Taking notes

I’m really hopeless at taking notes… part of the problem is my handwriting, it’s often illegible, and I use a sort of short hand to myself which seems perfectly clear and patently obvious as I scribble something down, but when I look at it later it is perfectly obscure and patently meaningless… if I actually find the notes. I have a habit of writing things down on any bit of paper, or in any notebook, and come across a message to myself later, maybe weeks, maybe months, maybe it’s a message from some indeterminate time in the past.

If I make notes for something I’m working on, so I’m not just dashing something down quickly, I seem to have a knack of missing the nub of the matter and writing a lot of extraneous information which has no bearing on whatever it is I’m working on… and the shorthand comes into play; I will use abbreviations or make mysterious references which looking back I have no memory of what is being referred to.

I have come across an old notebook; on the first page are some notes about people I must have been researching, ‘Barbara b 1844 Scot’. Who was Barbara? Was she a Scot, or was her surname Scott? On the same page there is a list, maybe of brothers, George 1873, William 1875, Daniel 1869 and John 1863. Who were they? Are they related to Barbara? Was she their mother? below them are five more people; none of the names have any connection to my own family, so who were they? Adam Purvis, R.R. Patterson, Arthur Bailey, David R Towes/Tawes/Turner (I can’t read my own writing) and Ralph Wood. I have absolutely no idea who any of these people are.

On the next page another mysterious jotting ‘1911 Christmas still sister in Ipswich’ – 1911 was a census year, and I know Christmas is a surname… but what did I mean? And so it goes on, mostly I think something to do with family research, but whose family? Then I come across a list of words

• murmuring
• muttering
• mumbling
• softly
• looming
• looked
• embrace

Was it a poem? Was it a spelling list? I have no idea… I’m just hopeless at making notes!