The usual morning routine – a scampering irritability of girls disrupting the more measured approach of the adults.
Clatter, scrape, bump, slam – silence.
Sue hurried through her chores and settled down with Peter’s book. After reading a few chapters, she had to agree with Peter that it was very straight forward. It gave an easy guide into tracing one’s family history and was interspersed with interesting and informative examples. Sue found the subject fascinating and was surprised that it had not occurred to her to ask her parents about their family background earlier. Some of the anecdotes in Peter’s book were compelling and made her wonder why so few people were interested in genealogy. She supposed that it could be time consuming, but in her own case that was part of its appeal. She was particularly struck by Peter’s suggestion that for anyone beginning a quest, speaking with elderly relatives was the first and most urgent task. Documentary evidence was particularly useful. Birth certificates, photographs and family papers were a bonus. Following the information obtained from family members, one should attempt to draw up a speculative family tree. This should enable the researcher to see what information was missing from their recent past. The next step would be two-fold. Firstly, attempting to confirm the information given verbally and secondly, endeavouring to fill in missing items. This normally entailed obtaining evidence from civil registration sources in the form of birth, marriage and death certificates, which usually required a visit to Somerset House in London.
“Hmm.” Sue put the book down. Goodness, was that the time already? She went up to make the beds. She reflected that almost all her living relatives were still in the Birmingham area, as far as she knew. She would phone her mother. During the rest of the day family history matters dominated her thoughts. The obvious thing to do was to make a trip to her family home. The thought came to her suddenly; half-term was only a few weeks away, which would be a good time. It would be nice for Jo and Katy to be with their cousins again.
*
The second meeting of the Corrosion Sub-Committee was set for the eighteenth of February. Dave felt that he must make some progress before that. A store had been set up at a sub-station close to the Winford site where the failure debris was now being housed. He arranged for Gritty to collect a sample from the failed LP disc material.
*
“Dave, that’s just so annoying,” was Sue’s response when she learned that he had to go to London during the half-term break. “Surely you have a say in when the meetings should be held. You are one of the members, not the filing clerk.” Dave winced. He was still not confident of having paid off his bad debt associated with the skittles match. Sue was right. He should have an input when meeting dates were decided, but he still felt in awe of his fellow sub-committee members, as well as feeling favoured by his own department in choosing him to represent them. He was prepared to accept any date that was proposed, rather than rock the boat or to have a meeting take place without him. These people had international reputations; their time was valuable. He was a comparative novice from Fisher’s Tubes who had trained at the Birmingham College of Technology, for God’s sake. He was flustered.
“Of course I’m consulted. I was happy with the date. How did I know you were planning something?” He hoped that he sounded convincing.
“Half-term? Surely that’s the most likely time we’d want to do something as a family,” Sue snapped, also a little guiltily, as her own planned research was hardly something the rest of the family would enjoy. “I’m surprised that the other members don’t wish to spend time with their own families,” she added. Some might feel that the catastrophic failure at a nuclear power station was a tad more important than a stroll around the Bull Ring, Dave thought, but sanity prevailed and he just agreed that, indeed, it was surprising. Sue was not to be easily placated and trusted that they could rely on him for transport.
The following morning, Sue was still feeling aggrieved at Dave’s selfishness. Since moving here she believed that he had changed. In Birmingham he had struck a happy balance between family life and work. As far as she knew he had been conscientious in his job, but this had not prevented him being pleased to be at home and actually having fun with her and the girls. Nowadays his work was clearly his main priority, perhaps his only priority, if you didn’t count skittles. No, that wasn’t quite fair, she wanted him to have a social life, but it did seem that she and the girls were seen as, more or less, obstacles to his ambitions. Maybe it was just a phase and things would eventually return to how they used to be. In the meanwhile she had to get on with her own life.
She made two phone calls, the first to her mother to make arrangements to visit. She thought it best if, whilst she stayed with them, the girls could go to Velma and Barry as it would be much more fun for them to be with their cousins. This suggestion seemed to be accepted. Sue mentioned her intention to do some family research and would be glad if her mother could think of who she ought to visit whilst she was there. There was evidence of teeth being sucked at the other end of the line. It might be tricky, her mother thought. Some of the family were still of the opinion that such matters were nobody’s business but theirs. Sue left it with her mother to think about. Her second call was to Pam, partly for a chat, but primarily to see when she was next seeing Charles or Peter, when she could return Peter’s book for her. Pam said that she was going to be in London for a couple of weeks – ‘the bloody DIY can wait’. She had Peter’s telephone number if Sue wanted to arrange something directly with him.
