What a depressing array of news stories on the BBC site this morning.

Jolie causes stir on Mumbai train
An actress caught a train. Whoop-de-doo.

Bodyguards made sure no one got too close – quite a feat on Mumbai’s crowded transport system.

They would have had the same problem on the train I caught this morning. Not the train I was planning to get, mind, as that – a half-hourly service – was remarkably 34 minutes late.

Leeming bitten in TV tucker trial
OK, a seriously ill celebrity is worth reporting. Oh no, hang on…

Ex-newsreader Jan Leeming has cried after being bitten by ants on the first ‘bushtucker trial’ of reality show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

Someone cried. Stop the presses. Hold the front page.

Now another food scare story is of course worthwhile so that we can make informed choice.

Eating large amounts of red meat may double young women’s breast cancer risk, a study suggests.

In other news, eating large amounts of food may make you fat.

Oh, this is absurd too, although I suppose if you can have honorary degrees, you can have honorary rank without it being a slight to those officers who actually have to work for it. When I shout at the radio, it’s almost always the Today programme; today it was for the thoroughly pointless playing of the National Anthem to mark Charles’s birthday which interrupted it as I made my sandwiches.

Train problems + cold weather + rain = me grumpy.

Update: What a way to pass 150,000 words and 800 posts on this blog…

So outgoing Countdown presenter Des Lynam (an anagram of “Manly”, I notice) is to be replaced by Des O’Connor.

I can get the appropriate CROONED for 7.

As it’s 11/11 today, it seems fitting to recount an event that happened during the Second World War, 63 years ago yesterday. That was the day on which my great-uncle Frank Howells died.

He was born in north London on the 4th of March 1915, one of twins, the ninth child of Thomas and Emily Howells. Like his late father and his two brothers, Frank was an insurance agent. He was 24 when war broke out and became a lieutenant in the Reconnaissance Corps.

I grew up knowing the my Great-uncle Frank had died in the war, but didn’t know the details. As part of my family history research, I checked the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and was surprised to see that he was buried in Yorkshire. I obtained his death certificate which confirmed that he wasn’t killed overseas or in action. He died in the Military Hospital at Scotton and is buried in Catterick.

Inquest reports rarely survive, so the genealogist has to turn to the local press. A few years ago, I visited the public library in Darlington to search in the newspapers held there. The Northern Echo of 12th November 1943 covered the inquest.

TRAGEDY OF LIVE ROUND IN BREN GUN
— Catterick Inquest

At an inquest at Catterick Hospital yesterday on Lieut. Frank Howells, aged 28, who died the previous day, Dr. F.R. Eddison, the Coroner, returned a verdict of “Death by mis-adventure, he having died from a gunshot wound which caused haemorrhage and shock.”

Lieut. A. Harbottle told the Coroner that he heard a report and an exclamation from Mr. Howells. The witness saw that Howells was leaning on a table and was conscious. He did not speak. A corporal had also been wounded. A lance-corporal told him that a Bren gun had been accidentally fired during instruction. The witness thought that an inexperienced soldier could inadvertently load a live round with drill cartridge when they were of a mixed type. The rounds in use at instruction were examined at the beginning.

Capt. W. O’Brien said that Howells suffered from severe loss of blood.

L. Cp. K. Fraser, an instructor, said he himself examined the gun. He was sure that there was not a live cartridge among them. A trooper failed to do the instruction correctly and he told him to do it a second time. When he pressed the trigger he heard an explosion. Trooper G. R. Trueman said he was under instruction and could easily have recognised a live cartridge.

So it turned out to be an absurd and tragic accident that took his life. He was older than many of those who died in the two world wars, but still only a year older than I am now.

American comedian Amy Lamé dropped me a nice email a few weeks ago mentioning that her show, Amy Lamé’s Mama Cass Family Singers (which I’ll refer to, for ease of typing if not ease of reading, as ALMCFS from now on), has a London run this month.

One of the highlights of my Edinburgh festival visits*, ALMCFS is a one woman show in which Amy recounts, with the assistance of family photos, video interviews and 1960s music, her life as a child star press-ganged into a Mamas and the Papas tribute band.

It’s funny, touching, and slightly mad. And there are sandwiches. It’s running at the Soho Theatre from the 15th to the 25th of this month at 9.30pm, and tickets, which you can book here, are £15.

*The other was the marvellous Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf