I am currently in what passes for a lull between the Guild of One-Name Studies’ Annual Conference and Who Do You Think You Are? Live, where I am being an ‘expert’, helping on stands and in the guise of Mistress Agnes, presenting. The best part of these events is of course meeting up with old friends, making new contacts and generally catching up on what is new in the genealogical world. All this comes hot on the heels of extended birthday celebrations, with 26 people staying and other day visitors. Wonderful of course and thank you everyone but hardly great preparation for a very hectic week.

First the Guild conference where somehow I ended up in an organising role, not sure how that happened! An initial problem was when the delegates’ badges mysteriously disappeared between the neighbouring county and my home, despite being posted, at huge expense, using guaranteed next day delivery. We set off for Birmingham minus the badges and our poor badge-making volunteer made a duplicate set and left home on an earlier train in order to get them to us on time. Once at the venue, it transpired that we were one of three conferences on site for the weekend. The Unitarian church were inconspicuous but it was immediately clear that we should be wearing furry ears or other outrageous garb in order to fit in with the UK Anime and Geek Culture Convention Kitacon Carnival (probably best not to ask) whose presence added a rather different dimension. Their event seemed to involve a great deal of posing for photographs and late night revelry. It is very hard to keep a straight face whilst speaking to Pikachou.

Having already replaced one of the speakers due to ill health, sadly another substitute was needed following a car accident. Trying to find alternatives for 25% of your conference speakers, especially when you have called in favours to create the programme in the first place, is not easy but wonderful people came forward and that was solved. So, grateful thanks to those who stepped in and best wishes to the incapacitated speakers. At 11pm on Friday night we ran the gauntlet of the audience escaping from an Adele concert and returned to the caravan. On returning to the venue at 7.30am the next day, we found that our registration desk, complete with conference packs and badges for our day delegates had disappeared into thin air. Frantic searching by the staff, including examining CCTV and raiding the bins failed to locate the material. In the end it took 24 hours to discover that the night staff had ‘helpfully’ donated our items to the Unitarians. You would have thought that the fact that the bags were emblazoned ‘Guild of One-Name Studies’ might have been sufficient clue as to which conference party the stuff belonged to but no.

The food was actually good but the first lunch, a buffet, was served without tables being made available. Buffet, in this instance, should not be translated as sausage rolls and sandwiches but a proper meal, with things like curry on offer. A tad tricky to consume whilst standing, especially for those with mobility problems. We solved this by moving to an adjoining room. In the end though, the two key conference elements, the presentations and the interaction with fellow delegates, scored highly, with several people saying it was one of the best programmes ever and there was a marked reluctance for people to leave the conference dinner table for over an hour after the meal had ended.

The last few weeks have seen me wrangling with officialdom on a not infrequent basis. First there was that sinking feeling when I checked my bank account to find that I had allegedly purchased a very expensive bathroom from an outlet in Hull. Credit to the bank who had the money back in my account by the same afternoon but I did find it more than a little odd that I was asked if I was sure that I hadn’t forgotten about this purchase. Like I spend a fortune on a bathroom every day of the week. Whoever hacked my account must have lacked forethought as this was an online purchase and they presumably had to give their address for delivery!

I now have a lovely new-to-me car that is ridiculously smart and I hardly dare use it. In fact I nearly couldn’t use it as it proved almost impossible to tax and insure. Firstly, transferring my old insurance to the new car. The first person I spoke to claimed that she couldn’t identify the new car and requested more specification details than I could provide. Having ascertained that there were no more specification details, I tried again and this time got the holder of the insurance office brain cell. They could identify the car with no problem but then there was the usual hiatus because none of my occupations appear on their magic list. As I do several jobs I was asked how many hours I spent on each one – do I have any idea?! I am now down as an interpreter – my skill at languages is barely above zero. Hurrah though, there is nothing additional to pay for the remaining insurance period. Imagine my horror when the two days later I get a bill for £194 as the excess required for two months insurance – you must be joking was the polite version of my reaction. Another phone call to the insurance company. I should explain that each of these calls necessitates the caller in listening to how important their call is for a full fifteen minutes. “Our call lines are open 24/7” – no, they so aren’t. It, fortunately, transpired that the bill was a mistake but what a performance.

