I am writing this in a field, to elucidate, I am in a caravan in a field, in preparation for the South West Area Genealogical Fair in Swindon. So far we have ‘enjoyed’ the music festival in the neighbouring fields and my shoe has had to be retrieved from the caravan site owner’s dog. Life is never dull. Despite the blog silence, there has been plenty to fill the days since our return from foreign climes. Activities have included speaking at a Migration day conference organised by Somerset & Dorset Family History Society’s Bridport Group. Then I got talked into being an ‘inspirational’ woman; in the company of iron women, nurses and fashion designers. No, I don’t quite know how I ended up there either.  I spoke to High School girls about, well, me really I suppose. The girls circulated from one speaker to another in a speed dating like haze.

I’ve spent a week trying to negotiate my way out of a room along the faceless corridors of a motel. I have attempted, on more than one occasion, to open the room door using my debit card. Yes, it is that time of year again. The glorious weather began and I was incarcerated in a northern industrial city, embroiled in the job I must not mention. It turns out that this coincided with (insert name of a northern industrial city here) Day, allegedly meaning 60,000 people were descending on said city. Fortunately, I managed to avoid 59,000 of them. Another indicator that I am not fit to be let out alone came when I inadvertently did something peculiar to Chris’ phone, meaning that it neither rang nor vibrated when I tried to summon him to collect me from the centre of the town to take me to the motel after my meeting. Fortunately we did manage to make contact but it turned out that whatever I’d done was considerably more complicated than just turning the sound off. Cue frantic ‘live chat’ to help lines and a Chinese whispers-like scenario whereby I read the handy hints suggested on the chat line to Chris who, without the aid of reading glasses, attempted to carry out the instructions for resetting a something or other.

Then there was the rather strange meeting room that I had been allocated for the session I was running in a city centre hotel. Being a small meeting, it was decided that I could have a ‘seminar room’ aka a thinly disguised hotel bedroom. This was six floors up from the rest of the public rooms. Great I thought, we will have our own en suite and indeed we did. Unfortunately in order to turn the bedroom into a meeting room it had been necessary to hide the bed – in the bathroom. The mattress was incongruously wedged into the shower and the toilet was inaccessible. Undaunted, I heaved parts of a double bed across the room in order to avoid us having to descend six floors.

The Braund stand at South West Area Genealogical Fair

This is also the height of the Swords and Spindles season. Typical. The record temperatures soar and I am encased in thick woollen seventeenth century clothing, entrapped in a classroom with forty thirteen year olds. There is the prospect of something very exciting on the Swords and Spindles front for 2019 but it isn’t yet confirmed so, for now, all I can offer is a tantalising hint.

And there is Barefoot on the Cobbles news: my tour de force is currently at the printers for the creation of a proof copy. The publishers are now also taking pre-publication orders. If you aren’t likely to be in a position to get a copy direct from my hot little hand, then this may be an option for you. Do please read what I have written about the book first, I don’t want anyone to get any nasty surprises.