess that is a good way to look at it um yeah I've definitely particularly on this side I can't remember what I think it's David and then Julia gets Julia and Elizabeth get repeated quite a lot so yeah it is good to see that people do follow that tradition and keep it going but it's just like you say when you when you're lost in the nitty -gritty in it and ancestry's throwing like it's dirty hints at you and you're like oh yeah this is david and you're like which david is this again so unless i'm unless i'm totally on it with the actual dating times then it is confusing but yeah for for the general strengthening of your tree that's it is good So I just thought it's nice.

Thank you for the help, Debbie.

It's a good tip.

It's good.

It's good.

It's positive.

It's not negative.

I like that.

Yeah, I definitely think more brings the merrier when it comes to doing family history.

Somebody having that fresh take on things.

Definitely.

You did a bit of a novel thing with your run recently.

It's about your run.

Because you do a lot of running, don't you?

But this was a run with a difference.

A very important run, really.

Yeah, I mean, we joked about it a while ago back when we were talking to Jude about becoming like a running genealogist.

And like, I've got lots of, again, this whole thing about me having everybody in the local area.

There's lots of old places I can go visit, like where people used to live or streets or pubs, etc.

And they're all within running distance.

So obviously we made this joke about maybe becoming this running genealogist.

But remember, I thought, OK, I'll go and do this.

I'll actually...

go and do a run that's based on my family history and my mum told me about well obviously i'd done some research about edward nelson who we all started to know as tank man my mum told me a bit about him and said he was on quite a few different cenotaphs or war memorials in the local area and she wasn't quite sure exactly how many but at least two so i thought i'll plot a route and i'll go visit them all and hopefully he will be on them all and then i can you know my my way of sort of thinking and commemorating it yeah so it's quite cool um it was a ended up being a seven mile run and I went to four memorials one in Calverley one in the Appley Bridge area which I get a lot of hits for when it comes to all my documents on Ancestry everybody seems to live around that area then another one in Rodley and then one in Farsley although that was in like a bit of a limbo area and I've never ever been to that one before so that's quite a mystery As it was, he was on two of them.

The first one, he was just called E.

Nelson.

And that was on the Carver Zenitav.

And then on the Green Gates one, he was down as Edward Nelson.

And I don't know why, but I found that really touching.

Like, he got his full name as opposed to just his initial.

That whole cenotaph was really nice.

It was in this sort of walled garden and it was really well maintained and looked after.

It was showing a lot of respect.

I'm not saying neither of us didn't, but this one just really sort of struck me at how grand it was.

And then for him to be named with his first name and his surname, it just felt really...

I don't know why personal, but it felt a bit more real.

He's like, this guy's a real person.

I think that's the whole thing.

And my big takeaway from the entire run was...

The run was incidental, it's the least I can do.

It's a nice way for me to get into my family history.

But it made me look at this person that was just a name and a number on my family tree and I'll have a couple of documents.

It made me realise that this was a real person.

He was less than half my age when he died and he hadn't experienced life.

So it really made me feel this guy as a person.

I think, again, seeing his name actually saying Edward.

It's like, oh, my God, this is a boy that's just died in a tank.

So it just gave me a bit more respect and context and...

Just taking that time, really, isn't it, just to reflect?

Yeah, reflect, that's a very good word, yeah.

It was that, because day to day, I'll be honest, I don't reflect.

I'm very much motoring on with life, as everybody is.

And even when you're doing your family tree, unless you really get absorbed in one person's story, it can just be facts and figures.

And as I said on the thing on the video, I've never experienced war.

I never want to experience war.

So I don't know what it felt like, but just a chance to sit and think about that for a little bit.

It's heartbreaking.

And also, you know, it's quite stirring as well that they were willing to do that for the country.

Yeah.

So if anybody wants to watch Nathan's video, then if you head over to our Facebook page, then you'll find it on there or on other social media.

and streams or if you get stuck just email me at helen .t at family -tree .co .uk and I can send you the link if you'd like to find it because I'm terrible at finding things on social media Nathan knows that I'm always having to ask him where things are when I can't find a post but what I found really interesting as well about your memorials that you visited Nathan is a couple of them look like they were contemporary so probably erected in the 1920s you know within just a few years of the war when there was that massive memorial kind of building, almost like a building programme because there was so much heartbreak and mourning and a lot of building went up.

But then subsequently people have continued to honour and erect new memorials in the intervening years and decades.

One of the memorials you went to looked really modern.

So did you have any clues about that one?

