As with all great butterflies, it doesn’t take much to send me off onto another flower. Wasn’t feeling too peaky last week, so the slightest suggestion from my Dad/Auntie that I should do some family tree digging had me off and running on a little bit of genealogy. And, I have to say, it was rather good fun.

I started by trotting off down the line of the Liddell men and discovered that my general lack of DIY prowess would have been generally frowned upon by a long line of largely blacksmiths. This lead to my favourite revelation of all. It had long been a source of some vagueness around where my middle name ‘McFarlane’ came from. I knew that it was shared by my Dad and my great-grandad Jock. He lost a leg in WWI while serving as a Bombardier with the Royal Field Artillery. Looking at his medal record, he left the war on or before 7/7/1915. He died not long before I was born, so I didn’t get a chance to bounce on his knee (singular). Anyway, beyond that I didn’t know where McFarlane came from.

So I was delighted to discover that my Great-Great Grandad, Robert Liddell married my Great-Great-Grandmother, Euphemia McFarlane in 1886. So I am, at least in part, named after a woman called Euphemia. Which is nice.

Much still do, I’ve made it as far back as my Great-Great-Great-Great Grandad, James Liddell, although I’m not exactly sure when he was born yet, some time around 1790 seems likely.

Oh, I did most of this on the Scotland’s People website. Don’t think for a minute that I actually left the groove on the sofa.