Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the nature of community and how we express love within it. There’s a special kind of magic that unfolds when people gather with shared intentions, whether it’s in an intentional, conscious community or simply among friends with a common purpose. Yet, even in these safe spaces, we often hold back from expressing love fully and openly, afraid of being misunderstood or crossing boundaries. But what if these conscious communities were places where not only was it safe to deeply love those around you, but to also speak that love out loud?

Since I relocated to St Pete, I’ve found myself surrounded by people with whom I feel a deep connection, where expressing love—platonically and sincerely—feels natural. Still, there’s sometimes a lingering hesitation. The words “I love you” can carry so much weight, especially in a world where we’re taught to reserve them for romantic relationships or family. But what if, within a conscious community, we could reframe those words to mean, simply, I see you, I value you, and I’m here for you?

Redefining Love in Community

In conscious communities, love transcends the usual boundaries of romance or family ties. It becomes something more—an acknowledgment of shared growth, support, and trust. Yet, despite the openness we cultivate, there’s often a reluctance to express love outright. Maybe it’s because we fear vulnerability, or we’re unsure how those words will land.

But imagine a community where saying “I love you” is not met with surprise, but with acceptance. Where love isn’t something withheld until it’s “earned,” but offered freely as a recognition of the deep connection we’ve built together. The magic of conscious communities lies in their intentionality—so shouldn’t love, the deepest form of connection, be a part of that? I remember moments where I struggled to find the words to express my appreciation for someone. Yet when I finally said, “I love you,” it wasn’t just about the words—it was about allowing myself to be seen and making space for them to feel the same.

Loving Without Reservation

There’s a unique beauty in telling someone you love them, especially in spaces where openness is cherished. We often hesitate, though, worrying it might come across as too much, too soon. Will they pull away? Will they understand? But in conscious communities, where mutual respect and growth are already the foundation, loving openly without reservation can be the next natural step.

In the past, I’ve found myself leaning on a group that had become like family during a difficult time. When one member said, “I love you,” it broke through the emotional noise I was carrying. I realized how much I needed to hear those words—not because I didn’t already know it, but because love, when verbalized, takes on a tangible reality. In that moment, I came to understand that expressing love without reservation is a gift, not a risk. It strengthens bonds and makes the invisible connection visible.

How to Love Loudly in Your Community

So how do we begin to express love more openly in a way that feels natural and safe in a conscious community? Here are a few practical ways to ease into it:

• Start Small: If saying “I love you” feels intimidating, begin with smaller affirmations. Try saying, “I appreciate you,” or “You mean a lot to me.” These expressions can pave the way for deeper connections and help normalize verbalizing love.
  
• Name the Moments of Care: Verbalizing love doesn’t have to be grand or poetic. Sometimes it’s about acknowledging the small ways we show up for each other—whether it’s checking in after a tough day or offering a quiet moment of support. Make those moments visible by naming them.
  
• Create a Love-Language for Your Community: Acts of service, time spent together, or simply being present are forms of love that often speak louder than words. But balance those actions with words to create a culture where love is both shown and spoken.
  
• Practice Non-Romantic Affection: Love isn’t always verbal. Simple gestures—like a hug, a warm touch on the shoulder, or sitting in shared silence—can communicate love just as powerfully. In conscious communities, where respect for boundaries is paramount, these forms of non-romantic affection can deepen bonds, as long as they’re consensual and respectful.

Love as a Path to Deeper Connection

At its core, love is what binds a community together. In conscious spaces, we come together seeking deeper connections—whether for personal growth, spiritual alignment, or social change. Speaking love aloud doesn’t complicate that; it enhances it. Words of love clarify our intentions and deepen our bonds. They say, “I see you, I value you, and I am here for you.”

Of course, there’s always the chance it might feel awkward at first. Vulnerability is never without risk. But the beauty of a conscious community is that it offers a safety net, a place where being vulnerable is not just accepted, but encouraged. In these spaces, love isn’t about expectation or obligation—it’s about connection.

Love, Spoken and Shared

In conscious communities, loving loudly and openly can be transformative. It’s a way of saying, “We’re here for each other, not just in spirit, but in heart.” When we embrace the safety of expressing love, we turn our communities into spaces of healing, growth, and profound connection.