What was that one?

It was like cream stone, not Portland stone rectangles that we're used to in Commonwealth war graves.

It was much more kind of rural looking, quite rough -hewn, I think.

There were two.

There was one that was the Rodley one, because the first two are statues, which we call cenotaphs.

I know we've had this conversation before.

Anyway, but the third one was like granite or marble and the names had been etched in and it was like black with gold writing.

So it looks very new.

I think it was redone quite recently, not quite recently, but in the last 20, 30 years as a memorial garden.

So that was like two big slabs of wood with, not wood, sorry, of marble with the names on and then various sort of, again, stone around it.

And then the last one, which I've lived quite close to this one, didn't know where it was.

I've never been on half these roads to get to this one.

It was really tucked away down, I think it was like down a dirt track around a field past this really randomly built kids play area.

And then you go down through this little wood.

And it was literally just two pieces of stone with then two pieces of stone either side to act as chairs.

It felt really rustic and old and I liked it because it was such a contrast to the other ones.

I know it wasn't the point of the run, but it was very interesting to see the different styles of memorial.

It is really interesting to see.

I think it's really important that we do...

kind of almost remember the memorials as well so I used to live right on the outskirts of Peterborough and after the First World War they built the local hospital as the war memorial so that's all well and good and as far as I can recall over the door of the hospital it gave words to that effect so that everyone would know that that hospital was actually Peterborough's.

First World War memorial.

So it's a building to be a memorial.

So that's a really cool idea, isn't it?

And it kind of makes sense that it's a place where people can go and, you know, treasures their health and hopefully have a good future.

And it feels like the flip side from war almost.

But then the kind of danger with that is however many years ago, but maybe very roughly 15 years ago.

Peterborough needed a new hospital.

And I think in the meantime, it had additions to the old hospital and everything else as well.

There'd be like 1960s, 50s, whatever developments.

So now this hospital is no longer.

And so they had to erect a new, as you call it, cenotaph.

So like a traditional, you know, pointed stone in Peterborough town centre.

So if you didn't know about the hospital, it looks as though Peterborough hadn't bothered with a war memorial until the last.

10, 20 years.

It was like it had bothered with a war memorial, but it just, it had taken a different guise.

Right.

I don't want any descendants to think, oh, Peterborough couldn't be bothered to have a war memorial.

I'm trying to remember all this local history.

I'm sure there are lots of really good local history organisations.

They'll keep tabs on it all.

I don't need to worry about that.

I can just stick with the family history.

I think it's good though, isn't it, just to have anything there.

The Rodley one, although it was more modern, It was quite nice to see.

It felt like it was a memorial garden.

They had a bench, like a metal cast iron bench next to it that had poppies integrated into the metal.

So it was totally black and then with a few red poppies, but metal ones.

And then even the run up to it, there's like a, I don't know, like an electric substation.

That's not very slightly.

And they've put fence around that and then they've meshed it all with poppies that are there all the time, metal poppies.

It's just good that they actually have put some money into keeping these memories alive because obviously things can just get a little bit lost and a little bit neglected.

So I don't know when they did that.

But yeah, the Farsley one was fascinating.

It literally felt like I was at Stonehenge.

It was just this big slab of stone that had been carved into.

Yeah, monumental.

It's saying in stone, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's a monolith.

It's just there.

But yeah, a very random location though.

It was in between two villages down this dirt track.

And like before I got to it, I was like, if I've been to the one that's in Calveley, what is this one going to be called?

Because it's technically still in Calveley and it wasn't in Farsley.

It's just a weird location.

I still don't understand the geography and the why it was.

Maybe that's a mystery that I can like waste my time.

Yeah, you would be able to, wouldn't you?

Like local newspaper reports and local council reports, they will all have people demanding where's a good location and where wasn't there funding for it, all that sort of thing.

Yeah, it just makes you wonder, like, what was the plans to build those houses around there and it was going to be a new village or a new hub or the village was going to expand in that direction and then for whatever reason it didn't do.

So it was just this random slab in between two villages in a field.

But equally, it kind of adds to the mystique because you have to go through this little foresty bit and I'm literally walking through this going, I might not come out alive here.

I don't know where I am.

It's just there.

It felt a little bit like Chronicles of Narnia.

It had that sort of woodland vibe.

Yeah, those sort of surprise journeys or surprise when you come across things by surprise.

