All About That Place
Imagine a pebble skipping across a body of water. Momentarily making contact with the surface before moving on to the next encounter.
Now imagine a Gypsy boy moving on from one achin tan (stopping place) to the next. Pausing only to sell his wares, or find casual work. But all within the narrow confines of a handful of counties.
And finally, consider a forced migration (Barnardo's) to Canada, and looking for work in the USA. And after 30 years returning to Britain.
It's all about that place...
Sidney Lee Gregory in 1888
12-year-old Gypsy
The story of Sidney Lee Gregory, the author's grandfather, who started life as a Romany Gypsy travelling the leafy lanes of rural Hampshire and Surrey from 1875. At the age of 12, he was picked up by the Barnardo's organisation and was sent to Canada as a Home Child. He worked on farms and in sawmills until he was old enough to work in the woods as a lumberjack, at one point being reported as having been killed by a tree. He took up with two Canadian First Nationer girls who were on the run from the hideous Residential School system which was trying to reinvent them as Europeans. In 1902, the work dried up, so Sidney joined the US Navy as a boilermaker and moved to San Francisco - just in time for the famous earthquake of 1906. He returned to Britain in 1917 in order to serve as a Royal Engineer in the Great War, but the war finished before his training did and so he never fought abroad. A mix-up with his discharge meant that he wasn't demobbed back to Canada, so he met and almost immediately married the author's grandmother. She already had two illegitimate children, and they had two more together. But she was to die young, and Sid found that he couldn't reintegrate into the Romany culture, nor could he find regular work, so the kids were taken into a home for destitute children. Sid eventually died in 1952 as a tramp.
Sidney Gregory was a little like Forrest Gump in that he couldn't help being near or influenced by famous people, or as a bystander to major world events - even though he had no power to influence any of them.