Then car tax. As a new owner I needed a vital part of the log book in order to tax the car online. This would be the vital part that the garage had inadvertently lost. The necessary twelve digit number was a mystery. Allegedly, it would cost £25 and take five weeks to replace the missing piece of paper. I am standing in the garage trying to collect a car that I am unable to tax and therefore, dear overseas readers, unable to drive legally. The garage receptionist sifts through the paperwork. She finds an eleven digit number. Using the mobile phone of a random fellow customer (my emergency phone is ten years old – it make phone calls – period) we go online and try the eleven digit number prefixed by a zero – eureka I have a taxed car. It still seems far too posh. It has a radio that changes colour as you drive along. Actually this is highly irritating and despite pushing, pulling and twisting every available knob and button, it does not seem to turn off but I am learning to ignore it as it blends from pink to yellow to blue.

We also had a car park incident – we really aren’t fit to be let out. We’d collected our ticket on entry to a multi-story car park and were queuing to pay on exit when the car two in front of us caused chaos by apparently losing their ticket. I’ll not lie, during the ten minute wait my driver was more than scathing. It is our turn to exit, we can‘t seem to see the slot for putting our money in. It turns out that we should have paid and validated our ticket at a machine two floors away before joining the queue. Guess who was dispatched at a run to accomplish this task. The fifteen people in the queue behind us barely hooted their horns.

My success at naming the Mutant Hero Ninja Turtles during my last outing to a local quiz went before me and I was asked to make up a team again. Did my alleged prowess at history stand me in good stead this time? No. My claim to fame on this occasion was to provide the name of a member of Take That!

Last week I had an invitation to be interviewed about my books on Radio Wolverhampton. Did I want to come into the studio, I was asked, or be interviewed on the telephone? No brainer that one. So tonight at 8.10pm I will be interviewed by Philip Solomon. His email told me that past interviewees include Noddy Holder, Chas & Dave, P J Proby, Alvin Stardust, Uri Geller, Neil Morrisey, Ken Dodd, Leo Sayer and errrr now me. I expect it will be a blink and you miss it occasion but if you are really short of things to do tonight you can it seems listen online if you have downloaded the appropriate thingy.

When Peter’s sister, Lucy, was born, I wrote about her direct maternal line. Four months later and her cousin Edward’s post was about grandparenthood. Now it is Peter’s turn. When I learned what his name was to be my immediate reaction was that it was a new name for our family but actually it isn’t. I can only comment on his maternal ancestry but there are six Peters amongst his known direct ancestors on this side of the family. What follows is their story; young Peter needs to be aware that he can’t choose his ancestors!

Three of the Peters are members of the Elford family, grandfather, father and son; baby Peter’s 12, 11 and 10 x great grandfathers. The eldest of these is one of our earliest known ancestors and very little is known about him. Peter Elford senior was baptised in Mary Tavy, Devon in 1584, the son of William and Joan Elford née Cudlipe. At this time, Queen Elizabeth I was still on the throne and Walter Raleigh found Roanoke Island in North America. Mary Tavy, four miles north of Tavistock, on the edge of Dartmoor, was in the nineteenth century home to the world’s largest copper mine. It is likely however that the Elfords were yeoman farmers. Peter senior married Jane Bowden in 1606, the year Guy Fawkes was executed and Macbeth and King Lear were first performed. They had eight children. One of their daughters, Joanna, is a strong candidate for the Joanna Elford who was indicted for witchcraft in 1671. The youngest child, Peter, was baptised in 1622. In 1641, two Peter Elfords signed the Protestation Return in Mary Tavy; probably Peter senior and his son. Peter senior died in 1650.

The second Peter Elford married Katheren Wills in 1646, just as the first phase of the English civil war was coming to an end. Peter served as parish constable and churchwarden for Mary Tavy. A lease dated 1669/70 shows that Peter was a yeoman of Peeke’s Tenement in Mary Tavy. Peter and Katheren had five children. Their son, the youngest Peter Elford, was baptised in 1647. He married Margery Spiller in 1676, just as Christopher Wren was putting the finishing touches to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. They too had five children.

A pair of Peter Geachs, father and son, are young Peter’s 10 and 9 x great grandfathers. Peter Geach senior married Frances Addams in St. Mellion, Cornwall in 1674. He leased a property called Forse Field, Viverdon Common in St. Mellion and was described as a husbandman. Only two children have been found for Peter and Frances. Peter Geach junior was baptised in 1675. He and his wife, Anne née White, moved from St. Mellion to nearby St. Dominick, where they had four children.