So Diane Lindsay wrote about this in Family Tree just recently, I think.

whether it would be the November issue, maybe the December issue, and she was just reminiscing, nothing to do with war memorials, so about her childhood, and I think it would have been probably in the 1940s or 50s, and how her and some of her friends, I think she grew up in, I think it was Waterloo and Coventry, so there was lots of building work which hadn't been redone then, and it was a summer day and they went off, and just...

as children used to in the past, out for the day with a little packet of sandwiches, be back by dusk kind of thing, which you wouldn't dream of doing with a modern child in today's world.

And then they came across a garden and she said it's one of those memories that she's just stayed with her her whole life and she felt as though she'd gone into a secret place.

Lovely.

It is lovely, isn't it?

It is.

It's like the adventure and the mystery of it, which as adults we kind of lose, don't we?

We do.

But then sometimes as you're coming across that warm memorial, then you...

You kind of get back to it again.

When you stumble across a church or a churchyard, which is kind of in a place, you know, where the village maybe has now moved on.

And so it's kind of quite isolated and you're not really expecting it.

And it can just give you a real moment of stillness because you just, I think of a few churches, three times that's happened to me.

And you just stop and take notice of time passing.

And even though you don't know any of the people in the graveyards, it's just.

Yeah.

Makes you aware of history, doesn't it, and life.

Yeah, yeah.

Lovely.

We've been having a busy time on the old work front recently, haven't we, Nathan?

We've had so many good talks, it's untrue.

So we've had Nathan's run, so we'll point you to that if you'd like to watch that, because it's a really poignant and useful...

And it's a good watch.

It's only a few minutes long, isn't it?

And also I think it shows, I loved it because it was just ordinary England.

It's a little bit, looks like it's rained recently, doesn't it?

I was very lucky.

It literally looked like it was about to really, really chuck it down.

So I was, yeah, terrified I was going to get soaking wet.

I'm not sure it's very interesting.

If you want to see a man struggle running up a hill, maybe it's for you.

Yes, I think it is interesting.

And another thing which is free to watch and very, very good is Jen Baldwin, who's the research specialist at Find My Past.

She gave a talk very recently, which you've recorded.

It's available on the Family Tree YouTube channel, free to watch.

And it's about researching your First World War ancestors.

Following on from the thing that we bang on about virtually every week, apart from research logs, is about building out the story, not just having the basic details.

And Jen is just next level.

Honestly, Nathan, I felt like somebody had, when you think you're in a room, you think you know what's on all the bookshelves.

And then Jen just went, Helen, there's another whole room over here you've never looked in.

Open up this door and look in here.

There's like a billion ways of looking at family history that I'd never even considered.

It was so inspiring, so useful.

That sounds brilliant.

It was really good and really clever research tricks in there as well.

So like your poor Edward Nelson, he died.

So he is that little bit easier to trace because you have his day to death and you have the Commonwealth war graves.

You have those hard and fast facts to try and build out from to learn about his war years.

But sometimes when we have ancestors who...

didn't die which is the majority thankfully didn't die but if their papers have been lost suddenly you can end up feeling a bit at sea and not knowing where to look so she had this really clever hack that um so you've got the unit war diaries which have been up we've talked about them before they're brilliant they give detail and i know you know nathan but i was recapping quickly for anyone else in case they do you know quick they give a day -by -day account of what the unit's doing through the war.

Sometimes it can be quite boring, but that's useful to read anyway.

It's not boring for us to read, but you can clearly understand that people are just behind the lines waiting or whatever.

And then when there is a drama, they tend not to mention the soldiers.

So the soldiers are the majority of our ancestors, not the officers.

But you can know that your ancestor has been wounded from...

other records or family memories but trying to find out what event they were wounded in can be really tricky because it's not named them in the war diaries and so she had the brilliant hack that i'd never thought of apologies to anyone else who has thought of it is to find out the names of other people in the unit who've died and look up those people with their um with their uh and track them down in any which way you can, in other records, even the newspapers, and then go back from there.

You'll have dates about when they died.

And if you know this person, let's say a private XYZ with number 12345 died on this date, and there may even be information about how he died, you can go back to the unit war diaries, and if you know that your ancestor was serving with them, then you can extrapolate that your ancestor, although they're not named as wounded.

That's likely the event they were wounded in.

Right, that's good.

It's part of her thinking.

Yeah, that's kind of just like the same as doing your family tree, isn't it?

Linking it through the marriage certificates, only applying it to war.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

I thought it was clever.

Yeah, really clever stuff.

I like it.

