Well, indeed, time has moved on in the respect that the tradition of elders of the kirk wearing morning dress (tails) has indeed died out. However, some funeral directors continue to wear this formal dress as noted at the funeral in the Auld Kirk, Ayr to which over 900 attended for the service for Jack Alexander of the Alexander Brothers this month. (Some listers had suggested that they were indeed funeral directors.) (The Alexander Brothers duo was famous for their traditional Scottish music. At one point they sold more records in Scotland than the Beatles, to emphasise their popularity.) This note from the Auld Kirk in answer to my query about elders wearing morning dress: “It was indeed the Funeral Directors that were wearing the morning suits and top hats at Jack's funeral - but what a lovely mark of respect that would be if that tradition had carried on through the years.” The newspaper photograph showing gentlemen dressed in morning suits and attending personally to the mourners had led me to wonder that they might have been kirk elders. I have never observed funeral home staff be so personally attentive at any funerals I have attended where I live in California. Further on how time might not stand still, it was impressive to see the Remembrance Day Cenotaph services at the Cenotaph, Whitehall, London, at which over 10,000 ex-military marched past, with a contingent wearing the iconic John Bull bowler hat and carrying rolled up umbrellas. It was also a reminder that a cousin of my father a few times removed had been chosen as a representative of the British Merchant Navy to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. During the war he had had a few ships blown out from under him in the North Sea. What has this to do with genealogy on this list? Well, as I keep on harping, it is more than just barebones BDMs and census returns. It has to do with the woof and weft that creates the texture of a country where our forebears lived. A friend has just finished her “book,” but mine is a non-starter as my lot were all ordinary people, the only one seemingly of note was this Captain in the Merchant Navy who was chosen to represent this service at the Remembrance Day ceremonies. Should I start on my “book,” do I include for colour a relative nicknamed Biddy the Barracuda as she was a most unhappy soul and chewed on the characters of relatives then spat them out? What about the layabouts who didn’t know the meaning of work, or those that had wee souls born on the other side of the blanket, "’father unknown,’ and so on? Should we air all this ‘dirty laundry’ of people of your own generation, or leave the negative stuff out? The intentions of most of us are not to create the book of the month, but to record what we have learned about family history. Maisie