A bit of a slower #RootstechConnect day for day two. I began by spending rather too much time analysing my Relatives at Rootstech (237 and counting). The bias towards descendants of one particular couple is marked.

To begin the day I watched 10 Things you are Probably doing Wrong with Jenny Joyce, definitely things that all researchers should bear in mind. On the topic of doing things wrong, am I the only one who keeps clicking on the little pink ticks in my RootstechConnect playlist, thinking that will start the video when in fact it removes it from the list?

Next, I enjoyed Michelle Patient’s From Convict Stain to Royalty; I always know Michelle’s talks will be good. I followed this with Connecting Children to their Family History with Jana Greenhalgh of Genealogy Kids.

Then it was time for  Family Tree Magazine’s afternoon tea. Great to chat with friends again; I think that this is the aspect of a live event that we are missing the most. This time the poll was for our favourite teatime snack. This session included an ‘interesting’ interruption from an interloper. I didn’t quite catch what they said but it led to their immediate expulsion! Having Zoomed almost daily and sometimes more than once, since March this is my first such incident!

Continuing the theme of down-under presenters, I very much enjoyed Rob Hamilton, talk about Freemasons’ Records. I am inspired to see if I can find out more about my grandfather’s membership. I first enquired thirty five years ago and was given some very basic information; perhaps they might be more forthcoming now.

As I wasn’t asked to speak at Rootstech this time, I thought I should probably listen to Becoming a Better Conference Speaker by Julie Miller from NGS. Much of this was directed at responding to calls for papers in the most effective way.

That was enough for one day. I suspect many attendees are in the same position as I am, for every talk I remove from my playlist, two more are added. Good job we have a year to view!

Tomorrow I must make sure that I have done all I need to do in the Expo Hall before it closes. Decisions, decisions, do I want to invest in updating my Family Tree Maker; can I cope with the learning curve?

Regular readers will know that I am distinctly devoid of family members, apart from my five descendants and two in-law descendants. No siblings, no first cousins and only six second cousins, all on the same side of the family. So, a third cousin (with whom I share great great grandparents) counts as practically my closest relative. Since I was a child, thanks to my great aunt and the family photo album, I was aware of my great grandmother Clara’s four sisters and brother. I was also aware of the children of those siblings, my grandmother and great aunt’s cousins. I had photographs of most of them too. This generation was born between 1878 and 1895.

About five years ago, I decided to trace these cousins of my grandmother further forward to the present day. Imagine my surprise and excitement, when I discovered, in my own generation, a third cousin who had been in my class at primary school. (I should point out this was not in some small ancestral village. We were living in a highly populated area, each having a potential of about twenty schools that we could have gone to). My mother was certainly not aware that my classmate was the granddaughter of the first world war soldier whose image looked out of the pages of our photo album.

Although I did not keep in contact with any of my primary school peers into adulthood, about ten years ago a few of us did get together via Friends Reunited. We formed a Facebook Group and some of us met in person from time to time. I attempted to make contact with my newly discovered third cousin but wasn’t able to do so.

Then, this weekend, one of our Facebook Group organised a Zoom gathering. By the process of osmosis, the word spread and there before me was my third cousin! Fortunately, she was as excited as I was.

There are some interesting events coming up. On 9^th February I am taking part in the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies Diamond Event. I shall be giving suggestions for those who are wanting to write their own memories and sharing reminiscences of the period 1946-1969. There may still be spaces if you want to book. Then, in March, I shall be joining my down-under friends for the virtual Family History Down Under Conference, giving two presentations. In between I am criss-crossing the country with talks to local societies as well as running my own. Of course there are also the excitements of RootsTechConnect to enjoy this month.

I am still on a book selling mission. I had to repurpose two book boxes in order to send birthday presents to my descendants. This means I now have a pile of loose books looking untidy. So, if you were thinking of buying a copy of any of my books from me, now might be a good time. Just in time for Valentine’s presents! On the topic of selling, Martha is also selling some of her beautiful craft items (if privacy settings prevent that link from working, take a look at the post I shared on my Facebook page). I think Edward may be going to benefit from the proceeds.

I regularly receive catalogues from a seller of old documents and paper ephemera. This week, one of the items on offer was a Devon based, late nineteenth century chemist’s notebook, giving recipes for various medicines and ‘cures’. It was not what you might call cheap. Using the fact that I have been giving wall-to-wall Zoom talks over the past couple of weeks, including a voice damaging seven in five days, as justification, I parted with my hard-earned cash. I am now eagerly awaiting the postman. Said postman is officially a star. Today he successfully delivered a missive addressed to ‘Mistress Agnes, c/o Dr J Few, Buckland Brewer, N. Devon’. Given that about 1200 people live in Buckland Brewer, I thought that that was pretty impressive.