How have you experienced love in your community? Have you found ways to express it that deepened your relationships? Let’s share stories in the comments—after all, the more we talk about love, the easier it becomes to live it out loud.

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Every 12-18 months, I find myself diving deep into genealogy… a bit too deep sometimes, as I find myself getting burned out, and end up putting things on the back burner for another year or so. Recently, I signed up again for Ancestry.com, and I’ve been doing my best to pace myself. Today, I decided to try one of those new technologies they’ve added since my last deep dive, which is called Thrulines. What it does is use Ancestry family trees to suggest how you might be related to your DNA matches. It works backwards, starting with your parents, to show you how you might be related to your DNA matches through ancestors you share. Basically, when it finds people that have matching DNA, it looks to see if you have common ancestors in your respective family trees.

I didn’t find any Thrulines until I went back to my great-great-grandparents, where Ancestry had identified 17 potential matches. I decided to explore the DNA matches they’d found through my great-great-grandmother, Sarah Stone. Sarah was born in 1828, in a small Derbyshire village called Heage, which is less than 10 miles from where I grew up.

As I sifted through the available facts (births, baptisms, marriages, and all too soon deaths), I started to see just how hard life was back then. Sarah was the youngest of three children, and was only four when her mother Mary Stone (née Clark) died. Less than seven months later her father (James Stone) remarried, and went on to have a further eleven children with his second wife Polyxena Stone (née Jepson). Of her two full siblings, her sister Mary Ann Stone died at the age of 24, and we will be returning to her older brother Joseph E. Stone (1822-1899) later.

After the death of her mother, the next time Sarah turns up in the records is in the 1851 census, when she was living with her 80-year-old grandfather, Richard Clark. A few months later she married her first husband Charles Garton (1831-1857), and they had one daughter together (Mary Ann Garton), before his death in 1857, at the age of 26. Sarah remarried two years later, and this time it was to my great-great-grandfather John Richardson (1832-1909), and they went on to have a further six children, including my great-grandmother Sarah Richardson (1867-1918), who married my great-grandfather George Ford (1865-1902).

Okay, it’s time to return to my great-great-grand uncle, Joseph E. Stone, and why I’m so fascinated to dig into his branch of the family. The reason is that just a few weeks after marrying his wife Elizabeth in early 1845 (in the village church where my parents were married and are now buried, and where I was christened), he and his bride arrived in Ellis Island to start a new life in America. Interestingly, they arrived 150 years before I did, settling in New Castle, Pennsylvania, whereas I arrived in 1995, settling in a different New Castle, 100 miles away in Delaware.

As I’ve learned more about my family history, many of my male ancestors over the last 250 years were miners. As I’ve dug into the details, I’ve seen migration patterns play out in my family tree, as new, richer coal fields were discovered and exploited. When deeper coal seams were discovered around Nottingham in the 1920s, my grandfather moved his young family there. As miners were paid based on the amount and quality of coal extracted, they would move to where they could earn more.

I didn’t really know much about US mining history, but it seems that large deposits of anthracite coal had first been discovered in the mid-18th century, but it wasn’t until the arrival of the Schuylkill Canal in 1822 and then the Reading Railroad in 1842 that the boom really began. Joseph and Elizabeth made their lives there, going on to have nine children together. In 1863, he was drafted into the Union Army, fighting in the Civil War, before returning to the mines. Despite that, I’m guessing life proved easier in the US, as three of his younger half-sisters also ended up migrating across the Atlantic. I am still researching their stories, but for now, I’m happy to finally be assembling some of the puzzle pieces that explain why I have so many DNA matches here in the US. Keeping with that analogy, it feels that I’ve really started to put together all of the edge pieces and corners, and that gives me a solid framework to explore further.

My takeaway is that genealogy can bring history to life in a way that books and other forms of media cannot. It’s that combination of the big things (wars, plagues, colonization, etc.) and the way that they play out in the everyday lives of generations of our families. Coming from a mining family, I’ve seen the lives of far too many branches of my family impacted by mining-related deaths and disease. Families will appear to be thriving in one census, and then ten years later they will have been scattered to the winds, with children as young as 11 working in factories or as servants, widows living out their lives in workhouses, and younger children being taken in by other parts of the family.

