Ireally hate a loose end in my family history, and so spend many illicit hours when I should be doing other things, tidying up my family tree on the computer, which of course sorts out very little other than more loose ends, necessitating more research, more digging, more exciting crumbs of clues and yet more tidying up of loose ends. That’s our lovely hobby for you – our Never Ending Story!
Loose ends aren’t like brick walls though. They’re big gloomy structures in an otherwise tidy tree, which in my imagination have nasty notices on them saying things like ‘Ye shalt not pass’ or, more likely, ‘Why art thou trying to pass for the hundredth time?’ I’ve actually barged through a couple in the past year, in one case through the generosity of a fellow researcher, the other from a piece of sheer luck. Sadly, I’ve three or four big brick walls left that I think may stand for ever, though of course, in this game we never really say never.
Loose ends are more like good housekeeping, where you find that lost item under the bed. Where, if you’d have looked properly in the first place instead of merely poking the crevice tool around in a desultory way, it always was.