In other news, I have just been asked to share the story of my Thockrington One-Place Study to a Northumbrian Group. I am looking forward to this challenge.

Last but definitely not least, thank you to everyone who sponsored Martha and I for our Move for Mind challenge we hit our modest exercise and fund raising targets.

Well, I am certainly not going to be bored. I have Zoom presentations coming out of my ears, with five to deliver in three days this week, as well as some to listen to. The first of my own series starts tonight and I will be encouraging people to write their life stories, a great lockdown project. You can attend just this single talk if you wish but you need to hurry up and book! Having not, from choice, done any professional family history research for a while, recently, I had two requests on the same day. Obviously, I am limited to what I can do from home but I already have one happy customer and I am waiting for a marriage certificate before I can make progress on the other.

On the presentation front, I have had to climb the learning curve that is recording audio on to a power point. I thought I had cracked it as I worked my way through a whole presentation, doing the whole replaying and re-recording bit. The latter was a frequent occurrence as it is winter croaky voice season. It was going pretty well I thought, although I don’t sound my usual relaxed self, it is more like I am still getting used to auto-cue. Even though I am not using a script, it sounds as though I am, maybe because I am trying to enunciate clearly. At least it has slowed me down a bit. The problem came when I hit save. I was drastically revamping a previous presentation and it was in an old version of power point, which, wait for it, doesn’t support sound! By then it was too late to save as the new format. In the end there was nothing for it but to start all over again. It didn’t even seem to work copying the slides into a new format document, so it was definitely back to the drawing board on all fronts.

I am enjoying compiling the family history albums for my grandchildren. Probably more fun for me than it will be for them but I can hope.

As to the whole pre-diabetic thing. I’ve now consumed my Christmas cake (ok cakes), one of my all-time favourite foods and cooked before the diagnosis. Now I guess I take it seriously. The fitness watch is still enough of a novelty to get me out of the chair. I wore it for a couple of days doing just what I would normally do to see how little I did. Bearing in mind I am not leaving home at the moment, I was expecting it to be about 200 steps a day and was surprised to find it was around 1600. Encouraged by Martha, we signed up for a challenge involving us in walking 100 miles a month. After a bit of adjustment, we worked out that 6666 steps a day would do it and I’ve managed to stick to it since January 2^nd. I am a bit annoyed that we didn’t realise how many it was in time for 1^st January but hey ho. It probably sounds pathetic to my fitness fiend friends but I am consoling myself with the fact that it is four times what I was doing. As this has to be accomplished in my tiny house it does involve quite a bit of jogging on the spot. I tend to make up the numbers in the evening during the adverts on commercial television – a bit of an incentive to watch BBC! You have no idea quite how many adverts Dancing on Ice has until you try this. The challenge does involve sponsorship and thanks to lovely friends Martha and I are nearly at our modest joint target. Of course, it would be great if we smashed it. If anyone would like to donate to the mental health charity Mind, particularly relevant at the moment, here are the links for myself and Martha.

 Any minute now the watch will buzz to remind me that I haven’t moved yet today so I’d better get going.

Pictures of jogging would not be pretty sight so here are some flowers to cheer everyone up instead.

Last year I posted a round up of the 2010s and looked forward to what the 2020s might bring. The first year of the 2020s has certainly brought us rather more than any of us might have bargained for but in the spirit of new beginnings, I thought I would assess my progress towards my ambitions.

Family. I hoped I would be able to spend more time with mine. Well, COVID certainly stood that one on the head and this does not look set to change for the next few months at least.

Home and Community. My bedroom has been decorated this year and thanks to lockdown, there has been some progress in the garden but I might have expected to achieve more in this regard. My community input has been limited to organising weekly Zoom coffee mornings and monthly online History Group meetings.

Work. This has altered to take account of 2020 circumstances. I predicted that I would be doing more online. I could not have imagined how much, or how quickly. My speaking engagements went online. I set up my own course of lectures and have a lovely, friendly group attending these, with room to add a few more if you are interested. I have also spoken to many groups across the country and indeed the world, most of these would not have taken place in person.

Travel. Clearly, 2020 has not been the year to achieve travel ambitions but we did sneak off to the wilds of Northumberland and there is always next year.

Writing. I published my second novel and one of two planned booklets. Marketing has been tricky but book sales have held up surprisingly well. I have written up some more family history stories and was thrilled to win a short story competition.

Leisure. I have had a few piano lessons, mostly virtually, I have definitely improved and can manage a few recognisable tunes, albeit a bit slowly. I also don’t look at the keys all the time anymore. Learning Cornish got no further than buying some books and I still haven’t got back to my spinning.

