Hi, I am Paul Burnett
My inspiration for this site was born out of the stories my father would relate to me as a young boy through to adulthood. I would listen, fascinated with a young boy’s excitement and imagination as he told me stories of his exploits leading up to and beyond the war years of 1939 to 1945. Of course, he had plenty of stories to tell post those war years, some of which will be related here and some not. I can recall stories he told me that he hasn’t included in his writings … one of them included the throwing of a hand grenade which resulted in the rest of his troop diving for cover. I guess he either forgot that one or simply didn’t get around to writing it up.
Some years before he passed away, I asked him if he would write these stories down in order that they would be committed to paper for both myself, my sister, our children and their children, should they be interested in family history. Personally, I have always had an interest in where our family came from although to date, I have struggled to find the time to do a full search. The idea of searching through census and parish records attempting to track down my ancestors, is a frightening prospect when thinking about the amount of time I would have to commit.
My Dad enjoyed writing, so he agreed and set to work. Eventually, he called to see me and presented me with a hard-bound pad containing some 11,000 words. To say I was excited would be an under statement and then to my horror I realised something which should have occurred to me when I first asked him. My Dad had beautiful handwriting, unfortunately I simply struggled to decipher it, only being able to make out particular words and then mainly be guesswork, as I read a sentence trying to make sense of it.
What to do? The only way I could get around this would be to ask him to record his own writings which he was prepared to do using an old cassette player he had. Quite funny really because when I listened back, I could tell when the batteries of his recorder were running low.
So, he did record everything but again, one of the big problems with cassette tapes was that every so often, the tape would become tangled and break. So, I know I haven’t got everything. I have therefore completed the recording on his behalf.
As I write this introduction and listen to his voice, it’s a very emotional experience for me, but I am so happy that I have it. He died in 2002 and now its 2020. Only now at age 66 myself, am I doing something that I should have done many years ago and have felt a fair amount of guilt during those years for not doing something earlier.
Only recently when I began to think how his stories might be preserved for the future did it occur to me that a site such as this could be expanded to include, not only the histories of my family members but also those of our extended family. Perhaps in the future, families entirely unconnected with my own, might want to use this site to record their own histories? Then it further occurred to me that all this precious material from years passed that might get lost or destroyed over time, is only the beginning …
… Why should it just be ancestral history? Why shouldn’t we post material from family members who are creating history in whatever they did last month, week or yesterday? What about that memorable event? Holiday, Anniversary, Wedding, Christening anything at all, that should and could be preserved for the enjoyment of others. Pictures, writings, video’s, recordings, all of this can be saved here and accessed, globally, 24 hours a day. My intention is that anyone accessing the site can leave comments and get involved.
I hope you enjoy LifenTimes. Remember, yesterday is a history that someone within your family experienced and they or someone else may enjoy reading that account, many years from now.