So far, only one of my own real life friends is on Twitter, so it’s nice to see her tweets once in a while.  The rest are people I know through J.  Plus, there are all kinds of business, TV, history, etc., to follow for their updates, which makes for some interesting reading.  One of the places I follow is The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry.  One of the reasons I do that is because I still have some theatre vouchers that were a wedding give to me and the ex, and this threatre is one of the places I could use them.

However, last Friday, the theatre tweeted their Friday Freebie – answer a question about one of the plays now on (Season’s Greetings) and win a pair of tickets by 5:00 that day.  I answered the question, and I won!

Unfortunately, the tickets needed to be used by last evening and I really don’t have a lot of people I can ask.  Most of my friends are either in the US or Birmingham!  Janet had to work…J was tempted to skip going to a meeting – he said he’d be happy to go with me – but he really needed to go to the meeting.  None of this bothered me too much, as I really had no problem with going on my own.  It would just have been nice to go with someone.

Well, I went.  I was told to pick up my tickets at the box office, which I did.  I said I really only needed one ticket, but they gave me both, and I’m glad they did.  The seats were the 4th row back from the stage, which seemed like a good position, except, of course, the person who sat in front of me was quite tall…so I just shifted over to my other seat. 

I enjoyed the play.  I also enjoyed being at the theatre.  Prior to the start, I sat outside for a while, as it was a lovely evening and the plaza area in front of the theatre is a nice place to sit.  Although I didn’t buy a drink (trying to make those pennies scream), I checked out the cafe bar and the bar – nice interior, lots of open seating space, just a nice place.

Now, if Janet or J had been able to accompany me, they would’ve driven.  As it was, I took the bus, of course.  The play ended a little bit before 10:00 and my next bus wasn’t until 11:05!  Still, I took my time leaving the theatre and then sat outside again for a while before slowly making my way to my bus stop – which was about a 10 minute walk away.  Coventry is a quiet place on a Monday night!

One of those weeks, we met at her house and I got a tour of her cute cottage.  The following week, we met at my house and she got the tour of this place.  Each of those weeks (except for our first walk), we’ve stopped at one of our local pubs for a drink (or three!) afterwards.  It’s been really fun getting to know her, and it is really nice to go into the pub for a drink WITH someone (can’t imagine doing it on my own!).

She is a student at Coventry University and is a few years younger than me.  She also works part-time at one of the offices at the University and has just taken on ‘casual’ work at the Co-op in the village.  This has been an advantage to both of us as she gets to know people in the village from ringing up their purchases at the Co-op – many of them happen to hang out in one of the pubs as well.

There are three pubs in this village, although one of them was closed down and another was for sale when I moved here.  The closed one is now open and the for sale one has now closed down, but not before we had a chance to have a drink there.  So now we feel like veterans – we’ve been in all three village pubs.  We’ve had fish and chips from the local shop.  One of the pubs has a Chinese takeaway in it, so we’ve picked up the menu for future use.

The pub we happen to like best is The Rose and Crown.  Not quite sure why, it’s not a fancy place (it’s the one with the Chinese takeaway), but we both feel comfortable there.  There is live music every Friday night, which happens to be the night we go there, and sometimes the music is good and sometimes not so good (based on three visits!).  This past Friday night, I saw a man wearing a shirt that said ‘Milwaukee’ on it, so I actually talked to him and asked him about it.  He bought the shirt in Peterborough (of all places) because he thought it would ‘look good’ when he went on holiday in Ibiza!  lol.  He knew Milwaukee was a city in the US, but that’s about all he knew about it…so that led to a nice little chat.

In any event, Janet and I will continue to go on our walks and out for a drink afterwards.  We’re also planning, one of these weekends, to take a longer walk, but so far, either one or the other of us have had plans at the weekend, or the weather has not been cooperative.  Still, it’s nice to have a friend right down the street from me.

Instead, he suggested that I use the access to Ancestry web-site to start on my family tree.  Wow!  That was nice of him, and I didn’t realise you could put more than one on there.  But, of course, it is unlimited.  He could split his own family tree up into any number of them if he’d like.  Plus, he’s given two other friends access, so with mine on their, he now has 4 family trees on his web-site.