Norham

The most recent Peter is Peter Eadington, young Peter’s 6 x great grandfather. Edington and its rarer variant, Eadington, is a surname found predominantly in Northumberland. It is a locational name, taken from the hamlet of Edington (Ida’s town), which is three miles south west of Morpeth. Peter Eadington arrives in the family history as the father of Isabella E(a)dington who was baptised at St. Cuthbert’s, Norham, Northumberland on the 29th of June 1789 to Peter Eadington and Isabella Mather. Baptisms in the area do sometimes give mothers’ maiden names but the entry suggests that Peter and Isabella Mather were not married. This is borne out by the existence of a bastardy bond citing Peter Edington, a miller of Norham, as the father of Isabella Mather’s unborn illegitimate child. There are other baptisms in Norham for children of Peter E(a)dington around this time. He appears to have had four children by Alice, to whom it seems he was married and another illegitimate child by Mary Brown in 1794.

Norham is right on the Scottish border and it has been difficult to identify the site of the mill. Local folklore suggests that it was on the site of what is now Tower Cottages and the adjacent ‘vennel’, or alley, is known as The Mill Opening. A painting of 1907 depicts what might be a sail-less windmill. Ordnance survey maps however suggest that this structure was a dovecot. The deeds of 14 Castle Street, next to Tower Cottages, confirm that a miller lived there but there is no certainty that the mill was next door. The Tithe Map and schedule site a mill on the opposite side of the village green however there were no male Eadingtons in the parish at that date. This building is near a tributary of the River Tweed and would almost certainly have been a water mill. There was no building on the site of this mill by 1898. Even if the site of the mill could be identified, there is no proof that this was the mill worked by Peter Eadington. Call Books listing freeholders for the manor of Norham Town do not list Petter {sic} Eadington until 1795 and he sells his freehold to principal landowner Sir Francis Blake in 1805. The land tax for 1798 mentions a mill in the hamlet of Twizel in Norham so it may be that Peter worked here before moving in to the centre of the village.

So, just tiny fragments of Peter’s ancestry and rather a mixed bunch but all part of the rich tapestry that is our family’s history.

Those of you who know that my recent blogging silence has been due to the arrival of my latest and very precious grandchild (hello Peter Robert) might wonder why he doesn’t feature in the lengthy title of this post. He, like his sister and cousin, will rate a post all of his own but that needs to be carefully crafted and will be for a later date.

So, what else has been happening? Much of my time this week has been spent fighting (not literally but I wouldn’t rule it out and we have swords) a truly despicable person who has illegally uploaded one of my books, along with others from respected history book publishers, to a site where subscribers can download it for free and I assume, the uploader gets a payment for each download. To say I am furious would be an understatement of immense proportions. Needless to say, these sites do not make their contact details easy to find but find them I did and I did not mince my words. To be fair, the site did take down the initial link very quickly but it was still available via another link. A few days later the same set of 70 or so books appeared again, allegedly uploaded by someone different. I am heading for setting a record for the number of desist notices one can send in a short space of time. I just hope that it took whoever this thief is a VERY long time to scan every page.

Two warnings to take away from this. When you download a ‘free’ book, are you sure it is being made available legally? Here is a hint, if you can buy a new copy on Amazon (other booksellers are available) the answer is almost certainly No. It may be tempting to go for the free option but unless they are J K Rowling, authors make little enough out of their work as it is – think pence not pounds per copy. Books take many, many hours to write. A little like craft workers, very few of us achieve anything like the minimum wage for the time we put in. We are familiar with the scandals of illegal music and film downloads but spare a thought for beleaguered authors too. Secondly, if you are an author, I strongly suggest that you do an internet search for your titles, perhaps together with the word ‘free’, on a regular basis. I only discovered my book had been stolen because it is new and I was searching to see if it had been reviewed.

Support a struggling author – buy a book. What about a gift for Mothers’ Day (UK) in a couple of weeks time? Of course it would be great if it was one of my books, the latest is particularly appropriate (email me for details) but any book would be great. Having said email me, my emails have been very erratic lately, so please keep trying. Pretty much, if I haven’t replied within 48 hours I haven’t received your message.

I am now officially inducted as a tutor for Pharos Tutors and will be leading online genealogy related courses for them along with a great band of fellow tutors. Look out for my first course on Maps and Surveys, due to start in August. This is one I am picking up from a previous tutor but I will have courses of my own devising in the not too distant future. As part of my training I am taking an existing course and have chosen one on Scottish Ancestry by Chris Paton. This would work well if I had any Scottish ancestry but my ancestors never got further north than Northumberland. Fortunately, my children do have some Scottish forebears that I can ‘borrow’, as do my grandchildren, so I am all set. I will report on my progress in April.

I spent a great day at the recent Guild of One-Name Studies Twentieth Century Seminar, where I was one of the presenters. The proceedings included a convivial meal in a restaurant that was not going to win any awards for fast service. Given that said meal began after my bedtime, by the time the dessert arrived at gone 10pm I was ready to attack it with gusto. The only cutlery available was a fork. Ever tried eating a sundae with a fork? Another ten minutes and spoons were in evidence – like I am going to sit looking at a gently melting sundae for ten minutes.

The seminar itself was very interesting but due to one of the speakers being taken ill, we were ‘treated’ to an truly excruciating ‘video’ (whose pictures did not work) of a webinar on a similar subject. I tried very hard to be respectful. I failed. It did rate highly for its entertainment value though, or as an exercise on how not to present. The remaining presentations were excellent. Firstly was Nigel Lutt, a former archivist who gave a thought provoking presentation in a dryly humorous style, highlighting why twentieth century archives are not likely  to stand the test of time as well as those from earlier eras. The sheer volume of material results in weeding, modern inventions such as paper clips and sellotape do damage, data protection leads to deletion of records and the move to electronic records, such as school admissions’ registers, will leave us the poorer. Ian Waller spoke about adoption and divorce records and the day finished with Gill Blanchard encouraging us to write our family’s story. As ever the best part of the day was catching up with so many old friends and meeting new ones too.

Along with many people who have UK ancestry I was there on 16th, ready and waiting to take advantage of the 1939 Register being made available as part of my FindmyPast world subscription. Up until then I had managed to restrain myself and had not ventured past the indexes to the point where I had to part with hard earned cash. I am getting very mixed results and have submitted a host of transcription error reports, once I had discovered the not very obvious way that this could be done that is. The company is claiming an 85% transcription accuracy; are my relatives really so atypical (don’t answer that!)? The tally so far, for 13 searches:- 5 (38%) were problem free. 2 had christian name mis-transcriptions. 2 had the address transcribed incorrectly, 1 had both the address and the birth year wrong, 1 had the birth year, initial and address wrong, 1 had the occupation from the next entry incorrectly ascribed to my relative, although it was clearly on the next line and one person is not transcribed or indexed with his household (or any other) at all, although he is there when you search via his wife. I stress that these were all transcription errors, not errors with the original record. So sorry, great resource but still ‘could do better.’

And the soggy encounter you ask? I accidentally (obviously) got a pint of water rather too close to the nearly new laptop. A swift move and I upended the laptop so water could pour (well, drip steadily) from the keyboard. At first all seemed fine but then it quietly died without so much as a wimper. I tried not to panic and dried it by the woodburner for a while. I was then in danger of adding a degree of meltedness to the soggyness but managed to avoid this. Still no signs of meaningful life. I removed the battery and shook the drips off it – battery replaced and whoo hoo it turned on …… and then promptly turned itself off. A few attempts at this and I seemed (everything crossed please) to have achieved a partial recovery. Ongoing issues are a rather strange opening screen when I first turn on (that I can live with), randomly, the clock losing 45 minutes and having to be reset (solved) and then there is the problem with the second letter of the alphabet. Either it does not work at all (all the bs in this post have been achieved by cutting and pasting) or, on the rare occasions when it does work, you get rows and rows of bs. I am hoping this will right itself, although it is good for me to try to think of alternative ways of expressing myself, ones which do not involve words containing the errant letter (try it, it is surprisingly difficult).

This week I was scheduled to give two talks on the same day. Not, fortunately, at the same time – sadly I have not quite yet perfected the art of being in two places at once. One was a virtual webinar for Ontario Genealogical Society, the other was a Mistress Agnes gig for a local women’s group. When the webinar was first booked I had worked out that it was due to begin at 3pm my time and began to prepare. Up came the little notice ‘this webinar has not yet started’. What passes for my brain began to whirr – Canada is behind us (in the nicest possible way) not ahead, a quick recalculation. I was due to start presenting at midnight! Midnight! In case you don’t know I just don’t do midnight, not ever, not even on New Year’s Eve; 10pm is a late night for me. Getting up at 5am, no problem at all but midnight! Had I not had the evening booking as Mistress Agnes I could have gone to sleep first but this was not going to be an option.

