vivdunstan: Part of my family tree (genealogy)
Exploring another branch of my maternal Scottish family tree, and finding a nephew of my 5xg-granny from Melrose who was a Professor of Hebrew, dying at North Leith in 1901. His dad, husband of my g..aunt, had been a schoolmaster at Galashiels in the early 1800s.
vivdunstan: Portion of a 1687 testament of ancestor James Greenfield in East Lothian (history)
Wanted to brainstorm new academic project ideas. Still have lots to work out. But helped hugely by just rediscovering my handwritten notes from quite a few years ago for further academic journal paper possibilities based on my PG research into the local Melrose (Scottish Borders) court 1650s-1680s. That was for my MPhil (taught PG) history dissertation at Dundee University. I built a huge database of nearly 2500 local court cases, almost 10,000 participants. So much that I can research further. Amused at my handwritten note "researching court officials more inc my g..uncle the punching judge"! I also want to do more new historical research projects, as much as my progressive neurological disease allows. But I do have this mass of Melrose local court material readily accessible and already largely digitised. And I can certainly look at exploring its possibilities further, in multiple ways.

Names

Mar. 25th, 2025 03:22 pm
vivdunstan: Photo from our wedding in Langholm (martin)
Booking a table for breakfast tomorrow after my yearly haircut. "Did you say Dunsinane?" Hahaha! That would be a first. We'll see how our name is written on the sign tomorrow 😜

Usually we get Dustin, Dunstone or especially Duncan. We often joke we should change our surname to the last for an easier life ...

Dunstan is a Cornish surname mainly, though it's also strongly associated with Somerset, especially with St Dunstan from Glastonbury. It's also a name I knew as a child in Melrose, with St Dunstan's an area there.
vivdunstan: Photo from our wedding in Langholm (martin)
I was awake a little today, so managed finally to go through some old things Mum gave me recently. Including many old photos. Lots of little me at school, especially primary school. Lots of Borders Schools Orchestra things, including a photo of us all. Lots of 1978 Melrose Festival photos - I was a train bearer. And some lovely graduation photos of Martin and me in 1994. Here's one of the more informal graduation photos. And after that is a photo of my granddad at the top of Melrose Abbey. He was the last in a long line of family beadles or church officers. Who, among other things, rang the abbey bell regularly.



vivdunstan: A picture of a cinema projector (films)
Finally getting to this, though it will take us at least two watches to get through it, given how sedated I am. Eyes were peeled for Leaderfoot Viaduct near Melrose near the start! There was much excitement there when the filming happened.

Impressions so far, halfway through, are positive. Though if anything it seems over hectic: too many prolonged action sequences, not enough calmer bits. I don’t remember earlier Indy films leaning so heavily towards the former, but that may just be my bad memory!

I’m impressed by how well the de aging of Harrison Ford and Mads Mikkelsen worked. I expected it to be more jarring. I only found some bits when Indy’s face turned side on to look badly fake. I found the horse and bike race visual effects more dodgy. Amused to see a pipe band, in a bit filmed in city centre Glasgow.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is doing a good job, and Helena is suitably unreliable and hard to pin down. Nice to see John Rhys-Davies again. Though he’s toned the accent down! And Toby Jones was fab.
vivdunstan: Part of my family tree (genealogy)
Pleased this afternoon to manage a couple of things on my to do list for the week. I blogged my way through them. Both family history hunts. First finding my granddad and his siblings in Catholic baptism registers for Leeds, Yorkshire. And secondly, using communion rolls to narrow down when my maternal ancestors moved to Melrose, Scotland. Happy with that burst of genealogical productivity.
vivdunstan: Photo of me from Melrose Grammar School plus NHS thanks (melrose)
Was just chatting to Mum, and she reminded me of my performance at High Cross Church in Melrose as Angel Gabriel in the Nativity Play. Whose speech was delivered not from the pulpit as intended but from behind the Christmas tree, invisibly 😜 The funny thing is I can remember quite a lot of that, including the effort of learning the speech. *So* long ago now ...
vivdunstan: Part of my family tree (genealogy)
Looking in the British Newspaper Archive, trying a search for where my Kerr ancestors were living in the early 1900s, among the Cheviot Hills near Yetholm. And found great uncle Andrew - a shepherd - winning loads of sheep competitions. Need to gather these up properly and blog about them sometime! Great Uncle Andrew was a fantastic character who I was lucky to meet several times when I was young. My last visit to his home (by then in Yetholm) saw him get young me to try snuff (!), and also fill me and Mum full of Selkirk bannock. Oh and I drove the three of us to Kelso to buy him more snuff!

