Recollections
This is an area for some lighter historical content
- a scrapbook of various recollections; drawn from other articles; elaborations on other content; and other ramblings.
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- Written by: Richard_McKie
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In Sicily we hired a Jeep to get from Palermo around the island.
I had my doubts about this steed. Our two big bags wouldn't fit in the boot. One had to be strapped in on the back seat - a bit disappointing.
At above 130, the speed limit, there's something odd about the steering – so much so that I stopped quite soon to check the tyre pressures. I was regretting my choice.
Reassured about the tyres we set off again.
On the plus side the fuel consumption seemed OK and the zoned climate control worked well.
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- Written by: Richard_McKie
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I recently had another look at a short story I'd written a couple of years ago about a man who claimed to be a Time Lord.
I noticed a typo. Before I knew it I had added a new section and a new character and given him an experience I actually had as a child.
It happened one sports afternoon - primary school cricket on Thornleigh oval.
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A Radio National discussion (May 29 2015) stated that statistically girls outperform boys academically and referenced research suggesting that this has something to do with working parents:
| Provocative new research suggests that the outcomes for girls and boys can be different when parents go back to work, in particular mothers.
The big question is WHY? |
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The movie The Imitation Game is an imaginative drama about the struggles of a gay man in an unsympathetic world.
It's very touching and left everyone in the cinema we saw it in reaching for the tissues; and me feeling very guilty about my schoolboy homophobia.
Benedict Cumberbatch, who we had previously seen as the modernised Sherlock Holmes, plays Alan Turing in much the same way that he played Sherlock Holmes. And as in that series The Imitation Game differs in many ways from the original story while borrowing many of the same names and places.
Far from detracting from the drama and pathos these 'tweaks' to the actual history are the very grist of the new story. The problem for me in this case is that the original story is not a fiction by Conan Doyle. This 'updated' version misrepresents a man of considerable historical standing while simultaneously failing to accurately represent his considerable achievements.
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Introduction
This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing. Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred. Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow.
The setting is Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England and my path winds through a time when the gardens there flowered with exotic blooms and their seeds and nectar changed the entire world. This was the blossoming of the late industrial and early scientific revolution and it flowered most brilliantly in Newcastle.
I've been to trace a couple of lines of ancestry back six generations to around the turn of the 19th century. Six generations ago, around the turn of the century, lived sixty-four individuals who each contributed a little less 1.6% of their genome to me, half of them on my mother's side and half on my father's. Yet I can't name half a dozen of them. But I do know one was called McKie. So, this is about his descendants; and the path they took; and some things a few of them contributed to Newcastle's fortunes; and who they met on the way.
In six generations, unless there is duplication due to copulating cousins, we all have 126 ancestors. Over half of mine remain obscure to me but I know the majority had one thing in common, they lived in or around Newcastle upon Tyne. Thus, they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund. So, it's also a tale of one city.
My mother's family is the subject of a separate article on this website.