So one of my great -grandfathers, my dad always said he was injured in the First World War and I've never had any luck finding out about him.

And when he started stuff in the war, he was a soldier.

So I'm hopeful I'm going to be able to find out some stuff about him by doing her tactic.

Wish me luck, Nathan.

You'll have to let us know, definitely.

I will, I will.

Do you know what?

Also, which is happening, and I think we need to give this a little bit of thought.

So this is the 50th episode of our podcast.

It is indeed.

That's pretty cool, isn't it?

Is it cool?

Two episodes time.

We've been doing this for one year.

It's our birthday.

It's our birthday.

And I think this is, we're not going to go back and we haven't got time to go back and listen to 52 hours of podcast.

But we have talked about lots and lots of things we've done and been doing.

Some of them we finished.

Some of them, if we're honest, we probably haven't finished because we've got distracted by something else.

So I want to have a bit of a think over the next few weeks about the things that I've half started and they go, right, I've really got to finish some of those off.

Some of them finished, but some of them aren't.

Yeah, this is probably my opportunity to go back to my research log and make a note of all the rabbit holes that I marked to look at later that I've never gone back to.

Because I keep saying that I'm going to go do that.

I think for episode 52, that's probably a good one to reflect on.

And if anybody listening wants to take stock of their family history over the past year, so kind of through the end of 24, through 2025, and let us know any projects that you've finished, which you're pleased that you're like, yes, I've meant to do that for a long time and I've got that finished.

So anything like that that you've accomplished, if you've got anything that you're halfway through, still pleased that you're plugging away at it.

keeping persevering yeah just let us know how you're getting on because it's we'd find that encouraging that we're not the only ones with a big pile of rabbit holes that we want to research and another big pile of rabbit holes that we're halfway immersed in definitely it's so dizzying isn't it when you let it get to you or you think about everything i'm there and and partly it doesn't it doesn't particularly matter does it like every every single time you do from history you learn something don't you well i do anyway i literally even if i'm relearning something and go oh silly me i forgot that you do yeah you're learning things and like i feel like i'm growing as a human being like i keep saying this i'm i'm not very good on the history aspect of life i'm very much my life is very immersed in pop culture So I quite like the fact that I'm growing in that way.

Maybe I shouldn't be reflective now.

Maybe I should wait for 52.

But it's nice to think, okay, I am thinking about history.

I'm thinking about people.

I'm not thinking about quirky film quotes all the time.

It's growth.

They're important too.

Always.

I mean, the number of film quotes I put in these podcasts that you never, ever notice is ungrateful.

I am, like, I'm a bit of a cultural desert with lots of things, yes.

Because, so some people, you read those, like, desert island discs, and we've had articles in the magazine before, so this is a guy called Keith Gregson, lives in Sunderland, he's an amazing folk musician, and he wrote an article about, basically, leaving a legacy for your descendants through a bunch of songs.

They'd be, like, choosing 20 songs and going, this is me, these songs sum up me, like, my vibe, what I'm...

into my era i lived through yeah yeah that sounds really cool it's really cool isn't it it was quite a few years ago it was before you got into family history nathan so um i might dig it out for you it's very good well basically i've told you what you need to do you need to do what i've just said drop a list of 20 songs i like that yeah yeah It seems a little bit self -indulgent as well, which, you know, occasionally we should allow ourselves to do, I guess.

But that's the thing.

Partly, it might seem a bit self -indulgent, but imagine if your grandpa had done that for you.

You would just love to listen to his list of 20 songs, wouldn't you?

Yeah, maybe.

Even if you might not like the music, but because they meant something to him, and they would inevitably be a time capsule, wouldn't they, reflecting lots of different eras?

Yeah, definitely.

soundscape that's what makes his heart sing when it comes on the radio or they're playing it down the pub or whatever yeah yeah no that's a lovely idea that's a lovely idea isn't it yeah i often i mean i've probably mentioned this before i've got a lot i had a very good relationship with my nonna and um a lot of songs that i listen to i associate with her and very particular times in my childhood and like it's really daft but i remember She was, like, listening to, like, Terry Wogan on Radio 2 and played Carly Simon's You're So Vain.

And I hear that song and I can taste spam sandwiches that my nana had made me.

So any time that song comes on, I'm like, I love the song.

I don't care about the lyrics, what they're on about.

But it just reminds me of her and eating, like, ham sandwiches.

Yeah, yeah.

You've already started your list of 20.

Would it make the cut?

Well, that's her song, isn't it?

That's not who I am, but it's nice.