He sat me down and walked me through the process so I could quickly understand that the site also gives hints and tips regarding any family member I might add.  For example, for one of the sets of English great-grandparents, it gave me a tip that these people appear in someone else’s family tree.  I recognised the name on that family tree, a distant cousin of my mother’s, and even found photos of my great-grandparents.  Pretty cool!

J also walked me through a number of military records, since I can’t find this particular great-grandfather in the 1901 census.  Therefore, it can be surmised that he wasn’t in England at the time of the census.  He could have been in Scotland or Wales for some reason, but he could also have been in the military and in South Africa (the Boer War).  We didn’t find records for that war and I have no clue if he was even in the military.  As J said, it’s not at all important when it comes to tracing the family back, but it is interesting to try to find out why he wasn’t in that census, or if there may have been a mistake in his name.

Ultimately, I’ll be able to get back probably just one more generation and then I’ll need to try to come up with birth or marriage certificates to help me get back further.  That costs money, so I won’t be able to do that at this time, but I’ll try to do what I can.

I also added some information to the tree for my dad’s side of the family.  I’m mostly interested in my mom’s side at this point, since there is a family tree in the family already that covers my dad’s side from the time they arrived from German, but it’s still interesting to add the information I know.  J got really excited by my dad’s information when the system threw up a hint regarding dad and the military.  As I explained to J, my dad was in the Army in the ’50′s and stationed in England, where he met my mom…nothing more exciting than that.  J tried to check out the hint, though, and realised he’s not paying for the international version, so can’t get any information regarding people outside the UK.  He’s thinking of adding to his subscription, though, just because he’s curious.

This is an interesting, time-consuming and even frustrating project, but overall, I think it will be rewarding.

The first thing we did was to take a walk to Ryton Gardens for a look around and some tea and cake.  Once we’d walked back, it was time to jump into Jeff’s car for a trip to Burton Dassett Country Park.  What a spectacular place. I could hardly wait to get out of the car to have a look around.  After Jeff parked the car, it was a matter of a short walk back to one of the ticket machines to pay for the parking, but as we were walking and the wind was coming up (it’s probably always quite windy up there), we started to pay attention to what was coming towards us…lots of clouds that looked quite stormy.  Within just a few seconds, there was thunder and lightning and we decided to re-think the plan…why pay for parking if you can’t wander around?  Back to the car we went and back down into the valley, just in time to be inundated with torrential rain.  We were all very happy we’d made the decision to get back in the car!

Jeff’s next suggestion was that we go to Compton Verney, not to tour the house itself, as it was getting late in the day, but to go to the tearoom and have some more tea and cake – none of us had actually had any lunch – so that’s what we did.  Of course, by the time we got there, the tearoom was getting ready to close for the day.  I had an opportunity, however, to see the house in the distance, which was nice.

From there, Jeff mentioned there was a nice pub nearby, which, if it was closed, he was going to throw himself in the river!  Of course, it was open, and so we were able to have tea and cake.  The only downside to this was that they had a very nice courtyard seating area, but it was too wet to take advantage.  Still, we had our tea and cake and sat and relaxed and chatted and then headed for home.

It hadn’t rained at all at my place and we sat in the front garden in the sun and drank more tea and had a long discussion as to what to do next with the garden.  It was then time to head to The Royal Oak for our dinner, although we took a walk around both Wolston and Brandon before going there so they could better have a chance to ooh and ahh as the thathed-roof cottages in both villages.  Our food was good, we had a really nice time, and then the two of them made their way home.

Now, as the money gets tighter, I am forced to stick closer to home.  I can’t afford to buy a monthly bus pass (and don’t need to travel everyday anyway), but even a return ticket to Coventry is nearly £4, so I’m really marshalling my resources and thinking about what I need to buy – not much, my freezer has a lot of food in it – and what I need to do.  This has certainly given me more time to work in the garden and the house, as well as to work more on family history.

Things could be worse.

I ended up finding around 15 employment agencies in the Rugby, Coventry and Birmingham areas but so far, I’ve only registered at about 5 of them.  I’m saving the rest as I go along to add to my JobCentre diary.  I’ve also applied for any number of jobs, oftentimes as simply as submitting my CV online, and sometimes in a little more complicated manner of completing an on-line application and submitting it with my CV – these have generally been through several different agencies.