First then extolling the delights of seventeenth century living at a venue in a small village near me. I have to say the roads en route were realistically seventeenth century like but we made it there and back. Some of my incredulous friends had been made aware of my webinar time slot, ‘Are you really presenting at midnight?’ Well it looks like I am now. The one good thing about this sort of webinar is that it is audio only, so I only had to sound as if I was awake and it didn’t matter what I looked like. I was also competing against Rootstech sessions – the largest genealogical event in the world. Maybe I would be talking to myself anyway. It turned out that 174 people had applied for the 100 places participating in this webinar in real time and I think I manage to sound as if I was vaguely alert. The topic was ‘A to Z of less well known British sources’ and at the end my addled brain fielded diverse questions on such topics as Scottish cab drivers, non-conformists and Buckinghamshire quarter sessions records. It was fun in the end and I get to do it all again with another virtual webinar in December!

Well, now I have been reminded what going out to full-time work feels like. Phew – no housework has been done for a week and I was in a state of collapse most evenings (the ones when I wasn’t working that is). To be fair, that was partly due to the after effects of the accident. I am clearly not as recovered as I thought I was. It helped that we were working in a really lovely school with a staff who got involved to the extent of painting plague pustules on themselves, which got worse as the day wore on. Who else in their working day hears surreal comments such as, ‘how do my pustules look?’?

A curious incident on our way to the school: we have to pick up a colleague in the van. Said colleague lives in a road where parking is at a premium so Chris parks the van a hundred yards up the road, where he is blocking someone’s drive and walks back to collect our colleague. I am skulking in the van, trying to keep a low profile but am being eyed very suspiciously by a couple who have just emerged from a house over the road. I am wondering if I can reach for a sword before they remonstrate with me for illegal parking and obstructing their neighbours’ drive. Chris returns and they are still staring. I had forgotten that we have our super advertising magnets affixed to the vehicle. It turns out that the people viewing our car with suspicion are Medieval re-enactors. We have a nice chat and exchange contact details before running the gauntlet of rush hour traffic.

Reviews for Remember Then are starting  to appear and we were featured in The National Archives’ newsletter, raising us in the Amazon cultural books list to number 187 at one point. I am stupidly excited by this. Sales this week have necessitated my going to the town Post Office in seventeenth century clothing after our time in school. This is always fun, as reactions vary from politely ignoring the fact that I am strangely attired, to curiosity, to barely disguised mirth.

A very interesting members’ evening at Buckland Brewer History Group as usual with several members contributing short items of an historical nature. Local author Liz Shakespeare outlined some of the research she has been doing for her forthcoming book about the postman poet Edward Capern. He was known to compose poetry in a Buckland Brewer cottage whilst waiting to continue his round. Liz has done some painstaking research to try to identify this cottage, using clues from the poetry and it turns out that it was mine!

Well, Happy New Year to the three people who are reading this. Actually, there may be a few more than three as I have just had two of my busiest days on this site, with over 500 visitors. This is probably because my lovely volunteers who helped me to compile my latest book of memories of the 1950s and 1960s  Remember Then have been busy advertising it. Sales are going very well and I have sustained a book related injury as a result so my back is now suffering. The good news is that those who have received their copies have said some lovely things about it. There are still quite a number of books in the spare bedroom – I have visitors in March. There is no room for them and the books! For this reason, I have been encouraging people to buy directly from me rather than via Amazon or the publisher. Despite this I did, one morning, rank in the top 300 on the cultural history books sales list on Amazon. If you have Christmas money to spend …….. Another book buying opportunity – if you have been saving up for Unlock the Past publications (including mine) My History are offering a 25% discount until 15 January.

This year’s list of lectures has already begun, with Mistress Agnes making a visit to a local WI to instruct the ladies on how a seventeenth century housewife should behave. I have a frantically busy week coming up with all five days in schools (I think it is 35 years since I did a full working week outside the home) AND four evening functions the same week – if there are more blogs after 22nd January – I survived. Several new eBay purchases have been made ready for the school visits, as we have three slightly different presentations to give, as well as our regular repertoire. Watch the Swords and Spindles site for details. Talking of eBay, don’t you just love it when eBay makes suggestions ‘especially for you’. What on earth in my buying or watching history might suggest that I would be interested in a Batman DVD or a Happy Santa toilet seat?

