WDYTYR exhibition at Olympia

Went to Olympia today and had a great time. I started by managing to get my Ancestry subscription offer and a free cup of coffee. Good start.

Visited the U3A stand to give them a copy of our programme and celebratory booklet and express our disappointment at not having our article published. We await to see if I did any good.

Browsing around the stalls I bought a couple of books and three maps and picked up several leaflets. It was good to hear Mark Bayley's talk about the Genealogist website and how to get the best from it. I picked up several tips. I also went to one of the DNA talks, quite interesting, oh I do wish I could get some men interested.

Great to meet many people, talk to old friends and meet new ones.

New arrival

Welcome to a new Great Great Grandson for Thomas Wilfred William Huitson and Margaret Greathead born yesterday. Congratulations to Mark and Kelly.

ONS informal meeting

Six of us met yesterday in Worcester Park at the house of Sue. This meeting was postponed from January when all that white stuff fell on us. We had two members with very large studies and it was interesting to hear how they deal with ONS. We also looked closely how one member drew up charts which were linked to each other and others indexed theirs. Shoe boxes came into the conversation quite a lot.

One person commented "I think one good thing I learnt on Friday is that I probably put too much pressure on myself to get up to date with my ONS. I feel compelled every time a new site is mentioned to have a look and gather yet more information which sits in a huge pile. The reality is I will never be up to date nor ever finish. (It is just annoying when people ask for help with a line and you are missing the information.)"

I think we can all agree with that sentiment, don't you.

ONS informal meeting

Several of us met in Capel last evening and discussed man aspects of collecting and storing data for our ONS. I great evening meeting new faces and chatting with "old" friends. Look forward to the next one on 19 February in Worcester Park

Website updated 1 February 2010

Wow what a night. Massive power failure covering a huge area lasted just over an hour. Just as I was creating the website. Crash. Power returned we had dinner eventually started again, another power cut. This went all a further three times until by 11:00 all really seemed well. I did not check the data very well and in haste at midnight pressed the update button, only to discover this morning that the data was corrupt.


After a few hairy moments I have now finally updated the website. If you find a problem I would be very grateful if you would let me know.


Some extra photographs and much source material entered. No huge "finds" but I plod on