And the other day I was with my mum and we had a game of cards.

And again, we always used to play cards.

Every Sunday we'd go to my nana's house and we'd have a big family meal.

Everybody would have lots of food.

The adults would have a little bit too much to drink and we'd play cards and everybody would get giddy and silly.

And my nana always wanted to listen to Lionel Richie.

So I was playing cards with my mum this last week.

And she was like, oh, we're playing Gin Rummy.

We better listen to some Lionel Richie.

And it was just that nice family association that that's what we used to do.

I just loved stuff like that.

Yeah, it does sound really lovely.

You're going to have to inflict it on your boys as well.

Oh, yeah, they already know.

Oh, OK, that's good.

That's really good.

That's really, really good.

Yes, my list of 20 might be a list of 10, that's all, because I am such a rubbish.

Because you only know 10 songs.

Probably, well, maybe I could do a project for week 52.

I can come up with 10 songs to sum up with my life.

Yeah, good challenge.

Yes, I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to set myself any more things.

What I need to do is work out what I want to prioritise and finish off between now and the end of the year.

Yes, that's a good thing, isn't it?

I think I...

Personally, I don't know if we're getting to this now, but I'm talking about it.

I've got two involved in people.

I haven't got two involved in people.

I've got involved in particular people.

And now I can feel the itch for just some quick, fast research and getting back a few generations again.

I want to move away from stories and then just get back.

But I know that as soon as I get back on one person, I'll find somebody and there'll be a story.

So who am I kidding?

I just feel I want to make my tree go further back at the moment.

It's static, but I'm getting a lot more details and texture about two or three particular people, which is great.

And I know it's good, etc.

But I feel like my tree hasn't moved.

I have to say, I do agree with you.

I love all the context stuff.

I love all the stories.

Maybe it's like whatever you're doing, you go, oh, this is the best bit of family history.

Because when I'm doing that, I'm like, this is the best bit of family history, all the stories and the context.

But then when you are in a kind of tree building phase and you're rushing around gathering new people and you're having to think so hard about whether they are definitely the correct people and when you can't find them, you're having to think so hard about how you're going to try and find whoever it is, the next generation or the siblings.

All the bits.

Then that's a very addictive feeling, isn't it?

That hunting feeling.

It is.

And the last time I did that, I pretty much had a clear path.

Everybody led on to everyone else very easily.

So it just felt like really easy wins.

And all the people that I was going through, I wasn't finding any strange documents or rabbit holes to distract me.

So it all felt very straightforward.

which was a novelty in itself, but actually quite enjoyable.

It's like, oh, look at this progress I'm making.

This is brilliant.

And yeah, I know it's not always going to be like that, but it felt good.

It is.

It does feel good.

With the people I'm working on, I'd made up this grand story that I found a GI bride being a distant relation via a DNA match or whatever.

And then I just can't build the family tree back.

And I think I've actually, I think I've got it wrong.

I think.

I think I need to, so as soon as I found her and she was born in England, but I think actually her family went out to America.

I think that's what happened.

And so I'm not looking at a GI bride.

I'm looking at a child who's born in England, who went out to America, who would have felt American, who married an American soldier.

So I think I might have to dismantle that story.

The story's all very well and good, but it was stopping my research because I kept struggling around in England trying to find a family.

I think I've hopped back to England too quickly.

I need to go back to America, try and find these people.

So how would you start that process then?

Start from where I know where they are in America and then just do what we should always do.

What we should always do, work from where we are with what we know and then work backwards.

Don't get one detail out of the blue and then make up a great big story and then get in your big hot air balloon and just float off and land down where you think could be a good idea.

That's a really bad research strategy.

It sounds like fun though.

Imagine the adventures you could have.

Yes, I do have adventures, but it's also a complete waste of time and very naughty.

I love it.

Yeah.

Ooh.

Yeah.

One day I'll learn.

Same.

Have we got anything else that we need to talk about?

I feel like lots of people have contacted us and I feel I'm not giving them enough of a thank you because we really love it, don't we?

Literally, as soon as I get an email from anybody giving us a tip and it's normally information for Nathan, then I just ping it right onto him immediately so that you don't have to wait a second longer than you need to.

Yeah, we've had a few.

Obviously, a bit of banter on social media about lots of things as well.

I think we're all good.

I think we just need to psych ourselves up for having actually accomplished a whole year of Family Tree Talk podcast.

Make a clear list.

It was going to be a bit of a confessional, isn't it, Nathan, of what we mean to be getting on with.

