This is the most boring bit - it is about me, John Talbot.
I made my entry into the world at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford at 6.20am on the 1st January 1930.
By all accounts I was the type of child that even a mother had difficulty in loving, being singularly unattractive, extremely irritable, and in possession of a strident and insistent voice. I am pleased to say that my voice has softened somewhat over the years.
I spent the first twenty-one years of my life (apart from five years at boarding school and almost two years National Service in the Far East) living with my parents, one sister, and a wartime evacuee at Cholsey in Berkshire. Cholsey moved to Oxfordshire in 1974 (or was it Oxfordshire moving to Cholsey?).
As a youngster, giving my home address always caused me a great deal of embarrassment, for it included the words 'Berkshire Mental Hospital'. I hasten to point out that my address was entirely due to parental employment and had absolutely nothing to do with my state of mind. A short time after my National Service call-up the Hospital was re-named Fair Mile Hospital, but by this time the inevitable question "Do you live in a Lunatic Asylum?" no longer caused me the agonies of blushing. Actually, a few years before I was born the place was called The Berkshire County Lunatic Asylum - giving that address would have got my blushing out of the way right at the start, without my having to wait for "the question".
I married Jean in 1952 and we set up home and raised a family at her birthplace, Hayes in Middlesex. We have moved house three times, but remained within Hayes, where we raised our two sons. We now have two teenage grandsons of whom we are inordinately proud. Not a very original statement, but true nevertheless.
My interest in Family History started in 1970 but it was not until the 1980s that it became really obsessive. In 1984 I joined the Berks FHS, the Oxon FHS, and The Talbot Research Organisation. I have made useful and interesting contacts through all three groups.
One of these contacts is Alan Simpson, whose article in the Oxfordshire Family Historian, Vol.14 No.3, December 2000 prompted me to try my hand at creating my own Website. I followed the instructions on his Website (http://www.shotover.clara.net/) but inevitably I hit a couple of small problems. An email to Alan brought a prompt reply, so this is a public Thank You to Alan, my mentor.
Berkshire F H S Website is at www.berksfhs.org.uk
Oxfordshire F H S Website is at www.ofhs.org.uk
The Talbot Research Organisation Website is at http://www.talbotro.co.uk