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After carefully unpacking and arranging my
clothes into a neat mess, I changed into a little black number and
headed back into the town centre to take a look at the Clann
archives. At each gathering a room is reserved to hold the vast
amount of journals, newspaper clippings, photographs and other
paper records that have been uncovered and extracted by cousins
around the world. German Jim serves as the guardian for some of
this material and he also maintains one of our more valuable
resources - the Clann databank. The last time I checked the
databank it contained the records of over eight thousand
individuals and these have proven to be of immense value to many
of our members hoping to locate a long lost ancestor. As a rule of
thumb you can expect to find Jim in close proximity to the
archives and as I entered the room I was not disappointed. There
he was in familiar pose; hunched over his laptop, a four-foot pile
of CD ROMs and diskettes to one side, a two-foot stack of paper
and manuals to the other side, and the usual vipers nest of cables
at his feet. We chatted a while and then I left him to answer data
bank enquiries. Outside I noticed the car in which Jim had
transported all of his material across Europe. It had a huge boot
and I made a mental note that should I consume a little too much
alcohol and be unable to make it back to Clone House, that it was
spacious enough to sleep three adults, two kids and a cat in
comfort.
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The first event of the Gathering took place
at 7.30 on Friday evening when we assembled in the function
room of the Courtyard for the official welcome. I imagine the
locals are used to seeing a procession of weirdos file through
their pub every two years in September, each with a large
friendly name tag but we did get the odd look here and there.
Jungle Jim and Bridget Kavanagh Dalton were our MCs for the
evening and Jim began by thanking our cousins one by one for
their attendance and then gave a short talk on the origin of
the Celts. After that Bridget oversaw the presentation of
awards to those individuals who had worked tirelessly on
behalf of the Clann. This year recipients included Michael
Kavanagh from England who had managed to uncover important
family records from Barbados and Judi King from Little Rock,
Arkansas who had helped track down documents on various people
in the US. There was also a presentation of a birthday cake to
Jim Gethings, a stalwart of the Clann and a regular sight at
our Gatherings.
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