Regular readers will know that I’ve been moving house. I’ve made the leap from a very pretty home in a small village beneath Belvoir Castle (the home of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland) to life in the centre of the City of Bath. Both are time capsules in different ways.
The village I have moved from is called Knipton – and my former home there could be dated back as a settlement to the days of the vikings. It’s the sort of village that Robin Dunbar would have researched when worked out his number – 150.
As readers from the UK will know, it’s our year for a census. I took the time to dig out what life looked like just over 120 years ago. No surprises, the village was divided in to two areas (North end and South end) – and they were made up of approximately 150 people each. Please take some time to click the links and skim through the names, families and birthplaces.
What is most striking from the census is that most of the people were born and lived their whole lives in the village – or have come in from a maximum of 5-10 miles away. There were a small number of family names making up the numbers – and many of them I can recognise in the area today. Families stayed together – and their jobs and crafts were passed down from generation to generation. This was nepotism at its finest. Was there something wrong with that?
We live in a world with very confusing signals. On one hand we want to get back to family values. On the other we want to fight a war on nepotism. Strange!
Last week, I wrote about the UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg making policy in “Canutish” style. He basically said that it was now “what you know” not “who you know” that will matter from now on. At the weekend, I watched a BBC current affairs comedy programme – “Have I got News for You”. It’s very entertaining show, full of satire – and the funniest guy on the panel by far is Paul Merton. On this topic, he didn’t create a funny. He just said:
“That’s what people do. They want to look after their kids. They want them to go to the best schools and they want them to have the best jobs. You can’t stop that.”
Many a true word is spoken in jest!