Family history. All-consuming rather than leisure, so it rates its own category. The highlight in this respect has to be my Certificate of Recognition from the Society of Genealogists. I have added a few new ancestors to the tree but unsurprisingly, my three major brick walls remain. I have found myself as the chair of Devon Family History Society, which is an interesting challenge. I hoped I would inspire my descendants with a sense of their past and I do have plans in that direction.

Health. Not so good here and I have added an unidentified allergy and pre-diabetes to my list of ailments. In a vain attempt to knock the ‘pre-diabetes’ on the head, last week I bought a fitness watch. It seems that that isn’t enough, you actually have to do stuff as well. The first challenge was to get it to talk to my phone. That’s ok, there are instructions. Line one, ‘wear the product on the waist’. Really? I know I need to lose a few pounds but no way can I get this round my waist. Ah. It seems I am the victim of someone writing instructions using Google translate, for ‘waist’ read ‘wrist’. After two days, I managed to get the watch and the phone to communicate. Apparently, I get credit for ticking off five healthy habits per day. One is reading! I have so got this. Others are getting up early, check. Having breakfast, check. Going to bed early, check. This is a cinch. Ah. The fifth one is movement. Well, I move, probably not enough but I’ll give it a go. I am fascinated that it will tell me how much I sleep. Ok. So, I was expecting it to reveal that I don’t sleep much but 0%, really? Mind you I was allegedly awake 0% of the night too. Perhaps I haven’t quite got this sussed yet. Added later – it turns out you have to be asleep for four hours for it to realise that this is your night time and you are not just dozing off in front of the fire and register. I almost never have four hours of unbroken sleep, so it won’t be giving me statistics any time soon.

Here’s to a positive start to 2021. Let’s take care of each other and ourselves.

With a sold-out talk for the Society of Genealogists in the offing my lap top decided to go slow and then grind to a halt. As I was fresh from a ‘discussion’ with Amazon who decided they couldn’t verify my bank account in order to pay the paltry royalties due to me, this was the last thing I wanted. I should add that Amazon have been using this bank account for over two years with no problem but I guess they have to check occasionally. The issue seemed to be that the account officially uses my initials whereas the system assumes it uses your name and insists that you enter that. Anyway back to the expiring laptop. Good news, the repair shop was open during lockdown. Bad news there could be a week to wait. I review the alternatives for giving the three Zoom talks I have in the next week. I can use a lap-top that only has the free version of Power Point, meaning I have to alter all the fonts. Alternatively, I can use a teeny tiny lap top that is more difficult to use. A bit of testing and it seems I can make this work. Hurrah.

I am sat in the conservatory because that is the best light. The talk, on Madness, Mania and Melancholia: mental health of our ancestors, goes well. I am just in to the 35 minutes’ worth of questions when a neighbour arrives at the glass door with a brace of very deceased pheasants in his hand. I try to subtly gesture to the front door indicating that he should ring the bell, which should summon my lockdown companion. No, subtlety isn’t cutting it. I have to abandon the audience briefly to explain. I guess it beats the Zoom call cats.

The catalogue of woes continues. In order to complete a job due next week I need to download some software on to the borrowed computer. To do this I need to access a website. I have forgotten my password (which is saved on the defunct computer). Simples, I will reset it. It needs me to answer a ‘secret’ question. ‘What is my mother’s maiden name?’ That old chestnut. Clearly I do know what my mother’s maiden name is; I am a family historian. I don’t normally give the correct answer as it is in the public domain (you can probably find it on this website). It is also very easy to guess. I try the only two plausible alternatives – wrong. I try the actual maiden name – also wrong. There is no way round the ‘secret’ question. There should be a help phone number but guess what, the document with these useful numbers on is accessed via the website I can’t currently get in to. You couldn’t make it up.

I won’t mention the other website I can’t get into because I am not receiving the verification codes that they are allegedly sending me. Oh and then there was me trying to connect the borrowed laptop to my printer – don’t even go there. ‘You have 90 seconds to use this verification code.’ On this teeny tiny lap top – no chance. Good news I have a wireless keyboard and yes I can even locate it in the crowded loft. What I can’t locate is the little USB thingy that has to go in the laptop – sigh. Expect typos.

Then there is Tesco’s, fortunately to reset their password you do not need the inside leg measurement of your infant teacher’s uncle. I put in a new password, ‘that is your old password, please choose another password’. Arrgghhh.

Another day, another Zoom talk. I have finished the actual talk and am trying to minimise the presentation in order to copy and paste my web address in the chat. I press the escape key. Ah well on my computer it would be the escape button. On the one I’ve borrowed it is the power off key. Luckily this one was a double-hander so I just had to pop up on a different screen in another room in my house. Never work with children, animals or technology.

I have been home for a week and I have reprehensibly left you all in the wilds of Northumberland. So, for the one of you who is wondering what happened next, here goes.

