We are family.

My dad is tracing our family tree, he's started with his dad's family and my mum's dad's family. So far we've found out that my grandad on his side comes from a family that moved around a lot and probably originally came from Ireland. My Mum's dad's side have almost certainly always lived in Sheffield. It got me thinking about what it must have been like to have seen it develop into the great Industrial City that it was and then it's rapid decline into having almost no industry of it's own.

The male side were nearly all steel workers as my own grandfathers were and I struggle to imagine what working next to several furnaces with dirt and dust clinging to the air must be like, and the noise must have been horrendous. And yet they produced good quality steel and were the best in the whole world at doing it.

It may seem strange but I am fiercely proud of the city of my birth and what my ancestors were part of - they did so much and got so little in return.