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.

"It is very vexatious to honourable feelings, when we go into society at home and abroad, to meet foreigners of all nations covered with medals and orders, when we, who have had the pleasure of licking them in every part of the world, have neither orders nor medals." - a Wellington-era British officer argues discretion is NOT the better part of valour.

I love my work! I go to London all day, and I work on the train on the way, and on the way back (although occasionally I read a book that's not work related although they're historical in some way). And then as I walk down the steps at Luton station on my way home I start to get excited, because soon I'll be home and I can get my computer out and do some MORE WORK. Not like direct work, that's what I do in the archives, but some background reading, maybe a little tinkering around on familysearch, trawling through the National Archives online catalogues. Today, I picked up a couple more small projects. I finished my first magazine piece this week which should be running in the next issue but one, and I've got two more on the go.

Don't worry, I haven't become some kind of workaholic. I still have time for tinkering with other stuff, tending my garden, and watching all those awesome new programs on the BBC about Normans and Saxons. In fact, it seems I've spent an awful lot of time lately watching middle aged men wandering around damp fields and tripping over ruined buildings. Although the Norman series went to Sicily and Jerusalem this week which are not damp and completely amazing. And I did have some play time tonight. I met up with Dad and went to dinner in Chinatown. We ate spicy beef and I chattered about...err, work.

I love being in an unfamiliar train station and looking at a board filled with destinations I never see at home...

I was in Manchester this weekend. It looks like it was a grand city once, but now I thought if felt like Boston, but without the history. I don't know if that makes sense. Anyway, it was just still light when we left Manchester Piccadilly on the train journey home, and I could look out the window and read all the station signs and everything written on the sides of old buildings. I wanted to see everything and remember it all. I want to know everything about everywhere. That's why I love my job, I'm learning things all the time. Obscure, perculiar things about obscure, peculiar people and places, and I'm trying to remember it all.

Oh and they have trams in Manchester. I LOVE trams.

I'm in Lancashire

First time ever. It's pretty exciting.

At three months, little Jacob is really starting to come to life.

Looking ahead to my birthday (wow, only two months to go) I'm thinking about birthday treats for myself. How about a trip to Bayeux to see the tapestry, something I've wanted to do since I was quite small. And if I'm going to northern France, perhaps I should take in Beauvais as well.

Any other bright ideas?

I totally smoked the boys on University Challenge trying to identify lego representations of British musicians. I rock!

I couldn't quite beat them to the answers on many of the others questions, but we know what counts here.

I've just been sent another followup from a previous client - my first project on early army records, she's sent like new names - and then hot on it's heels came three - yes three! - offers for magazine work bang in a row. They're American case studies and I'm the Yank so... What a morning my head is spinning!

I can't concentrate today. I'm supposed to be writing a lengthy client report for work. And I just can't do it, too much on my mind that's not a Georgian villa in Blackheath. This is the trouble with going freelance, it's easier to confine your thoughts to work when you're chained to a desk. I think I'm gonna go help my friend dig up her garden this afternoon instead. I need air and space. And gardens are a great place to think.

The report is my first house history project and it's definitely something I'd like to do a lot more of. And I have a repeat client. He was happy with my report on an ancestor's naval career, so now he wants us to do some follow up research. That's five projects now that I've done - a house history, a merchant seaman, an excise officer, a sailor and a soldier who fought at the Battle of Waterloo.

Wow, driving in London is certainly an adventure