Kernow

I've had a wonderful little holiday in Cornwall with my maternal grandparents. I didn't actually do much while I was there-just relaxed-sort of! I went to choir with my Nana and discovered that a choir who's members are of the slightly older generation like to sing: "I want gin and tonic now" down the scale as a warm up!

I was also reminded, yet again, how short I am-but in a good way! My ancestors were all Cornish miners and would have been quite short from working down the mines all their lives. We went to Wheal Martyn, a clay museum where you can walk around the old site, see the quarry and observe all the waterwheels (and what a lot there were!) but there was also a lovely little tunnel with "MIND YOUR HEAD" signs all round it...so me and Nana walked through it, stretched as tall as we could (albeit tentatively!), and we did not hit the roof once!

Talking of ancestors: My grandad took me on a very interesting trip to St Clements. But first, a bit of background. I have my mother's surname - Tregaskis, not my father's. My grandad has done a fair amount of name-tracing/family-tree-gathering to the extent that I reckon knows most of the Tregaskis' in England and most if not all of them going back at least 600 years! So one day when we'd dropped Nana off at her embroidery workshop, Grandad took me to a church in St Clements. In the entrance arch of said church, there where 3 headstones that had fallen over or cracked so were now pinned to the wall to help preserve them. One of them had the year 1795 and the name Betsy Tregaskis. She was 19 years old, same age as I am now. And when we went into the church, on the list of vicars we found one John Tregascour-1489! My Grandad thinks Tregaskis is a misspelling of Tregascour as one generation is listed as Tregascour and his son is listed as Tregaskis. If you say Tregascour's it does sound remarkably like Tregaskis!

We also popped into the Eden Project as they have lots of butterflies in the tropical biome - lots of BIG butterflies, that gently glide along because when you're that big, who needs to flap!? And while we were there we wandered into the Mediterranean biome where there is always a story teller . Now when I was at choir with Nana, one of the alto's in the front row had an amazing pair of patchwork trousers, so after the rehearsal, we wandered into Truro to see if we could find the shop she'd bought them from. Alas, it had shut down. But there was new hope with the story teller. He did not have patchwork trousers but a wonderful knee length patchwork waistcoat. Trousers are (according to my Nana) fiendishly difficult to make-what with all the measurements and what-not, but a waistcoat it simple. So I am in the process of making myself a patchwork waistcoat. So far I've sewn the main patches on and I'm filling it out a little. It already looks incredible!

In other news, I got myself a nice Cornish flag to take back to South Africa with me!