Which Reminds Me

Yes, my grandmother was a Strickland. Generally speaking, the Stricklands settled in Virginia in colonial times, but before that, in Tudor times, the family was based at a castle located somewhere in Middle England. The Strickland ancestors may have been attached somehow to the French Normans of William the Conqueror, you know, the "veni vidi vinci" crowd, and yet their castle is so far north of London that perhaps it would be hard for France to make any claims to that. The Stricklands of England were Roman Catholic, of the Bloody Mary variety of Catholic who would probably like to slit the throats of their Protestant American cousins, someone has said. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I only know that my grandmother was a registered member of the local Methodist church. So if the Catholic Stricklands would rather turn over the castle to the UKs National Trust than to solicit the help of their Protestant cousins, well, so be it. I never had any thought of that. Castles require a great deal of maintenance. We just don't have money for that and aren't the UK royalties rolling in dough? There is just no comparison.