I’ve also put my CV and a covering letter through the letter box of a solicitor in Coventry that does some immigration law work, knowing they didn’t have any openings, but just hoping something might come up.  Plus, I check the web-sites of the local universities and colleges, as well as the Coventry City Council, to see what kinds of jobs they have going.  I actually have a further three applications submitted that way.

This is all keeping me somewhat busy!  However, I have been lucky enough to get two more job interviews.

One was with a new company that is just trying to get started.  They are not yet registered with the authority that would allow me to actually give immigration advice and there just seemed something ‘iffy’ about the whole thing – they offered me a job on the spot, I told them I’d have to think about it and get back to them.  A day or so later, an email from the director including a ‘start up plan’ that in the end looked like they were expecting me to tell them how I was going to bring in the clients.  I turned that one down.

Tomorrow I have an interview with one of the local colleges for an administrative position.  I’m overqualified for the role so happy that they called me at all.  The pay is a little lower than I was looking for, but it’s way more than Job Seeker’s Allowance and would work.  Plus it’s right across the street from one of my bus stops…needless to say, I want to do well in this interview and get the job.  I can certainly always search for another job if this isn’t the right one for me.

Last week I also attended an appointment at one of the agencies where I’d registered.  She took further information from me as to what kind of work might actually suit me and then had me do some of their assessments – working with word processing, Excel spreadsheets and a copy typing test.  I did well with the first two, but was really happy with the typing test.  When I looked at the page to type, I felt that I could complete the page in five minutes with pretty good accuracy if I was on ‘top form’.  The test just happened to be five minutes and it is difficult to be on top form when using a strange key board that is a little wonky, but while I was waiting for my score to come up, I was fairly sure that I’d typed at least 70 words per minute.  I’d managed to type about three quarters of the page when the time ran out.  Result – 80 wpm, 100% accuracy.  No problem there!

In the end, the agent agreed to look for temporary, part-time and permanent jobs for me.  She felt that permanent was going to be the most difficult, temporary the easiest, but she had absolutely nothing for me at the moment.  Oh well.  Her eyes bugged out when she saw the result of my typing test, so at least I am fairly sure she’ll think of me when she has an audio-typing job.  With any luck, I won’t need it.

It was really good to see them.  The last time I saw them was in my mostly empty new flat back in January of 2010.  Since that time, we’ve exchanged greeting cards for birthdays, holidays and their anniversary.  My father-in-law was diagnosed late last year with aggressive prostate cancer (which is now in remission) and I was really happy that MIL kept me up-to-date with what was going on.

In any event, they stopped by, examined the new house and proclaimed it to be like ‘a dream come true’ for me and we sat and drank tea and ate cake and got caught up with all kinds of things.  Including the fact that I’m now divorced from their son.  We talked very briefly about that and then went on to other things.  No point in beating a dead horse.

In a way, their visit was kind of sad.  It brought home the realisation that my niece and nephew (the ex’s brother’s kids) have grown up a lot since I last saw them and I most likely will never see them again.  I don’t even know if I’ll ever see these two again, but I’m not going to worry about that.

We hugged and kissed good-bye with the promise to ‘keep in touch’, which I expect we will do through greeting cards once more.  I’m satisfied with that.  Must make a note in my diary – their 50th wedding anniversary is coming up in January – that’s worth sending them a card.

On a side note, I am really happy with my friendship with him, he’s opened my eyes to lots of different things.  Without him, I would never have explored beyond the lending library!

As it was, the people on the 6th floor were very helpful to a novice.  I needed to look at info from the 1911 census and they had free access to it – for 3 more days, so my timing was perfect!

I was able to track down and save a lot of information regarding my English ancestors, and it seems that several family mysteries may have been solved.

Then, I looked for info on the family members J had in mind.  He’s been working on his family tree for about 20 years and can go back to the mid-1700′s on some of the family lines.  There were, however, about 1/2 a dozen ancestors who would have been alive in 1911 (he surmised) that I was able to find and confirm what they were doing at that time.

I also searched through loads of city directories going back to the 1700′s looking for some of these people, whom I felt like I was getting to know on a first name basis by the end of the second day!

