The holiday season is over, although I have to confess that I still have Christmas cards and a Christmas tree to take down. Bearing in mind that half the cards didn’t arrive until January, it seemed a shame not to display them for a while. I am probably risking the wrath of the bad luck fairy that dictates that decorations have to be away by the 6^th (or is it on the 6^th – who knows?) but I’ll survive.

I was away from home at New Year, so didn’t do the typical old year reflection/new year plans post. Better late than never – highlights of last year (in no particular order): spending time with friends and family; visiting some beautiful English coast and countryside; working on the revamped Braund Society website; being part of the Few Good Women group and launching the Few Forgotten Women project (another website created); passing (just) my grade 1 piano exam; passing (with rather more success) my postgraduate certificate in Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture; starting to learn Cornish; creating a living willow chair (even though ‘living’ is up for debate), some fused glass and learning to plait straw; making two separate, exciting family history discoveries in asylum records.

Plans for 2023: more of the same and finishing some projects started in 2022 including a book to complete, a dedicated family history website to launch, a course to write, Ivy’s biography to finish and a new one to create; Ireland to visit (postponed from 2020); more Cornish to learn, speaking in sentences would be good!

Even though I have only had a few days back in the old routine, there has been so much going on. My article The Family History Revolution, looking back over five decades of the world of family history, with thoughts on what may come, has appeared in Family Tree Magazine. The book I am writing is finally nearing completion, with half a chapter an introduction and a conclusion to go. It is a non-fiction family history book. I can’t announce the subject yet but you won’t be surprised to learn that it isn’t all sweetness and light. There is some overlap with my work on the Few Forgotten Women Project. What fun that is proving to be and it is such a lovely group of ladies to be working with.

Just before Christmas, some of our Forgotten Women team chatted to Helen Tovey of Family Tree Magazine and the podcast has just been released. Our next venture is a joint research project on Friday 20 January, dedicated as what we hope will be the first of a series of Forgotten Women Fridays. We are going to look at a particular set of records that feature forgotten women and collectively research those ladies on that day. We are inviting family historians to help us, so if any of my genealogy readers want to give us a hand, we’d love to allocate you one of the women from our chosen list. You have a day to find out as much as you can, using what is available online. Keep an eye on the Few Forgotten Women website on Friday for full details.

Another collaborative project: our local history group is preparing for a cemetery workshop at the end of the month. We are trying to compile mini biographies of those who are commemorated in our churchyard.

As part of my preparation for my, as yet to be revealed, website showcasing my own family history, I was looking at the surnames of my direct ancestors and created this using Wordclouds. There is a choice of outlines and colours. It includes the forty nine surnames I’ve discovered in my direct ancestry, back to my 4x great grandparents. I could have included the other sixty eight names from earlier generations but I rather lost the will. In theory, the names that feature in my more recent ancestry should be larger but that is not exact.