I already knew that mining had so much impact on my family over the last 200+ years, but I hadn’t really stopped to consider how mining (and to a lesser extent the railways) had led some of my distant relatives to take their chances overseas. The more I learn about my ancestors, the more I appreciate the sacrifices they made and the resilience they showed. They weren’t just names on a page; they were real people who made choices that shaped the course of my family’s history.

What I find fascinating is that I spent the first 27 years of my time here in the US within a couple of hours. I remember visiting Jim Thorpe for the first time, which is a town in eastern Pennsylvania with a lot of coal mining history. There was something about it that felt like ‘home’, and I assumed that it was because former mining communities feel similar, because they were built by hardy, resilient people. Jim Thorpe is 30 miles from where ‘Uncle Joe’ made his life, and where he and Elizabeth are buried. Now I’m thinking that maybe it felt familiar, because distant cousins lived and worked there.

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Looking for Tuxedo

“I’d been looking for a sign, to let me know that he was okay. That’s when I saw the poster, pasted to a streetlamp. It said ‘he’s in hiding’, and I knew that God was telling me he’s okay”, he said.

This was the third time that I’d met the Catman, in as many days.  The first time, I was walking through Williams Park in Downtown St. Petersburg, when I saw a slight man, in his early 30’s, bending down over one of those baby strollers that look like a pet stroller, or a pet stroller that looks like a baby stroller. The stroller was facing away from me, so I couldn’t tell whether it was occupied or not, or whether the occupant was human or feline.

As I got closer, he unzipped the mesh cover, and a cat peered his head out. I paused, because I didn’t want Wolfie to frighten the cat, but the Catman (as he likes to be known) signaled that it was okay for me to proceed. When I drew level to him, I saw that there were two cats in the stroller, and both seemed unfazed with being in close proximity to a dog. For his part, Wolfie seemed pretty unfazed, too.

Because of its warm climate, St. Petersburg has a lot of homeless people, sleeping out in its parks. When I’m out walking Wolfie, I try and make a point of smiling and saying hello. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to be more understanding of the hows and whys behind people living this way. A smile and a kind word costs nothing, and it’s clear that for many of our homeless population, those are two things that they see little of.

I stopped to chat with the Catman for a while, complimenting him on his cats, and that’s when he told me that he had a third cat, but that he was missing. “He’s black, with a white chest and face, and that’s why I call him Tuxedo. He’s been missing for a couple of weeks now, but I know that I’m going to find him. This one (as he pointed to one of the cats, snuggled up in the stroller) was missing for two weeks, but I found him in the parking garage under the Signature building. Someone told me that they’d seen a cat like him, so I went there, and there he was”.

I told him that I would keep an eye out for Tuxedo, and he said that if I found him, I should take him to the local convenience store, and that the owner would keep him, until he was able to pick him up. I sensed that a lot of people care about the Catman, and could see what a gentle soul he is.

A couple of days later, I was up early, to give Wolfie a walk, and to watch the sun rise over the Pier. Although it was still pretty dark, I recognized the shape of the stroller, and that’s when I crossed the street to get an update on Tuxedo. The Catman told me about the sign from God, and then told me that he’d spoken to someone earlier, who had said the same thing. He said that he was reassured that Tuxedo was indeed in hiding, and that they would soon be reunited. I got the sense that maybe the person that he’d spoken with had only said that Tuxedo was in hiding, after the Catman had told him about the sign from God, but I chose to say nothing.

Again, I promised to keep an eye out for Tuxedo, and I started to say goodbye. The catman pointed to a plastic bag that was hanging over his shoulder. He told me that when he’d been talking to the other man, he’d asked about the bag, which was full of food, and had been left by a park bench. The man told him that it had been there for a couple of days, and that he should have it. The Catman prodded the bag, and told me that it was full of sports bars, and other “good protein”. I had the feeling that the man had probably bought those things for the Catman, and this was his way of helping make his life a little easier.