Also coming soon is my webinar for Ontario Genealogical Society – kindly advertised for me by John Reid of Anglo Celtic Connections. I am busy working with Pharos Tutors on two online courses for later in the year so stand by for more news on those. Mistress Agnes is appearing in an official capacity at Who Do You Think You Are? Live this year and I shall also be involved in a seminar and conference for the Guild of One-Name Studies, so no signs of a quiet life on the horizon.

Thank you to everyone who enquired about my recovery from the car accident. I am currently car-less and it still hurts to laugh, cough, sneeze or exert myself (good excuse to postpone the New Year exercise regime) but I’m getting there thank you. Ridiculous conversations with the insurance company abound.
An excerpt regarding my injury:
Insurance clerk with no medical training to me: ‘You have refused physiotherapy. You would have recovered more quickly if you had had physiotherapy.’
Me: ‘My doctor has not suggested physiotherapy. I do not yet have a replacement car. I am a 32 mile round trip from the nearest hospital, there are two buses a week. How do you suggest I get there?’

B-day arrives. The day that 1000 copies of Remember Then are supposed to descend on my doorstep. Well not actually on my doorstep but on a driveway near me. I am not supposed to lift much following the car accident so I have enlisted help. Unfortunately the help I have enlisted isn’t supposed to lift either! Ten out of ten to the delivery driver who finds my house without being misled by his sat-nav/enquiring at the local shop/phoning me in desperation/giving up and going home all of which have been resorted to in the past. I have been asked in advance if there are any narrow lanes to negotiate. I live in the middle of nowhere, of course there are narrow lanes.

The delivery lorry is quite large, it is rush hour, traffic is at a standstill ok, for traffic read one car and a tractor but at a standstill nonetheless. My pallet of books is duly deposited. Said pallet is the focus of attention for my assistant – it will be firewood by tomorrow. The books are shrink wrapped in packets of 16. That means an awful lot of packets, more indeed than we anticipated as it turns out that my 1000 copies is actually 1146. Weird number I know but that is how many there are. Living as I do in a very small cottage this poses somewhat of a problem. I have persuaded my trusty assistant that he must have a bed at home that needs supporting with several hundred books underneath. That still leaves a ridiculous amount for me. Far more than my already overflowing loft can cope with. I stow a few packets in the cupboard under the stairs. A few more (far too few) fit under the spare bed. The only option is to leave a not insignificant pile in the tiny spare bedroom. By my reckoning it will be two years before I get said spare bedroom back, to say nothing of the rest of my house and as for my assistant’s ……..

Fortunately my lovely ladies who contributed to the book and others have been ordering copies so some are already winging their way to new homes. One lady collects eight copies, now all I need is 100 more like her ……. In order for this winging to commence, books have to be wrapped and posted. A quirk of the Post Office’s pricing structure means that, although some people have ordered several copies, it is cheaper to post these singly. So my initial tranch of orders from twenty-five people needs to be fifty parcels. An industrial scale production line is set up on the kitchen table. I have been hording bubble wrap for this for ages. Resisting the temptation to spend the morning popping bubble wrap instead, we begin signing, wrapping and addressing books. Two rolls of brown paper and one roll of brown sticky tape later we have a pile of not very elegantly wrapped books. Brown sticky tape is second only to cling-film in the non-user friendly all-time list. Now to post. The mobile post van is outside my house. There is already a queue of eight people waiting in the rain. Anyone who ends up behind me in the queue will not be thrilled that I have fifty parcels, all of which need proof of posting. Aside from which the van only has another half-hour before it departs for its next stop, so it is off to the Post Office six miles away. Two circuits of the block are required before a parking place appears. Then half an hour to get the pile of books on their way. The poor assistant had to renew his printer roll to produce all the proof of posting slips. Good job we didn’t try the post van option.

So in the interests of returning my home to some sort of normality/retaining my sanity orders are very welcome. If you remember the 1950s and 1960s you should enjoy reading it. I can say that as it isn’t really my work, although my name is on the cover, it is the work of my wonderful volunteers. Even if this period is distant history it is a fascinating insight into the recent past. If you have thoughts about writing your own memories, the book gives you guidance. Further details can be found here.