We spent several days grappling with the lack of internet, during which time we managed to get the car fixed. Undeterred, we returned to Craster, to find it marginally less busy than on our previous visit.

Next, a glorious, sunny day during which we ventured back to the Keilder Forest. On the map, the home of one of my probable ancestors looked to be up yet another non-road. Based on previous experience and mindful that the car was newly fixed, I debated whether or not we should boldly go. My companion was undaunted, so off we set and we were rewarded with a proper road and spectacular countryside. My ancestors certainly knew how to pick the best spots. Talking of maps, these trips always remind me how much I enjoy following routes on OS maps. This is absolutely not the same as navigating, though I have been doing that too, as some of the places on our itinerary are too small to be recognised by the sat-nav.

We then returned to my ‘one-place’ to photograph the eighty or so gravestones. Fortunately, these had already been transcribed by the local family history society, so it was just a case of taking the pictures.

Back at the van, we found that there was still no internet, meaning no work could be done, so we went for a walk round the nearby nature reserve. We’ve been to this caravan site several times before but as we habitually approach it from one direction, we had only just discovered this spot a few hundred yards beyond the site entrance. This meant that I could accomplish my Race for Life kilometreage (surely there should be a metric equivalent of mileage). It wasn’t very ‘racy’ but it was done and we got to see a huge flock of greylag geese as a bonus.

Our final day saw us embrace more hunting for ancestral houses. Against my better judgement my companion suggested that we embarked on a journey up a long and bumpy private drive as ‘we are almost there now’. These are occasions when I side down in the footwell and keep everything crossed that the owners are out. No such luck. A 4 x 4 approached from the opposite direction. We put on our best ‘we are stupid tourists’ expressions and were set to blame a faulty sat-nav. This is preferrable to admitting why we are actually there, as this often involves me in producing complete house histories gratis in exchange for a quick photo op. All is well this time as the 4 x 4 owner seemed totally disinterested in why we were up her drive in an area where households are currently not allowed to mix. There have been no follow ups to our adventures, so it seems that our covert photography has not led to us being reported to the local Farm Watch after all. Finally, internet was restored and I began to tackle the 210 emails that had arrived during the outage.

Then home. I was glad we went. It would have been all too easy just to stay at home but it was probably wise to escape briefly. It wasn’t as relaxing as usual and not ideal to be in a COVID hotspot but this was booked pre-COVID. Now I would be quite content to hibernate safely within my own four walls and garden until spring.

So, in the run up to departing for the wilds of Northumberland, I indulge in what was apparently some over-zealous gardening and am rendered almost immobile by a pulled muscle in my back. This means that many of the ‘must do before I go’ jobs take twice as long as usual, or don’t get done at all. Let’s be honest, it’s taking half an hour to get out of bed. The days have been punctuated by numerous Zooms, including C17th presentations for The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies and a panel chat for Family Tree Magazine – you can watch it here. By the time I got to the panel I’d already been presenting for two hours, hence the regular swigs of gin water.

Having been out of the house a mere handful of times since March it does seem rather out of character that we decide to head to Northumberland just as it hits special COVID measures. The plan is to be in the middle of nowhere in the north of the county and restrict ourselves to driving/walking in isolated areas. Definitely no tourist attractions/pubs/restaurants and with luck, just one shop visit – it will be my first for six months.  We are also on stand-by to bale out at any point. In the interests of avoiding public toilets, which are in any case non-existent in the wilds of Northumberland, we have purchased what is basically a bucket with a seat attached. I am still not quite sure how using this in the boot of the car will go, even though it is quite a big boot. Not being able to bend will make it even more ‘interesting’ than it might otherwise have been. Said purchase did mean that Amazon, bless them, sent the usual ‘Would you like to share your experience of …..?’ email. Ermmm, are you quite sure Amazon? Anyway, it is, as yet, untried; I’ll let you know how it goes.

I also have a new phone, this is a proper phone, one that, in theory, does things apart from make phone calls. The operator is still playing catch-up but I am gradually increasing my ability to make it do things. I even occasionally remember to charge it and turn it on.

On the way north, we call on some descendants and meet at a National Trust property. This counts as very adventurous for me and we have duly pre-booked. On arrival at the entrance the man fails to find my name on his list. I have helpfully printed out the tickets and I rummage in my bag for these, only to find that I have inadvertently booked for a different day! By this time, the other half of the party are already inside. I ask if I can inform them of the problem. Whilst I am confessing to my blunder, the fisherman of my acquaintance somehow blags our way in, partly due to his powers of persuasion but helped by my life membership and his status as a National Trust volunteer. Phew. A lovely sunny day and some glorious flowers, although I prefer the wildflowers to the dahlias. It was lovely to spend socially-distanced time with the family. Onwards and upwards.