Dear LPG, 

In my retirement, I have found a few new hobbies, one of which is researching my family history, and now that I have started, I got thinking about one aspect of doing this that could be improved a little, I think.

Having reached an age where my job and children are no longer my most significant worry and concern, has made me think about what is. When we become pensioners, we are usually at a stage in life when we begin to need our children more than they need us, and when they get in contact with us, we spend a lot of time learning about their problems and the problems that they are having with their little ones. 

That is how life often is when working. Still, I think that, while it all remains quite complicated for many of us as retirement changes, our main preoccupations to switch from focusing on those that no longer need all our care often become more about our own issues. Our health gradually becomes a matter of concern as ailments such as blood pressure and arthritis kick in, but so many of us end up with more time than we know what to do with. 

One thing is sure, and that is that a few years of having more time to yourself is more than likely to get you thinking and reflecting on your past, and although it seems to have gone by quite quickly, even if you don’t believe that your life has been that eventful, a lot of stuff has happened. 

I hope you will agree that all those little things that have happened in your past contribute to what makes you who you are. When you combine them with the experiences of your siblings, cousins and other such family members, they all add together to bring your generation’s section of your family history into being. 

So, I have started asking myself lately what information will be available for my great-grandchildren to find when it comes to their turn to start looking into their origins.  

No doubt, details can and will continue to be taken from the national census records, and many of us take the time to research family history with the websites that specialise in making such information available. Still, what can be found in that way can only offer a part of the story. When you were born, got married, and died will be there, and records showing where you worked, any significant inventions and political or community work you have done will also be documented. Photographs have made mammoth improvements during our lifetimes, and all those mobile phone videos taken at family gatherings will keep our memories alive in more realistic ways than ever before. Family members, who have not even been born yet, will one day start looking for the links we contribute to that family chain.  

But the real stories of how you felt about things and your version of some of those inevitable family incidents will not be there unless we pass them on. 

We all know how busy the younger, pre-retirement generations of the clan can be, so much so that they have little time to realise how important such information might be, even to them, in years to come.  

I feel that perhaps making a record of some of those stories by either committing them to paper, a Dictaphone tape-recorder, or even the odd mobile phone video recording could be a way of leaving so much more behind for those family members that we will never get the opportunity to overlap with. Making such a record will provide the detail that is so often missing from today’s searches, while it will also be available for you to relive. And if any of those future generations want to join the family dots in years to come, they will have a little more to go on than the skeletal information that national records can provide.  

DW, Sydenham.