Here are some things I think are really cool (yeah, I'm supposed to be working):

The Bell Rock Lighthouse
William Tyndale
High speed trains
Blue cheese
Venice
The Name of the Rose
anything Basque

My job is also really cool. Just not right now.

On QI they're talking about how waiters in the US will chase after you if you leave a restaurant without tipping.

This is true!! Happened to me twice in New York. Really bizarre and very annoying. First time we were too shocked to protest and paid more. The second time... I let 'em have it, and I don't mean more cash.

My favourite joke

What do you call a cow with no legs?
Ground beef.

The speed of life

I'm on the high speed train from St Pancras to Kent. It's the first time I've used the line and it's exciting. I love going through tunnels and at this speed it felt like we could come out almost anywhere, Russia or perhaps even China. Dagenham as it happens. I loved the roar of the train as we sped through the tunnel. I wonder just how fast we were going.I love speed, though I'm too afraid to drive more than ninety. Hopefully one day ill get to drive a supercar! The train is smooth which makes a nice change after the bumps of my recent plane rides. And I remember the old Eurostar route along the main line to Dover, commuting back and forth to Brussels. You flew through Belgium and France only to get stuck behind some doddering local service on the English side. We were ALWAYS late arriving. This is brilliant. No brain hemorrhages!

I went to Lord's today. Technically it's the home of the MCC and the Middlesex County Cricket, but really it's the home of cricket (as they announce on their masthead) and rightly so. If none of this is making sense, kindly follow the link provided. I was doing a bit of research on a professional cricketer for a magazine article. Now why specify a professional cricketer, why not just a cricketer? Because, the distinction between amateur and professional is a very important one in the history of cricket. Amateurs were men of means and talent who played for county sides and for England, but only received their expenses. The professionals were the folks who had the talent but not the means. They weren't gentlemen - a big no-no in English society until, well, like not that long ago - and who had to play for money, also a big no-no. It's very complicated and isn't meant to make sense. A few exceptional cricketers somehow managed to be a bit of both. Gentlemen who also made sure they got a share of the gate takings. Amateur in theory, but professional in practice. I'm a bit like that. Still living on other means but trying to get my share of the professional genealogical takings. They say "you can't ride two horses with one ass". Well W.G. Grace and G.M. Bovee have had a go at it at least!

No one can accuse Worcester of having nightlife. I know it's Monday but I had to get my dinner from Mickey D's. And I'm not real big on cardboard hamburgers. Still it's quite a charming place 9-5 so looking forward to seeing it reawaken tomorrow. I've been here at least once before. We stayed with Saudi friends the Wilmers back in the day. Not that I remember much of Worcester. I stayed indoors with Alix - we played seven rounds of Monopoly and made up dances to Kim Wilde records.

Jacob

Old friends run into at JFK: 1 + his newly minted Mrs.

Pairs of boots purchased: 4

Lunches at Chilli's: 2

Naps taken on Auntie Genevieve's shoulder: 6

Peanut butter M&Ms consumed: oh hundreds

Number of hours on a plane tonight: 9, uggh

I have a name!

Andrew has given me a name. I'm Ghee. We've been pointing to me and calling me Genevieve and trying to get him to say my name, and tonight he said, "Nigh-night Ghee". I'm the fifth person to get an Andrew name, after Mummy, Daddy, Goggy, Dad-Dad. And now Ghee.

Happy birthday wishes from Stephen and The Onion and some of our friends at the BBC:

Spooky

White polyester suit, loafers, shaggy shoulder length hair, small round frame glasses. For a moment I thought the ghost of John Lennon was haunting TNA. On closer inspection, it was just some other old hippy.

It's not the first time this has happened, only last time I saw someone dressed like that it turned out to be John's son Sean Lennon. My first thought - er, get your own look, dude. I'd have told him that as well, but I was a guest of the band playing that night and it's not the done thing to upset their friends. Especially when they're a famous artist also signed to the record label you work for. But still, he looked RIDICULOUS.

And I'm pretty sure the guy in the light green sweater swanning around the reading room this afternoon is Paddy Ashdown. Yes, former Liberal party leader and Bosnia peace envoy. Shall I ask him why the UN really made asses of themselves and allowed the deaths of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims? It's a fair question.

I've written a piece for a family history magazine about blogging and genealogy. I was sent the mock up today. Do I really need to say how just how exciting this is!!!

About two years ago my friend Lexia and I were talking about our ambitions. She wanted to paint and I wanted to work as a genealogy researcher. Lexia suggested we both make goals . I actually did it, but I had forgotten it until just now. And here is the list I made back in 2008:

• Attend non-LDS conferences and participate in workshops
• Open LDS family history center to the public
• Identify genealogy companies and archives in UK and US, and look for jobs/intern/volunteer
• Network and communicate with other genealogists
• Become a published genealogist

I was thorough, I even had sub-goals and recorded my first round of achievements. I've done them all now! I'm really quite chufffed to have remembered this.

