Well, this is me!

I was born in Islington, North London on 06 December 1950. Happily, I didn't take an interest in football until the family moved to my aunt's house in 1952.

She lived in West Kensington, where the local team is the Mighty Blues .. Chelsea .. ! My father took me down the North End Road to Stamford Bridge, and a life long love affair was born. As the old proverb says

" ...You can change your wife
But you can't change your mother
Or your football team ... "

My father was also called Ben (or Benny), so in Ireland, and in my Irish family, I'm always called by my second name, Laurence. The Irish have a way of distinguishing members of the family. I suppose Laurence is better than the alternative, "Young Benny", a name I would have carried to my grave, no matter how old I'd become!

Like my father, Benny, I had the education beaten into me by the Christian Brothers. For me, it was the de la Salle Order, at St Joseph's Academy in Blackheath, London. They were bad enough, especially the Irish Brothers (Brother Richard .. "Dick" .. the one from Armagh ..), but when I told my father, he always insisted that they were kind and compassionate compared to the discipline given out by the Irish Christian Brothers at the Brow o' Hill school in Derry.

I graduated from the University of Kingston-upon-Hull in 1972 with a degree in Economics and a future wife. I worked in banking in the City of London, before moving to Manchester to join the Co-operative Bank in 1980.

I married Andrea French in Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, in September 1974, and we had one son, Matthew Benjamin.

At t'Co-op, I sampled the delights of Stockport, Barnsley, Rotherham, Preston, Hull and Newcastle ( ... how the other half live, I hear you gasp ...!). Then, I lived high in the Pennines for twenty years, in a village between Denby Dale and Holmfirth, in West Yorkshire. (Watch "Last of the Summer Wine" - that's filmed around there). I'm now thinking actively of retiring to Donegal, Ireland.

My interest in genealogy started in June 2000, when I decided to research a family tree on my mother's side, that had been given to my sister. With the internet, genealogy is becoming easier than ever before, but I had a few lucky breaks, and have made contact with family members all over the world, but particularly in America and Australia. I'm still waiting for my brother to give me his wife's Brazilian family tree!

Some genealogy highs? Well, sitting in the National Archives in Dublin, holding the original 1901 Census returns, and thinking " .. my grandfather actually wrote this .." was one.

Okay, perhaps I ought to get out more.