It is Women’s History month. I really should be getting on with granny’s biography but that seems to have slipped to the bottom of the very long to do list. I was chuffed to see that The National Archives were recommending my book Remember Then for Women’s History week. There are still copies hiding under the spare bed of a fisherman of my acquaintance, if you’d like you cross my palm with silver. I have no idea why it is on sale on Amazon for £19.90. You can get it from me for the proper price of £12.95, just get in touch. In anticipation of a visit to the area where they originated, I have taken a look at granny’s deeper ancestry. I even managed to find a couple of new 5^th and 6^th x great grandparents but the mystery of which of two Johns is my 4x great grandfather remains. Fortunately, the Johns are first cousins, so, after what I call a wiring diagram, indicating the either/or, the line can be continued back to the sixteenth century.

Having decided, reluctantly, not to go to Ireland this month, in theory my diary should have been clear. Explain to me then how I have had something on, on thirteen evenings out of the last fifteen. It would have been fourteen but one was cancelled. On the strength of a nominally ‘free’ month. I decided it was time to decorate the hall and landing. The above-mentioned fisherman offered to do the death-defying balancing ladders on the stairs stuff. I was a bit reluctant to agree to this but was persuaded. Fortunately, that part was accomplished without incident. I couldn’t watch. The idea was that I would do most of the rest but in the end my role was limited to affixing miles of masking tape round door frames. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds as the reel of tape had been lying around for a while and peeled off the roll in three inch lengths. After a couple of hours I had completed the task. Halls and landing have so many doors. I sat down to some computer work, smugly content that the job was done. Leaving the room shortly afterwards, I was dismayed to see streamers of masking tape dangling from every point. A new reel of tape was purchased and I did it all again. I should say that my hall and landing could not be smaller. The hall is three foot square and the landing is a narrow corridor. There is nothing in the space. How then, has this decorating endeavour meant that there is evidence of its undertaking in every other room?

I still have a mile long playlist of Rootstech sessions to watch. In the meantime, on the horizon, there are three other key events to highlight. In chronological order:- Do check out the Historians for Ukraine event on 26 and 27 March.  I had hoped to be involved in this but I will be in a field and I don’t know how reliable my internet will be, so I will be cheering from the sidelines and hope to take part in a spin off event. An event that I am actively involved in is a Free 24 Hour Genealogy Marathon, run by Legacy on 7 and 8 April. You can register for that here.

Then on 7 May is the Youth Genealogy Conference. I get a sneak peak at the speakers’ submissions and I’ve been excited by the response. This is going to be a great day, with some thought provoking and interesting talks from some knowledgeable younger presenters. Don’t worry, I will make sure everyone knows how to attend. There is no age limit on the audience!

The website creation for the Braund family continues. I was advised that there were accessibility issues. For example, not all of the many images had alternative text, which is necessary to enable those with a screen reader to know what is in them. A bit of poking about in the bowels of Wix and I discovered a button to press to identify accessibility problems on the site. Button duly pressed, the whole site ground to a halt. After this had happened several times, I started going through the images individually and checking that they had alternate text. I tried the button again and 99 issues remained. It seems that we had had so many issues that we’d broken the system. All sorted now on the accessibility front, so it is back to the exciting job of continuing to add content.

To accentuate the positive, in my hemisphere there are wonderful signs of spring in the air. I am writing this at 5.30 am, watching the sky lighten and it is warm enough to open the window and listen to the symphony that is the birds’ wake up call.