Her mother rang back just before lunch to say that she had made the arrangements. As far as her queries on family history were concerned, her mother guessed that, since Auntie Clara had died, her best hope, on her father’s side, would be her Uncle Stan, her father’s brother and for her side of the family, she probably knew as much as anyone. Uncle Stan lived in Sparkbrook, which wasn’t far. He wasn’t on the phone but she had his address.
“Thanks Mum, that’s really helpful. The whole idea sounds intriguing, I can’t wait to make a start. Could you just give me some information to be going on with?”
“Oh! Dear. It would be better to wait and let me think about it properly.”
“Well, just tell me your mother’s maiden name, that would be a start,” wheedled Sue.
“Daniel, surely you already knew that?”
“And when did they marry?” Sue persisted.
“I’ll need to check, just after the turn of the century I think. Look, I’ve got to get your father’s lunch. You won’t have to wait long before I see you.” And with that her mother rang off. Sue decided to write to Uncle Stan, but first, she was like a child, she grabbed the telephone pad and began to sketch out the first, of what would be many, embryo family tree diagrams.
*
Half-term, and not before time from Jo and Katy’s point of view. It wasn’t that they disliked their new school, but the prospect of seeing their cousins again was exciting. Sue was eager to be back in Birmingham because it was home, but now this was reinforced by the exciting prospect of taking her first steps into family history.
*
Wednesday, the second meeting of the sub-committee. Dave was in a more relaxed mood as he had now met his fellow committee members and this time, he had something useful to contribute, in addition to having a better appreciation of the whole problem. Same floor as last time. Express lift for the three of them. Dave had met up with Dorinda McCann and James Collingwood in reception. Henry Fletcher and Joe Griffiths were helping themselves to coffee as they arrived. Pauline Sage followed, laden down with paperwork comprising photocopies of correspondence and other documents which had been generated since their first meeting – so much already! They settled around the table and Henry opened the meeting. Pauline, unconsciously exuding an aura of efficiency, passed around copies of a variety of papers which, Dave noted, all had their assigned document number at the top right hand corner, WW/CSC/1 being the minutes of their first meeting. When the time arrived, as it inevitably would, when the value of this sub-committee’s work was assessed, at least it looked as though they would get good grades for record keeping.
Henry outlined his activities since they last met, which had been largely of a procedural nature. Dorinda McCann reported that she had found nothing of relevance in her literature search. As far as their own investigations were concerned, she would leave that to James to report as he was much closer to the laboratory than herself, these days, she said, adding ruefully that she had been reduced to not much more than a paper shuffler. James explained that he had carried out some crude tests using metal cut from one of the Winford LP turbine discs. These specimens had been subjected to a variety of tests, the results of which were consistent with the earlier suggestion that the turbine disc failure had been the result of stress corrosion cracking. The nods and murmurs of the folk around the table as they scanned the accompanying photographs reflected general assent. James concluded by commenting that their intention was to undertake more detailed testing.
Joe was asked about his research into previous histories of steam turbine failures. He said that though other failures had occurred, none were similar to West Winford. Dave began his report by saying that he was pleased to be able to offer to investigate the steam conditions at Winford to check for contamination. This could begin quite soon as he’d learned that Number 5 turbine was due to have a brief shutdown at the end of the month. The necessary test equipment would be installed during this outage. He surprised the others by adding his intention of including a test vessel in which he could expose specimens to actual West Winford steam. This was welcomed by Henry and the others. Joe thought that such tests would be useful and would complement his laboratory steam-rig tests, which he’d mentioned last time. It would be ideal if they could use similar specimens so that the results from the two tests would be comparable. Before leaving, Dave made arrangements to visit Joe Griffiths in Nuneaton to discuss the specimen design for their tests. A very satisfactory day was Dave’s conclusion as he travelled home.
*
Dave’s first job the following day was to bring his Section Head up to date with the sub-committee developments. Later, with added motivation, he visited Alan Smith to check what progress he had made with the design of the steam test rig. Yet more good news when he learned that everything was on track for the end of month deadline.
Gritty was waiting when Dave returned to his office to report that he had delivered the Winford turbine disc material to the workshop. The design and number of the test specimens seemed to be the next step. Dave had some ideas, but he needed to make the trip up to Nuneaton to discuss his thoughts with Joe Griffiths.