www.nickhodge.com

In the recent research of my paternal fam­ily his­tory, I found ref­er­ence to David Melville Hodge sign­ing the papers for an Angus Hodge. These papers were per­mis­sion given by David for Angus to join the Aus­tralian Infantry in 1916 for ser­vice abroad. He was only 18 years and 2 months old.

Private Angus Hodge was my Great-Grand Uncle.

Based on my recent research into a Private Albert Lock, I knew I could find Private Angus Hodge’s ser­vice records at the National Archives. A few per­sonal notes where an injured right leg from a hors­ing acci­dent in 1912, and many teeth miss­ing. He was also noted as “stocky” at only 5 and a half feet tall. His denom­in­a­tion was lis­ted as Meth­od­ist.

Private Angus Hodge became a part of the 6^th rein­force­ments for the South Aus­tralian 43^rd Bat­talion, AIF. The 43^rd Bat­talion made up the 11^th Infantry Bri­gade, 3^rd Divi­sion of the AIF. Landed in the UK dur­ing the early part of 1917. (note: This Order of Battle is extremely use­ful and the War Diar­ies of the 43^rd Bat­talion are insight­ful)

At this stage, Private Hodge star­ted to have a bout of Measles and Mumps and finally arrived in France 30^th July 1917. He joined the front line on 24^th August 1917. Just in time for the 3^rd Battle of Ypres. (also known to Aus­trali­ans as Passchendaele)

From this time, there were many times in hosip­ital lis­ted as “NYD” and “PUO” : not yet determ­ined and pyr­exia unknown ori­gin (ie: fever)

Then there is a note from 18^th August 1918 “admit­ted old wounded leg, slight” back in the UK ; frac­ture from tibia, based on the fall from a horse some 6 years earlier. Repat­ri­ated back to the UK, Private Hodge spent time get­ting bet­ter at the end of the first world war.

On the 23^rd Novem­ber 1918, exactly 90 years ago today, the Med­ical Board in the UK awar­ded Private Angus Hodge a 20% per­man­ent dis­ab­il­ity due to ser­vice; fit for home ser­vice.  He would have limped for the rest of his life.

Dis­charged from the AIF on 19^th March 1919 in Adelaide. Merely a year after return­ing to Aus­tralia, Angus was dead.

Nearly 3 years away from home, Private Hodge served his coun­try. The records fail to detail the men­tal and other injur­ies suffered whilst in France.

Angus Hodge died ages 22 and is bur­ied 23^rd March 1920. The grave­stone states “Son of DM and FJ.” Last res­id­ence is recor­ded as Gul­nare South Aus­tralia. Where David Melville Hodge was farm­ing at the time.

Lest We Forget.

As pre­vi­ously blogged, my ancest­ors hailed from the east­ern shores of Fife, Scot­land. Exactly where golf was invented.

NB: this page will be updated as more info is found. Dots will join back to here

Inspired by recent fam­ily events, I decided to revisit my June 2006 research and go fur­ther back. The pre­vi­ous searches had stopped at David Melville’s grand­father: John Hodge

Thanks to Scot­lands People, the offi­cial gov­ern­ment source of births, deaths, mar­riages, census data and other bits and pieces: search­ing is easy and rel­at­ively cheap. Cer­tainly saves trav­el­ling to Scot­land and spend­ing days in a lib­rary or archive.

My ancest­ors were not cath­olic but rather “free kirk” Pres­by­ters, they freely recor­ded their details in the Old Par­ish Records kept since 1553 in Scot­land. I am 100% of my ancest­ors to 1734; The move­ments prior to Crail in 1662 is a little more tenu­ous, although this was a time of much upheavel in Scotland.

Using Maps.live.com, I have cre­ated a visual map col­lec­tion that details the move­ments of these people in Scotland.

So, this is where we are in reverse chro­no­lo­gical order; the left hand column has the male line and birth year, with the fol­low­ing row their respect­ive father. The num­ber is the gen­er­a­tion from Liam back (ie: Liam is zero, and I am num­ber 1)

Res­ults of 20^th Novem­ber 2008 destruc­tion of the old kit­chen below (Pho­to­synth, this time 100% synthy!)

Avril enjoyed the de-tiling pro­cess. Some­times, des­troy­ing inan­im­ate objects is cathartic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grief

“It’s Not a Sad Time” was one of my Nana’s last wise phrases whispered to my Mum. Said more for those around her than her­self, it is a canny reflec­tion that behind the syn­thetic opi­ods her mind was active.

It is a phrase that I am pon­der­ing; as the funeral was a cel­eb­ra­tion of her achieve­ments. I only real­ised how she treated every­one as spe­cial. From Dr Agar­wal her final Doc­tor; Dean Mar­tin one of her Abori­ginal stu­dents from the mid 1970’s; to the staff at the Lutheran Homes in Glynde.

It takes a char­ac­ter lar­ger than life to con­stantly impact the lives of so many other for 95 years.

I hold a deep and last­ing respect for those in my fam­ily that dealt unselfishly with this stress­ful part of life. Pal­li­at­ive care, and the very tough decisions that are made go to the heart of why we are alive: to keep living.

In the end, remem­ber: that who we love, and who loves us is all that matters.

Edna Dutschke (nee Elix) passed away peace­fully in her sleep, and under med­ical care dur­ing the early hours of 14^th Novem­ber 2008. She was 95, and had seen much in her life. Includ­ing giv­ing life to two sons and a daugh­ter. Her daugh­ter is my Mum. Edna was by Nana.