I'm in print

I'm about to be published. The research company I work for also publishes a new family history magazine called Your Family History. I've written an answer to a reader's query for the Ask the Experts section. I've had to supply a mugshot for that. Yes, my face will be on newstands (if a big gust of wind blows the magazines open to page 9). I've also written a short piece on the joys of family history blogging for the On the Web section. And there are more Ask the Experts queries and articles in the pipeline.

I've also just bagged two new projects. One from a repeat client (this is number 3) with more fascinating family members to follow up. And a house history project in Kent. I've done one house history - villa in Blackheath - and this is my favourite type of project. They combine family history, local history, geography and architectural history. Everything I enjoy, and a good transferrable skill. TNA records are only in London, but you can do a house history anywhere. You know, should I ever decide to escape to the country...

Which reminds me, I'm in the market for a village. (No I'm not going to buy a whole town Kim Basinger style) I want to write a history of a small town or village, describing the history of all the properties, the families who lived there over centuries, how the wider historical events and movements affected (or passed by) my little corner of England (or Wales or Scotland - who knows where I might end up living in the future).

Watching New York episode of Stephen Fry in America... a rare moment of nostalgia. When I see New York on film or television it doesn't seem possible I lived there. Even when I was there, the New York in the movies seemed like somewhere else. Oh wow, he's just landed on a ferry at Lewes, Delaware. I was in Lewes today. The one in Sussex.

Dreaming of TNA

When my sleep is disturbed, my dreams are invaded and become wrapped up in National Archives cataloguing numbers. WO 363, ADM 188, CUST 47, CP 165, RAIL 66... They swirl around in my head and keep me from falling back into a deep sleep. I think it may be my subconscious mind trying to make order out of chaotic thoughts.

Last night it was IR numbers. Part of my brain was trying to interpret a confusing email I had received - that was assigned IR8. There were other IR numbers assigned to different parts of the dream. IR stands for.... you guessed it, Inland Revenue. Now that really is a nightmare!!!

Are you looking at me?

I found out today that my 3x great grandfather David Woodcroft had a glass eye. Great for creeping out the grandkids.

Francis and Frances sitting in a tree

What do you do when you like hearing your own name? Marry someone with the same name and get a double dose every day.

I hate those family lines that stop up suddenly in the 19th century, it just doesn't look right. This is England, we've got parish records. Every line should make it to at least the 1700s. I've been working on some of these stunted lines (remember Richard and Judy), and today it was the turn of the Gilby's to be unmasked. Ann Gilby Sharp died in Kensworth in 1873 at the ripe old age of 91. We had no parents for her. Genealogists talk about brick walls, this was more of a speed bump. Her name at marriage was Gilby, but at birth was recorded as Guilby, far enough down the microfiche that Mum had not found it all those years ago. Thank goodness for familysearch!

Ann was baptised in Hitchin, at St Mary's church, daughter of Francis Guilby and Elizabeth Fountain. I love that name. Francis' parents were Francis Gilby and Frances Cooper, married on 12 October 1733. I don't think I'm going to have this problem. A dude named Genevieve would be an interesting creature indeed. Francis parents were Matthew Gilby (another name I really like) and Mary Turner. And it stops there, familysearch doesn't have a baptism for Matthew, but I'll track him down some other way.

There's heavy rain today, and the gentle rumble of distant thunder. Wonderful.

It sounds just like the tape we used to listen to in Saudi Arabia. People in Alaska have those lamps so they don't get S.A.D. and we used to listen to a cassette tape of the sound of rainstorms to remind us what moisture was. We'd turn off the lights in the living room and pull the curtains to make it dark like it was overcast outside, then open the door slightly as if the sound was coming from outside and switch on the tape and just listen.

The sound of rain still makes me happy.

Birthday starts early

Dad returns to Dallas on Wednesday, so he gave me his birthday presents early:


I raved about the series the BBC did recently on the Norman Conquest period and thoughtful Dad had a bright idea. And we found this beautiful book on St Albans Abbey at the library when I was doing some research, and he's got me my own copy!

We always used to hire a car over August bank holiday weekend when I would come home from New York, so we decided to keep up the tradition. I wanted to see the Elizabethan garden that English Heritage restored at Kenilworth Castle.

Then we went to the West Country. First to Wells, where the cottages are made of a salmon-coloured stone.

Wells Cathedral

And just behind the Wells Bishop's palace are open fields - I can't imagine a more English landscape.

The ruins of Glastonbury Abbey.

We drove along the Dorset coast. It was a beautiful day (perhaps the only day in August that the sun has shone) and the sky and water were a wonderful blue. This is Chesil Beach.

We also made a stop in Weedon in Northamptonshire where my great-great-grandparents Thomas Dellas and Sarah Ann Baron were married at the Weedon Barracks. No pictures though - I took snaps of the wrong buildings. Ooops.