It was the end of November. I had been away for seven weeks but I had cleaned my many inherited brass ornaments, made my Christmas cake and pudding, written my Christmas cards and made chutney. How can this be? Do I never sleep? The truth is that I was without a functioning laptop for a week; hence the paucity of blog posts lately. The old one died of overheating, Basically, if it was turned on for more than ten minutes it turned itself off in order to cool down. I became adept at judging the crucial ‘save’ point before it died but any attempt at proper work was thwarted. I have been provided with an early Christmas present in the form of a new ‘industrial strength’ laptop. I did ask if I was required to save it for 25th. Strangely, the generous donor did not relish another month of associating with me whilst I was computerless.

Either I am turning into a grumpy old woman (I can hear my descendants muttering ‘turning?’) or I have been surrounded by an unusual level of incompetence lately. Firstly I was totally confused for a day and a half (easily done) by the fact that the new computer’s date was set for 24 hours ahead of real time. I couldn’t understand how I was receiving emails marked Yesterday that had clearly been sent today. Next I attended a local planning meeting where two architects, who looked about twelve, were defending the indefensible. They lost all credibility when I discovered three errors on their presentation boards within five seconds. I know it isn’t necessarily a word in everyday use but surely an architect, or at least their spell checker, should be able to spell vernacular? Then FindmyPast announce their latest indexes and appear to think that the 1600s are the fifteenth century. Not sure that inspires faith in the accuracy of their transcriptions.

Whilst on the subject of FindmyPast, I returned to the 1939 Register to try again to find my grandparents’ home at 159 Davidson Road. This time, I ploughed through all 600 properties in Davidson Road, arranged in random chunks of odds and evens but about 30 numbers were missing and somebody-or-other’s law dictated that this included number 159. After some very imaginative searching I discover that these properties had been listed with the address  ‘Davidson’ instead of ‘Davidson Road’. Why had I not been able to find my grandparents by name you ask? Well I had identified a possibility for granny – the middle initial had been wrongly transcribed, either by the enumerator or by FindmyPast (I still haven’t succumbed and parted with money) but I had dismissed this entry as she was not accompanied by Grandpa. Mystery solved – Grandpa’s birth year was incorrect by twenty years – sigh.

There have been various social events in the locality in the run up to the festive season, including a village quiz. I was enlisted on to a team who were, we later found out, identified as the pre-quiz favourites – we did in fact win but mainly due to a very lucky choice of round on which to play our joker. The trouble with being recruited on the history platform is that one is expected to know everything about the history of the whole world from yesterday back to the dawn of time – no chance. I failed spectacularly on UK Prime Ministers and the Wall Street Crash but my moment of glory came when required to name the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles!

Then there was the saga of the decorations. Two years ago I blogged about my treasured historic Christmas decorations. Suitably large tree purchased I ventured up in the loft and brought down the decorations. Lights affixed I went to hang the most precious decorations first. Exasperated, I realised that I hadn‘t got that box, so I waited for assistance and returned to the loft again. They weren’t there! They had to be there. I knew exactly where they should be and in what box – a red and white box that had contained a turkey in the 1960s. With a sense of rising panic I ransacked all the boxes in loft. This is harder than it sounds as the height in my loft means you can’t stand upright and I am still recovering from the car accident so heaving a very large number of heavy boxes in a manner that would alarm ‘lifting and handling’ trainers was not desirable. Boxes heaved not once but twice and I am in despair/in tears/beginning to think I am losing the plot. Martha contemplates a 600 mile journey to help me look. I was disproportionately upset about what are after all just ‘things’ but I haven’t ever spent a Christmas without these decorations on my tree and they bring back many memories. I cannot understand where they can be. After all, half of my loft had been emptied and sorted this year and they should be in the other half – notwithstanding I check the other half as well. Surely they can’t possibly have been given to a charity shop during the clearing of the other half of the loft? Irrationally I search every cupboard in my house, places in which I know they cannot be. Equally, I know they are in the loft. Do I have Borrowers? Have I had burglars? I know, what self-respecting burglar is going to leave no trace and only steal a box of Christmas decorations?! I spend a sleepless night. Next morning, loft search take three. Eureka! There they are, ok the turkey box is in another box but this is a box I swear I have looked in three times already. In the same box was the stocking my mum made for me for my first Christmas and its twin that I made when I had a second child – I hadn’t realised these were also missing, so that was a trauma avoided!

If I don’t get a chance to blog again before the big day – have a lovely Christmas and I hope that 2016 will be a year of peace, tolerance and joy.