Her grand­par­ents immig­rated from what is now Ger­many and reli­gious intol­er­ance to South Australia’s Barossa Valley.

A jolly per­son with a cheeky sense of humour. A hard worked who never suffered fools gladly. Along with her late hus­band, Arnold (passed on Decem­ber 1984) she taught at many Lutheran Primary Schools in South Australia.

She had a sweet tooth (a trait passed on to her grand­son, but don’t tell my Mum), a love of garden­ing, Inspector Rex, the Port Power, her fam­ily and keep­ing emp­ties under her bed (last one is a fam­ily joke)

In her final years she was quietly frus­trated by her body fail­ing her act­ive mind. Walk­ers and wheel­chairs aided her mobil­ity and did little to slow her down. A keen eye was watch­ing every­one when the hear­ing aid’s bat­tery failed.

My memor­ies of her are all pleas­ant. As her first grand­son, I am sure I had a spe­cial place in her heart. She put up with me and passed on some les­sons in life. I lived with Nana from 1985 through to 1988 at a time I com­pleted my Matric­u­la­tion (HSC) through to find­ing Avril. Nana was the first in my fam­ily to meet Avril and provide approval.

Her phys­ical pres­ence will be missed. Memor­ies, stor­ies and thoughts remain.

Many memor­ies.

After nearly 10 years at this address, the bath­room and kit­chen need a massive makeover.

Above is a Pho­to­synth of the bath­room after this morning’s destruction.

Next step is the ren­der­ing prior to plumb­ing then tiling.

Some­time in 1986/7 I went to a doc­tor for what I found out was a sebaceous cyst on my left shoulder blade. Not going into detail, but I was left with a per­man­ent reminder of this cyst. That is, the bulk of the scar­ring remained.

Yes­ter­day, after an inflam­ma­tion and a 6 week battle of with anti-biotics, I could finally get the beastie removed. Under the care­ful assist­ance of Avril, I had the cyst pro­fes­sion­ally removed. The size of a grape, the sur­gical excision took 45 minutes under local. Now I have a 4cm scar with 5 stitches. Strangely, apart from the pain of a deep skin wound; my body seems to be relieved that the nas­ti­ness has gone.

The left hand side of my body is a war zone. Scars, infec­tions, palsies. LOL

Microsoft has a fin­an­cial year that matches Australia’s fin­an­cial year: July to June.

Each fin­an­cial year the cards are thrown up into the air, and depend­ing on which tar­ots are on top: the organ­isa­tional entrails are read and the future is fore­told. Or, at least that is what it seems like from deep in the trenches of “individual con­trib­ut­or” from “subsidiary” land (I am quot­ing the management-speak, just incase you think I’ve totally lost the plot)

What does that mean for me?

Thanks to an excel­lent man­ager, Anna Liu, and a very flex­ible organ­isa­tion: I get to change my job a little.

Half what I’ve been doing: web/blogging/on10.net/videos and sun­dry jour­ney­man things for DPE in Australia.

And Half Web Devel­op­ment Evan­gel­ism.

Which is really cool. C#, Iron­Py­thon, Iron­Ruby, Sil­ver­light, Vir­tual Earth, Live Mesh et al: here I come!

Why the change?

Time to become more cre­at­ive, build things. Help oth­ers build their things.

Also a change is as good as a hol­i­day. My syn­apses were start­ing to atrophy.

In 1993 I star­ted on the road to a Mas­ters in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion. More com­monly known as an MBA.

Com­pleted in 2002, the MBA has given me a deeper under­stand­ing to the­or­ies driv­ing busi­ness. MBAs are designed to provide a broad under­stand­ing of how organ­isa­tions work. I found the most enlight­en­ing top­ics related to Legal stud­ies and Account­ing. I can now read a P&L, Cash­flow and Bal­ance Sheet with confidence.

Within a year of tak­ing a man­age­ment role after com­plet­ing my MBA (est cost $16,000) I had recouped my fees.

What an MBA does not provide is how to man­age people.

If destined for a man­age­ment role, people man­age­ment where you spend most of your time. Not read­ing con­tracts, deal­ing with paper­work and account­ing. Each of these are spe­cial­iz­a­tions that have strict reg­u­lat­ory con­trols and there­fore organ­isa­tions employ experts to ful­fill the roles.

People Man­age­ment can­not be left up to HR. All man­agers are people man­agers first and foremost.

I con­tend that People Man­age­ment: keep­ing your team motiv­ated, work­ing together and pro­duct­ive is the hard­est job.

Learn this, and you have done your MBA.

1968 is the year where the sum­mer of love turned into the year of protest, riots and an escal­a­tion in world tension.

World events of 40 years ago seem obscure today. The fear of rising com­mun­ism, increas­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, and gen­eral chaos as a new younger gen­er­a­tion struggled against older stric­tures and structures.

Some events seem sim­ilar, with names changed: US Pres­id­ents squeezed between domestic ten­sion and inter­na­tional ego and guer­rilla war­fare stag­nat­ing into need­lessly killing. The Tet Offens­ive, the pivotal point of the Viet­nam war, was fought in 1968.

France dur­ing May of 1968 wit­nessed protests and riots as an author­it­arian de Gaulle com­bated both the left wing move­ment, and a younger gen­er­a­tion demand­ing rad­ical change.

In the midst of this tur­bu­lent month, in this pivotal year, I was born.

Thanks Mum and Dad. I wouldn’t be dead for quids.