For the last couple of days, I’ve walked through Williams Park, hoping to meet the Catman again, and that he’s been reunited with Tuxedo. As I write this, I’m about to go to the local supermarket and buy some cans of cat food. If I see him, I will tell him that someone had left them near my apartment, and that he should have them.

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At some point, I mentioned that we’d traveled down from Delaware in my bright red campervan (Robert’s Red Ford – thank you, Lisa!). It turned out that Adam had used to live in Wilmington with his ex-wife, and when I told him that I lived in the city, he got more specific and said that he’d lived in Trolley Square. When I told him that I lived in the neighborhood between Trolley Square and the city (Happy Valley), he looked at me a little quizzically, and said that is where his ex-wife lives now. “You might know her”, he said. After the briefest of pauses, he added “she’s a bit of a cat lady”. I started to rack my brain, and asked “how many cats does she have?” His all too quick response was “none… now that they’ve all died”, and there was an element of bitterness that spoke to unresolved pain and bitterness. “She’s called Natalie”, he added, and again, I felt that there was more that he was only too eager to tell me.

I thought about my own relationship with my ex-wife, who I still think of as family, and the following chorus from Nick Lowe popped into my head… “what’s so funny ‘bout peace, love, and understanding?” I felt sorry for Adam, and seeing her response to his words (she seemed all too familiar with the fact that he still had issues), I felt sorry for Lindsay, too.

They were an interesting couple. Both were relatively recent transplants to St. Petersburg, and while she seemed to have fully embraced all the opportunities that a booming city can provide, he seemed hung up on what it didn’t provide, or what was inferior to the Northeast. A great example was when I asked them about other restaurants that I should try. When she started to tell me about a place near the USF campus, he cut her off, and went into a vent about how crazy it was that a simple egg breakfast sandwich could cost $14. Clearly, this was not their first rodeo, and with practiced timing, she immediately responded that the sandwich was $11, not $14, and then, in what was almost a conspiratorial aside to me, she whispered “it really is a good sandwich”.

In addition to missing diners, and finding egg sandwiches too pricey, Adam also shared his concerns about the price of coffee (“who wants to pay six bucks for a coffee?”), and how adding alcoholic beverages to an all-night diner’s menu, both brings down the quality, and brings in the wrong sort of clientele.  I told him that there seemed to be a Wilmington connection, as the woman who cut my hair and trimmed my beard had also lived in Troilley Square. When I told him the name of the salon, he said that was where he went too, and he seemed to be disgruntled, at what he thought to be their excessively high price. I was temped to point out that it did come with complimentary access to their well-stocked beer fridge, but I thought better of it.

They told me how they’d been happily renting for a number of years, but that their condo had been sold from underneath them. They’d now bought a place of their own, “at a price that they couldn’t afford not to, but that they couldn’t afford to”, pausing before adding “if you know what I mean?”. I nodded that I did, but I didn’t really.

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After taking in the sun’s earliest rays, I bought a cafe con leche to go, and started to think about breakfast. The good thing about getting up early, is you do have a lot more time to be thinking about breakfast. As I left the Pier, and started to walk past the Marina, I decided to park myself on a bench, and just drink it all in.

That’s when I first saw, or rather, first heard Trinnie. She was jogging towards me, and was passing under the overhanging branches of a large tree, when she failed to see that the edge of the paving stone that was sticking up. Seemingly in slow motion, I watched as she started to fall forwards, but then was surprised as she twisted her body to the right in mid-fall, executing a military-style forward roll that meant that she landed on the grass, rather than the concrete. I rushed towards her, asking her if she was okay, but by the time I got there, she was already back up in her feet, and was dusting herself down.

As you read my description of Trinnie narrowly avoiding a potentially nasty face-planting incident, think about the image that you were building in your head. Was she some svelte young thing, dashing to grab an oat milk latte, fresh from her sun salutations on the beach? Maybe a jacked triathlete, feeling guilty about not meeting her mileage goals during the week, and so she was trying to squeeze in a few extra miles, before anyone else in the house was awake?