It was really interesting saving and printing this info and getting it to J.  He was thrilled with some of the stuff I found out…most of which confirmed things he already suspected.

Even better for me is that I have his help in interpreting some of the things I found regarding my own family, since he has many years of experience in dealing with the different information on previous censuses.  So far, I’ve looked at the 1901 and 1891 censuses and I now feel like I know some of these people on a first name basis.  It was also quite interesting to see some people listed as babies and young children in 1911 that I actually remember meeting when I was a teenager and they were quite elderly.

The free access that J has given me to one of his web-sites is really helpful, plus he’s giving me tips on organising the material…whether his way will be my way in the long run is not known at this time, but it is a good way for me to get started with organising it.  I think I’m hooked!

I packed as for an expedition.   I planned to spend the night, as I didn’t believe I could finish in one day…plus the paint hadn’t been delivered yet and I didn’t know when it would arrive.  There’s no fridge in the house, so I prepared a day in advance by making lots of ice cubes!  This house has a really good freezer, so I made way more than I needed with two trays in one day.

I packed whatever I thought I would need into a cooler bag, with some food in my backpack, painting clothes, pajamas, reading materials, toothbrush, etc., and set off.

Long story short, the paint didn’t come on Monday, but I spent several hours just preparing the two rooms.  A friend of Tracy’s also came to the house to do some repair work (door trim, that type of thing) so I did get some painting in with some white paint that she had at the house.

Once I had confirmation the paint would arrive on Tuesday, I seriously considered going home, but I was afraid if I did, I wouldn’t get back to the house before the paint actually arrived…it’s a two hour trip, so I stayed put, went for a walk, went to bed early and then waited on Tuesday.

The paint arrived at a little after 2:00 in the afternoon and I got right to it.  I wanted (and needed) to go home on Tuesday…just to get more food if nothing else!  Plus, with the timing on evening buses going to my house, I knew I’d really want to leave Tracy’s by 6:30, or I’d be waiting for my bus home until 11:00 pm.

I was able to paint the smaller of the two bedrooms in the time I had and was really quite pleased with the result.  The major problem in this bedroom is the staining caused by the cigarette smoking Tracy’s former partner did in that room when he had the computer set up there.  It’s going to want a second coat, but the improvement after one coat is quite obvious.

What with one thing and another, I left the house on Tuesday afternoon and won’t be able to get back until this Tuesday, but at least I should be able to finish on the same day.  I thank Tracy for the opportunity to do something useful and earn a little needed money at the same time!

The interview at the JobCentre was fairly cut and dried.  I met with a woman who went over the information I’d given in the on-line application, we clarified a couple of things I wasn’t sure I’d answered correctly and then signed the form.  She explained to me that, for as long as I was entitled to JSA, I’d get paid every two weeks and it would take a week or so for the payments to start.

Then I met with a man who got me into the computer system.  We talked about what types of jobs I’d be looking for and how I’d go about looking…basically by using the internet and through agencies.  I have to show that I have three ‘events’ a week – that is, keep a diary of at least three attempts to find a job.  Shoot, I have so many ideas of finding a job that in the first week, I have 9 events!  I report in on Monday the 12th.  Then two weeks after that, I show up again to see him with my CV where we’ll have a more in-depth discussion which will include his own ideas of getting me back into work.  He told me he hopes he won’t see me on that date!

However, if I don’t have a job by that time, then I just keep reporting in every two weeks. All of this is really simple, except then I start to worry about money and the cost of a bus ticket to Rugby.  I would never have batted an eye previously at paying £3.65 for a return bus ticket, but times have changed….

I got a phone call the day after the interview to tell me that and to say nice things about me, lol.  I was also offered an emailed feedback if I wanted it, which I said that I did.  That came the following day and confirmed (happily) the couple of things that I suspected – I screwed up on part of the test, and didn’t answer a question as thoroughly as they would’ve liked, as I didn’t have the experience in the field to be able to answer.

These two things are things that would be easily learned with training, which told me one thing…they obviously had at least one better applicant.  I guess that would be obvious!!  So I came away from the experience feeling pretty good about it, especially since the positives regarding everything else I had to say about my administrative experience was good.