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Oh well, back to yucky work tomoz. I can't complain can I? I am hardly down the pit! Usual Sunday jobs ironing shirts, making lunches, prep for tomorrow's teaching and finally catching up with my students. Where I live in UK, everyone...literally everyone worked in the cotton mills (East Lancashire), 60 hours a week. My great grandma had her little finger removed at age 12 years (Twisted from childhood paralysis) so it wouldn't catch the weft on the cotton. Can you imagine that? I am so grateful for them all, for the work they did so I can have the job I have. What did your ancestors do? Do you think it has changed your reality?

Amisja 8 Jan 6
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My Grandfather was gassed (to death) welding Liberty Ships during WW2, his wife did what she could to finish raising my dad.. A Great-grandfather, along with his brother and son, dynamited stumps to clear fields; I’ve still got their ‘hand crank’ dynamite auger… Dad was a barber and mom worked at the post office 🙂

But as I read your piece, I thought ..but she gets to live in the UK ~

Varn Level 8 Jan 6, 2019

Well come over

@Amisja ...shall I bring my dynamite auger 😉

@Varn Absolutely, sounds fun

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Professional Soldier + London Transport & London Transport + Conscript Soldier + London Transport. That's my granddads. Working class socialist attitude gave me a chip on my shoulder about further education for years. I still have trouble with seeing education and office work as proper jobs. Yet as a mature student, that is what I'm aiming for.
Back to college on Tuesday for me.

Hey thats brill, what are you doing? I get like that. I can't quite give up on 'nurse' and fully embrace academic. Fab ancestors though.

@Amisja Social Sciences HN1 - that used to be HNC, but last year they conjoined HNC & HND together. Hopefully, I'll get to do 2+2 and get into Robert Gordon University - like my daughter did! I could choose an easier route and specialise in either Psychology, Sociology or History, but I'm far too nosey about everything. With my age, it has been interesting (asked to shut up by lecturers) when I turn out to be both first hand and empirical evidence for a few subjects. Miners Strike, Mods & Rockers plus Scottish Devolution (1997).

@Sofabeast Thats fab. Thats another Scottish university I nearly applied to work at.

@Amisja Stunning campus, south side of the City next to the river Dee and Sainsburys.

@Sofabeast Sounds lovely

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I believe the one in the pit got paid more though didn't they? On the male side of my family mostly Machinists, maintenance during the day farming after work. My mom was a seamstress during the war, (the second world) not the continuing. I personally am more into the electrical mechanical end of it from a design/application standpoint.

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Both sets if grandparents were farmers. I knew none. Both my parents were the longest of big families. My dad was an iron worker and my my mom a seamstress. My sister, then I were the first grandkids to get college degrees. My richest cousins, financially, own junk yards or as they are called today: auto salvage yards. My three kids have degrees and nine seem interested in continuing this line of descent.

Myself, one cousin and my sister have higher degrees. Definitely the first in my recent family. My grandfather's family on my Mum's side were 'county' (as they say here) as in a bit posh. Sadly of 12 children of my grandfather's parents generation, 6 boys were killed in WW1, leaving 6 very pretty but fairly useless middle class girls (English middle class so posh) with no one to marry. They all ended up marrying 'beneath themselves' Except my great great Auntie Bessie who had poodles.My great grandmother and granfather were massive socialists, she at least of all of them got an education. They wrote for the early Labour Party and dabbled in communism. I met my great grandma and remember her fairly well. She told me to eat porridge every day and never look down on anyone. She definitely informed my politics.

@Amisja my dad was over your way in WWII. I always laugh to myself when cons believe my dad, a war vet of the "greatest generation " would agree with them as I sully amurika with my liberal bias. He always voted the most socialist, and when he died my oldest son said, "If Pop Pop had a god, it was FDR."

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I live in Shropshire, but I’m a Wolverhampton lad. All of my ancestors (over the last couple of generations) would have been working in factories, quite often doing difficult and heavy work. The stresses of my office job feel a bit insignificant in comparison.

But thats why they did it.

@Amisja indeed! My parents informed my politics in exactlythe same way as yours. We should never forget the struggles they had.

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My grandad lost a foot when he was 13-14, run over by a coal truck in the mines. And my father worked at Dounrey nuclear power and research plant as electrican foreman during the period some twat wired a pump the wrong way and radioactive contaminated water was pumped into the sea, for 6 months. Half a century later the Scottish coast still has radioactive hotspots.

Was your grandpa able to work?

@Amisja No idea, I grew up on south coast and he lived in Glasgow and I never could understand a single word he said. I know he was a miserable old bastard. Long dead now.

@Savage "Fit tae fuk!" as they say here abouts

@Savage awww poor lad.

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