Trinnie wasn’t at all like either of those stereotypes. She was more one of those ‘slow and steady’ runners that I used to see when I was taking part in a lot of half-marathons. The ones that pick a speed and stick at it, mile after mile, after mile. About my age, she had a grace and poise that belied her solid frame. She told me that she grew up in the Islands, and only after we’d said our goodbyes, did I realize that I hadn’t asked which one. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that she’s either is, or was, a nurse. It was something about the way that she held herself, and her matter of fact was, as she for back up and just brushed herself off, after what had been a pretty dramatic spill.

She told me that she usually runs on the other side of the road, and that she knows where all the irregularities on the sidewalk are, and how to avoid them. Sensing that she was more than a little embarrassed, I went with humor, to ease the situation. I asked if she’d been a stuntwoman, earlier in her career, and commended her on her form. She laughed, in that beautiful way that people from the Caribbean Islands, , especially women, have of laughing. It was warm, and smooth, and rich, and it seems to make that early morning light just a little bit more golden.

She told me that she’d fallen while she was out running recently, and how by putting our her arms to protect her fall, she’d ended up with badly scraped wrists and palms. I told her that was fast thinking on her part, and she patted her cheek, saying “this face has already been through enough, I think”, and then she started to laugh again.

Having decided to be open to talking to strangers (I’m sorry, Mum… 50 years on, I’m knowingly ignoring your advice), I loved the connection and shared experience, especially as I wasn’t the one who had taken the tumble. Tinnie seemed to enjoy it, too, as she lingered a while, before slowly picking back up her jog.

As I watched her disappear into the distance, at that slow but steady pace of hers, I thought again about her military-style roll? I let myself create all sorts of back stories for her (medal-winning Olympic gymnast, Guinness World Record holder, Special Forces retiree / Green Beret holder). Or maybe, she just got lucky.

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The next part of our conversation went as so many of my conversations do, when she said “oh, you have an accent”. I responded in my usual way, with “I don’t have an accent… you’re the one with an accent!”. Usually this stops people in their tracks for a moment, and then elicits a smile. This time, I heard her response more clearly, in a very proper English accent. “Yes, I do. I’m English.”  Having determined that we both originated from the same piece of rock in the Atlantic Ocean, I asked her whereabouts. “Sussex”, she said. “I’m from Chesterfield”, I replied.

We exchanged names, with Pat introducing herself as “I’m Pat… it’s a very ordinary name”. She went on to tell me how she came to be in the US. When she was a young woman, her mother had encouraged her to broaden her horizons, by visiting her relatives in the US. “I came over by boat. It was far too expensive to fly, in those days”, she said. On that first morning, as a stranger in a strange land, albeit snuggled in the bosom of her family, she’d gone off to exchange some money. As she was in line, she met a young man, who caught her eye, and they started talking. 

“Was it love at first sight?”, I asked. “No”, she said, adding with a twinkle in her eye, “but it didn’t take long, and then we were together, until the day that he died”. Pausing for a moment, I then asked how long that had been. She seemed to do the math in her head, and then answered “we were together for 65 years, until her died 3 years ago”.  “I am so sorry to hear that. It sounds like you had a wonderful life together”. “We did”, she said, and in that moment, I saw the beauty and seeming inevitability of their chance meeting. I looked again, as she shaded her eyes from the warm Floridian sun, and now I saw her genteel frailty.

“Do you walk here, every day?”, I asked. “I walk every day, but not always here”, she said. I told her that I would look out for her, and that I was looking forward to our next conversation. As I write this, I’m looking for Wolfie’s leash, so that we can go in search of our new, and not so ordinary friend.  

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I first met Ian, like so many of my friends, in the first few days of my time at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. It was September 1979, and we were both living at Brinsford Lodge, which was a series of depressing post-war prefabricated buildings between Wolverhampton and Cannock that offered full board accommodation. Appropriately, our first meeting was at a fresher’s event which offered cheap beer, and lots of it. I remember seeing this tall skinny kid wearing a camouflage jacket, and I went over to chat. He was another self-confessed computer geek, and after exchanging the secret handshake (I know it’s hard to believe, but it hasn’t always been cool to be a geek), we started chatting. After a few minutes a couple of girls joined us, and for a moment, I thought it was our lucky night. I was doing my best to be charming and witty, and not to be outdone, Ian started to tell a joke. As the girls moved in closer, I suddenly realized that I knew the joke and that things were not going to end well (thankfully, I’ve long forgotten the joke, but I remember that the punch line had something to do with tampons). I couldn’t really kick him to stop, although I did consider spilling my beer on him. He delivered the punch line with that cheeky chappy, sniggery grin of his, and seemed genuinely confused when the two girls shared a look of disgust and edged away from us. I think that even back then, I started to realize just what a unique individual Ian was.

