Having been away from the FWL offices for the best part of four days, it has taken a while to ‘settle back in’ today…. not for want of trying but the list is monumental and all the ‘we’ll do it when we get back from WDYTYA on Monday’ tasks are suddenly required now! Withdrawal symptoms from the event kicked in yesterday – it’s the one event in the genealogical calendar where you can guarantee to find most of your genie-friends. There are always a few faces missing, for whatever reason, but it’s great to take the opportunity to catch up, chew over cases with others and share a coffee or two (other beverages are also available). Twitter and Facebook have been awash with feedback and photographs from the event with new members joining Facebook groups, new followers on Twitter and much more besides.
In the United Kingdom, today is the deadline to register to vote in the general election and having missed most of the news during the WDYTYA event, we are once again barraged with political clap-trap on our television screens and news feeds online. For some unaccountable reason, I decided to take a look back in history at today’s date – 20 April – and what political connections this date has had in the past. I was surprised to find that it was on this date that Pierre Trudeau became prime minister of Canada and also that Enoch Powell made his infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech – both events taking place in 1968. In fact, due to my ‘irritation’ with regard to politics, it would seem that I am pretty dim when it comes to this particular field of knowledge. It would be true to say that British Prime Ministers would not be my specialist subject on Mastermind, for sure.
I guess that I am perhaps more ‘up to speed’ with other headline news over the years. I can certainly remember that today marks the anniversary of the Columbine shootings in 1999 – a very sad day in Denver, Colorado (and the whole of the USA) when two high school students killed thirteen people and wounded more than twenty others before turning their guns on themselves. All this made me think: What makes something ‘newsworthy’? Who decides? Why are some headlines more memorable than others? Interesting questions….
