This sort of changed when one night after a slight mix up with a taxi I was the only person around to look after my 3-year old second-cousin Millie. Now Millie, I have stated many times, if my favourite person in the World. At least until she grows up and loses the massive naievity of childhood. However the ten minutes where there was nobody else to look after her were almost panic attack inducingly worrying. Perhaps it's because Millie herself is so completely hyperactive and barely controllable when there's her parents and grandparents in the room. It might also have been because I was a tad drunk. So these things combined to send me into a nuerotic flap and worry she'd fall over a table and snap her neck, or impale herself on a particually sharp plant. Now I'm entirely convinced I would be a terrible parent, possibly one of those that wraps their own kids in cotton wool and never lets them leave the house.
The second thing I managed to think about was a part of my own family history, as well as a method of giving me something to do and not going stir crazy all the time. This stems from my grandfather Alec Lester, who died in 1978 (I believe), some 7 years before I was born. Most of his history I've picked up in pieces, but what I did know was that:-
- He worked for the RAF in Berlin
- His work involved intercepting Soviet radio signals
- He coached/played for an RAF rugby team
Now this isn't a lot, so out of curiosity, and the fact that with his family base being in Liverpool there were many of his brothers and sisters around, I asked around. I found out that in terms of what his job actually entailed, nobody really know more than I did. Apparently whatever unit he was with was top secret, real quiet sort of stuff. The only time he ever spoke of it was to tell me uncle John that a Soviet spacecraft had crashed killing all the Cosmonauts on board. Nobody seemed to know what unit he was with, or anything.
Well this has piqued my curiosity and now I'm looking around websites of RAF veterans, learning about cold war signal units and cross-referencing the dates of any Soviet spaceflight disasters. It's something I'm beggining to realise is a lot harder than I initially though. Without the unit name most searches are useless, large sections of classified material will still be sealed up for at least ten years and to successfully obtain documents under the Freedom Of Information Act, you do need to actually know what you're looking for, rather than have a vague idea. I perhaps haven't thought this through, but I'm sure it'll be a lot easier once I get a unit name, or his serial number. Hell, I may even post up information on my own personal crusade at some point.
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