It’s funny how for so many people, the friends that you make in college days go on to be the best friends of your life. It’s certainly proved to be that way for me. When I look back to my first year at college, many of the friendships were centered around which block you lived in, or which course you were on. While I loved the people at Brinsford, I didn’t really take to the place itself or to it being so far away from the heady big city lights of Wolverhampton, and so I moved out after the first term. I then ended up getting glandular fever (mono) and having to give up the rest of my first year, and so I didn’t really reconnect with Ian and the gang until the following year. I was then living within walking distance of the main campus, but I used spend a lot of nights back at Brinsford. I also used to see a lot of Ian in the coffee bar, and in the various computer labs. I think that he might well have been the person who introduced me to the text-based computer game Adventure, that almost brought the computer network to its knees.

In our third year, I really saw a lot of Ian and the gang (Stephen, Bobby, Paul, Graham – and Chris, when he was in town) when they all moved into a house together not too far from where I was living. I remember Ian’s room in particular, as it was so full of computer stuff and the laser project he was working on. Besides computers, we both shared a love of music and good deals. There was a record shop near where you caught the bus to Dudley, and I made some great discoveries there. When Ian came round, he’d always want to hear the latest music that I’d found, and then he’d go out and get a copy.

After college, in those pre-Facebook days when it was harder to stay in touch, Ian and Chris were two of the friends that we did manage to stay in touch with. They came to stay with us for parties at our first house in Oldham, and we stayed with them at Chris’ parent’s place in Lytham. Ian was the first of us to move to the US, and I remember those long ‘letters from America’ that would arrive every couple of months. They’d run to about 10 or 12 pages of dot matrix print – the first page would be personalized for each friend and then the rest would be photocopies. That would leave all of us wondering who at least half of these people were. As others have mentioned, I don’t think that I’ve ever known anyone who made friends as readily as Ian.

I did lose track of Ian for about 5 years or so, but occasionally we’d get an update via others. In 1993, I started to go to the US on business, and on my first trip, I decided to call Directory Enquiries to see if I could track him down. That wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds, as though I’d heard that Ian had changed his surname, I wasn’t 100% certain that I had it right. Luckily the operator was very patient, and after 20 minutes or so, I had a Dallas telephone number for him. Imagine my surprise, when I called the number and Chris answered. He just happened to be over on a visit, and so I got to catch up with both of them. A couple of months later, I was back in the US on business, and I had to go to Texas for a meeting, so I decided to spend the weekend with Ian first. He picked me up from the airport, and we drove back to his place, where the plan was for me to grab a quick bite to eat and freshen up, and then we were heading out for the night. For those of you who remember what Ian’s fridge used to be like before Ann Marie brought some much needed order into his life, my options for a quick bite was some cheese that was well past its sell by date, some scary half-eaten, open cans of stuff or a can of Boddington’s, which he was very proud that he could now get in Dallas.

A lot of my memories about Ian seem to revolve around getting ready to go out. I remember the few days many of us shared down at the beach in Delaware, when we came together for Pam and Stephen’s wedding. If it wasn’t us trying to explain to Ian that his ‘bat belt’ (complete with all of his gadgets hanging off it) wasn’t really a fashion statement, we’d be losing the argument that less is more when it comes to splashing on expensive cologne or explaining that while we agreed that Wallace and Grommit was very funny, a t-shirt with the aforementioned characters wasn’t really an appropriate clothing choice for a night on the town.

