I know, I know, I’ve been worryingly silent lately. I think this is my longest ever gap between blogs. You only have to read my previous post to know that I haven’t been sitting around doing nothing. Firstly the family have been visiting. This involves excavating the house from under its protective layer of dust, although I suspect the visitors think I could have done a better job. It also means that I’ve been cautiously out and about digging sandcastles, blowing bubbles, reading stories and other fun things.

The family history continues of course. This month, I have managed to have items in both leading UK family history magazines. My discussion on why our ancestors might have been embarrassing is in the latest issue of Family Tree Magazine and there is a short item about agricultural labourers as part of a feature about genealogy education in Who Do You Think You Are?.

One Pharos course (In Sickness and in Death: researching the ill-health and death of your ancestors) draws to a close and another, First Steps to a One-place Study, begins. I am also checking through Are you Sitting Comfortably: writing and telling your family history ready for October and working on a beginners’ course for Devon Family HIstory Society. There are talks to three countries on the horizon, I’ve done some more brick wall demolition and chatted all thing one-place for an upcoming Family History Federation podcast.

I am still working with my lovely memories group, which is really just chatting with friends. I have got to the end of 1973 in my hugely embarrassing diary read. Another ten years and it might start to get better!

If you’ve been following my ramblings for a while you will know that I am passionate about involving young people in their history and heritage. It is something that I have written about and give talks on. Finally, in no small part due to the wonderful folk at Hidden Branch, there is a real enthusiasm for moving forward in this area. Family history societies need to embrace this if they are to have a future. Down here in Devon we are looking for someone (or several someones) with Devon heritage, or a Devon address, in the 18-25 age range to help us to take our society forward in this respect. If that’s you, or if you know someone, please get in touch. It is no good a load of old people trying to decide what they think younger people want.

Following on from the great loft sort out, I’ve embarked on a bit of a book cull. This may sound like sacrilege but when you have a house as small as mine, it is hard to justify keeping books that you haven’t opened since the 1970s. This week on Twitter someone pointed out that 1980 (which as we all know must be about ten years ago surely) is the same distance from 1939 as it is from 2021 – noooooooo.

We are off on another mini jaunt soon, this time heading east to Norfolk. Time of course to revisit the Norfolk ancestry so I can plan the obligatory churchyard tour. There are images of parish registers online now, which weren’t available last time I worked on this branch and ooh look there are a few new ancestors to be discovered. Currently, I am wrestling with some Norwich woolcombers and Great Yarmouth shopkeepers and trying to negotiate my way past an ancestor who was not baptised and came from a non-will writing family who never appear in the newspapers. The use of more unusual forenames means that I am pretty sure who his parents are but evidence, there’s another thing.

The excitement is building prior to the start of my postgraduate certificate course but I have decided to chart my progress through that in a series of separate posts, so watch this space.