This will be blogged on my dedicated genealogy blog. On another branch of the Scottish family a gg-uncle at Melrose was a well known breeder of Border collies and a sheepdog trials judge.
vivdunstan: Photo of my 72 bass accordion (accordion)
Just been chatting in the comments on my accordion tuner's Facebook page with someone who may have sold us one or more accordions at Clinkscales between 1976 and 1981, and also brought down my first accordion teacher from Lanarkshire to work in Melrose. Bill Sharp was my first accordion teacher when I was aged just 4 in 1976. And again later in the late 1980s before uni. Small world!

Mum loves to recall the story of little me in Melrose glued to the accordion shop's windows. And absolutely sure, though aged just 4, that I wanted one. And always going back to look in the window some more.
vivdunstan: Part of own photo taken in local university botanic gardens. Tree trunks rise atmospherically, throwing shadows from the sun on the ground. (Default)
Reminded of a talk I gave 10 years ago today to the Economic and Social History Society of Scotland conference in Inverness. As I wrote then: "Also my talk on 17th century Melrose area court records went well. I said two things I didn’t plan to say: 'CSI Melrose', and 'Murrrdddeerr' a la Taggart! I do improvise a lot in conference talks, and am never quite sure what I will say!"

I don't think I'll ever be able to give another academic conference talk again, given my progressive neurological illness now, but it was fun while I still could. For this one back in 2013 I had to use my wheelchair that day. Luckily the venue was pretty accessible.
vivdunstan: Part of own photo taken in local university botanic gardens. Tree trunks rise atmospherically, throwing shadows from the sun on the ground. (Default)
Finally installing Python3 on my new Mac so updated my family reconstitution code from Python 2 to 3 (very easy). Running both versions in test sequence produces identical results, core output and GEDCOM file. And the Python 3 runs 3 times faster than Python 2! This is reconstituting nearly 7000 baptisms and 3000 marriages at Melrose parish in Roxburghshire (Scottish Borders) before 1800. Putting children into families with parents, and outputting family groupings as a GEDCOM file for import into a genealogy program. This is the only Python program I've ever coded. I was a computer science PhD student when my neuro illness struck at age 22 in 1994. I had to drop out, and have barely coded since. But something must have stuck! The pseudo code was easy to convert into Python, even for a newbie.

vivdunstan: A picture of a cinema projector (films)
Miraculously we managed another film, albeit a short one, the first in the Roger Corman Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe series of collaborations, The Fall of the House of Usher (1960).

It’s fun, gloriously hammy, and wonderfully garish in colour and themes. But Vincent Price’s acting is really dodgy, and Mark Damon playing the heroic wooer of Madeline Usher delivers a really poor acting performance. On plus Myrna Fahey as Madeline is strong, and the only other cast member, Harry Ellerbe as the butler, is reliable.

But oh it is padded. Not one of the best in the series for me. Though the visuals are superb, especially the looming Usher house. I’d forgotten the psychedelic blue sequence with Usher ancestors.

I do have a soft spot for this film though. Perhaps helped by my descent from a very old Usher family at Melrose! And the ending, once we finally reach it, is rather glorious.

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vivdunstan: Part of own photo taken in local university botanic gardens. Tree trunks rise atmospherically, throwing shadows from the sun on the ground. (Default)
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