Looking back over the almost 35 years I’ve known Ian (I’m not ready for past tense yet, because it still feels like he’s here with us), no other friend has ever managed that balance of making me laugh and exasperating me like he has. You could have the silliest conversations with Ian and the darkest, deepest conversations with him, often in the same night. I always enjoyed those late night talks that would stretch into the wee hours, where we’d relive the old days or dig deep into some obscure book that one or other of us had read.

Over the last few years, I’ve enjoyed that Facebook meant that you’d get those quirky one-liners from Ian, often responding to something you’d posted. I also liked that you got to share in his joy of discovery – something that never grew old or jaded with him. As I’m sure many of us did, I also got my fair share of those late night calls / texts (both of them usually complaining that I never picked up my phone). When Ian got the urge to share something with you, he tended to act on it straight away.

I’m going to miss those calls. I’m going to miss that sweet, funny, charming, lovable, infuriating man that I was lucky to call a friend for all of these years.

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I can’t remember now whether I had a specific plan to visit St. Catherine’s House, or I just came across it by accident. That was the magnificent building in central London that used to house all of the UK’s original Birth, Marriage and Death certificates. You used to be able to walk in off the street and access their card indexes, and then you could fill in a form to request a copy of the original. I seem to remember requesting two copies; one of my Uncle Bill’s death certificate (he’d died a couple of years earlier at the age of 62, after a life down the mines had made him old before his time) and my Grandmother’s death certificate (she’d died before my 3rd birthday, so I don’t remember her.

I think that part of my fascination is because I grew up not knowing any of my grandparents, and none of my dad’s side of the family. My mum’s dad had died shortly after the Second World War after a long illness (yes, you guessed it.. he broke his back in a bad mining accident in the 1930s, and was mainly bed-ridden after that). My dad came from a long line of miners too, and I think that in those days, miners worked hard and played hard. My paternal grandfather was a heavy drinker, a womanizer and prone to bouts of the ‘blue devils’ – the way that coming home and beating your wife senseless could be passed off as “not my fault” back then.

My dad was the oldest of 5 children, and grew up in abject poverty. It wasn’t just the poor wages and poor social conditions of the time, but the fact that his father was also keeping a “fancy woman” and a second family across the other side of town, and then drinking himself senseless every night. One night when my dad was 15, he came home from the pub and found an excuse to beat up his wife. My dad decided to stand up to him and got between him and his mum. As a result, my dad took the beating, and he was thrown out of the family home.

With only the clothes on his back, my dad walked 20 miles through a wet and windy night, turning up at his aunt’s house, which just happened to be around the corner from where my mum lived. She took him and after a few hours sleep, he made his way to the local pit, where they took him on. Before you say to yourself how wonderful his aunt was for taking him, that hospitality came at a price. Her condition was that he handed over his pay packet to her, and she gave him an allowance in return. Not having a choice, he accepted her offer, and so while earned a decent wage at the time (he did one of the most dangerous that there was down the mine; widening new seams to make them accessible and putting in the pit props after explosives had opened them up), he remained as poor as a church mouse until he married my mum.

Only in the last week or so, have I finally tracked down my father’s side of my family on Ancestry.com. I have names and dates, people and places, births, weddings and funerals. All of them are part of my history, and yet I know nothing about them. I see names of cousins and aunts and uncles that I’ve never met, or maybe I have. Maybe I’ve passed them in the street, or sat next to them in a pub or on a bus. I wonder if any of them heard different stories growing up, with my dad cast as the black sheep of the family? I wonder if any of them are looking up my part of the Ford family tree?

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When it got to lunch time today, I was starting to flag. This morning, I got up at 5:30am for a call with a business partner back on the East Coast, and so I’d had my breakfast earlier than usual. After buying a fruit knife this morning, I did try the sugar cane that one of the students gave me, but by 12pm I was ready for a real meal.

Just as I was thinking about venturing out on my own, one of my students (a young man called Bush) dropped by to visit. He’s really trying to improve his English, and so he wanted me to go with him to the library to choose some English books that might help. I asked him if he was hungry, and suggested that after the library, we might go to the small restaurant off campus that he introduced me to last week, where they make the most delicious wonton soup. He agreed, and so after helping him chose a few books (D. H. Lawrence’s ‘Women in Love’ and John Irving’s ‘Hotel New Hampshire being among them), we headed off campus.