What we haven't done, yeah.

What we haven't done.

What we've started but haven't finished.

Oh, boy.

It's going to be a bit bad.

Maybe not the whole list.

We're just going to have a few chosen projects.

Yeah, I mean, we don't have that long in the podcast episode, do we?

It'd be like twice as long as normal.

Yes.

Identify them and crack on with them.

I'll tell you, I have got one little project that I do want to sneak one little new project in under the radar.

And it's for my little grandson, who, of course, is completely adorable.

But his favourite question, or one of his favourite questions at the moment, is like...

Were they little?

Were you little?

And he just loves the idea that his mum was once little like him, or his dad was once little like him.

The idea that Nana or Grandpa were once little, that's really stretching it.

That makes his whole head explode, the idea that we were once little.

We're just too old to be conceivably ever having been little.

But I thought it would be really good to make him a little board book.

With lots of ancestor pictures in them, ancestors as little people, and pictures I'd put of them as babies and kids.

I can give him, that'd be a family history book for him, wouldn't it?

Yeah, quite a good guessing game for the entire family.

Who is this child?

Yes, maybe that's what I need to do.

Not include their names in the thing, but have an index at the back, because to not include their names at all would just be very frustrating.

It would.

Yes, that would be bad.

Frowned upon.

And much frowned upon.

But I think it would be a really lovely little book.

Yeah, that sounds really cute.

And because I love talking to him and he lives quite far away, then I thought I could...

This is getting a bit ambitious now.

I might ask you to help me with this, Nathan.

So I could make little audio recordings of me going, this is your great -great -granny.

A little anecdote about her.

Record it as an audio and then his mum can point her phone at the QR code and it will tell him little stories about their ancestors.

So that sounds good.

It does sound good.

It sounds fancy.

I don't know.

Just thinking about my kids, I debate their attention span, whether they'd actually listen.

Yeah.

I'm going to try it out.

I'm going to try it out.

It's a cute idea.

It might work.

Yeah.

Can but try.

I will.

I will try.

I'm going to change this a bit slightly.

I'm going to try and jump onto the last day or two of this Find My Past free records.

Because I think I said to you before, I've got Benjamin, somebody or other.

I'm going to say Ward, because that's my son.

Benjamin Ward, who might have been in the RAF.

So I've been too tight to actually pay any money to find out the facts on this.

So that's going to be...

We'll do that.

So just to fill in, so by the time the podcast goes out, the free military records of Find My Past are finished, because we have to record this a couple of days before.

Not long before, but because it...

Nathan has to add the beautiful music at the start and the end and we have lots of work to do and we have bosses who suddenly tell us to do something we're not expecting so we have to plan a little bit ahead so the free records will have finished but do keep an eye out because all of the big data companies when it comes to anniversary events maybe around the end of the year Christmas and New Year they'll sometimes give free records across their whole range of records sometimes it's just to a chosen subset like Obviously for the remembrance period of time, military records is a natural good fit.

So do keep an eye out, particularly if you don't want to subscribe, which is completely understandable to more than one website, then finding out what the other websites are doing is good.

And on the, this is, I know I give it a plug every single week, but it is useful to sign that too.

On our Family Tree e -newsletter, which if you go to www .family -tree .co .uk forward slash newsletter hyphen sign hyphen up.

then we do tell people about things like this.

So there's major free records.

And again, on social media, that's another good place to get information like that.

I'm impressed you rattled off that address then.

It's only taken me 50 episodes.

I mean, you've got it tattooed to your arm now, haven't you?

I have, I have.

That's always going to make it easier.

Yes, we're not allowed to move it anywhere else on the website.

If it gets a new URL, I'll be spymied, won't I?

I do love the fact that they're doing those free records but part of me is like oh my god it's another thing to do but actually calm myself down if I make that the only thing I do then at least I've done one thing and hopefully that will motivate me to do more It will definitely motivate you to do more because you won't be able to resist once you get a few more clues It's like rabbit in the headlights or deer in the headlights thing, isn't it?

There's so much to do.

You don't know where to start.

But if you just do one thing, it'll push you on.

And I feel like it would be daft of me not to use this opportunity to find out about this RAF record because I'm so keen to have a pilot or somebody who's worked on planes or anything like that.

I'll be annoyed with myself if I don't.

I think you've got to do that.

We'll find out next time how you got on.

That's my homework.

Okay.

Thanks for listening then.

And we'll see you all next time.

Thank you.