Before we got to the restaurant, he asked me if I’d ever tried cake with meat. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but being eternally open to new experiences, I followed him to one the street food vendors. The cake was a sort of unsweetened flaky pastry that she opened up like a pitta bread. Into that, she took a thick piece of pork (it looked like belly pork) from an industrial size crockpot, and proceeded to chop it into tiny pieces, along with what looked like an Anaheim pepper. Lastly, she took a big spoonful of chili sauce and mixed that in too, before putting the mixture into the pastry.

We headed to the restaurant as I explained to Bush that elsewhere, restaurants really frowned upon you bringing your own food with you. He said that was pretty common, and so we sat down to order. I’ve been to this same restaurant 5 times now, and I’m slowly working through their menu. They really do have the best wonton soup that I’ve ever tried, with the most amazing broth. After reviewing all of the different flavors that I’ve tried so far, I went with Bush’s suggestion – pigeon. After trying it, I’m wondering if maybe this isn’t the solution to the pigeon problem that we have in so many cities.. all we need to do is to come up with a really effective marketing campaign on how pigeon is the new black!  It really was very tasty, but I did hesitate for a moment upon learning that you get served just every part of the pigeon. The pigeon heart was so tiny, and well… heart-shaped, but it also was very tasty.  I asked Bush about the soup, and he told me that it is made with 31 traditional Chinese medicines. He told me that it will ward off colds and prevent all sorts of ailments. All i know is that I was left wanting more.

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How it started was that I taught class tonight from 7pm until 9pm. I was busy putting the finishing touches to my charts befoe that, and so I didn’t have time for dinner (only a banana). Afterwards, I had to get back to my room for a call with a new business partner, and one of my students wanted to go over a plan for her project, and so I didn’t eat then either. Actually, I’d forgotten that I hadn’t eaten, and didn’t realize until I was downstairs taking the trash out.

I decided that I’d take a walk to ensure that I met my NikeFuel fitness goal, and that maybe I’d pick up a snack along the way. It’s turned very cold here the last two days, and so ‘Snack Street’ was quiter than usual. I did a first pass, and not seeing anything I liked, I walked around the whole block, coming back around for a second inspection. In the end, I got fed up with being indecisive, and just went to the first stall that was selling a mix of fried fish and meat.

The street was very dark and the stall was lit by something like a 10W bulb, and so it was hard to make out what the choices were. At first, I thought that the option I tried was chicken quarters, but as I pointed to it, I noticed that it was something that had been butterflied. Still thinking that it was some form of poultry, my mind jumped to quail as I found myself nodding my head, as she lifted a circular cover and dropped it inside. She then put the lid back down and started to use all of her weight to squash down whatever it was.

As it started to sizzle, I looked back at the other portion that was still sat on the slab. Hmmm.. remember those scenes in Alien and other sci-fi movies, when you suddenly realize that the skeleton isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen before. That’s how it felt when I realized that it definitely wasn’t chicken. After a couple of minutes, we got to really load sizzling, and so she pulled it out, and before I could take a closer look, she used a pair of tongs and a wallpaper stripper (if you’re not sure what I mean, think wide putty knife) to chop it into pieces.

She motioned if I wanted any spices, and after I nodded again, she liberally covered the contents of the doggy bag with the contents of two different shakers. When I got back to my apartment, I started thinking through strategies of how I could get rid of my snack, if I either chickened out (I wish!), or found that I really didn’t like the taste.

Surprisingly, I found that I really loved it. That’s probably to do with how much cumin was in one or both of the spice mixes, but what little meat there was on there tasted like a cross between bacon and yes, you guessed it.. chicken!

Just as I was finishing it, one of my students popped up on QQ (the Chinese love child of Facebook & Twitter, with a striking resemblance to crusty old uncle AOL IM), and I asked her what she thought I’d just eaten. She’s not that sure that it was frog, and after checking the images that come up when you search for ‘crispy frog’ or ‘crunchy frog’, I’m not all that sure either.

Again, I’m probably not going to enquire any further at this point. There are some things that are just better left unknown!

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