Well, the weather has beaten us!  We were due to exhibit at the Arboretum Trust at Castle Howard on 23rd January but, due to melting snow causing floods and mud, the situation of the Arboretum being so far down a dirt track, the organisers, www.yorkshireancestors.com, have been advised to cancel, rather than risk the health and limbs of exhibitors and customers.

We are reminded of an old poem:

Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot,

Whatever the weather, we'll weather the weather,

Whether we like it or not!

It's damp and cold

And I am being told

That it will rain again tonight

Hope the weatherman's not right

They said it was going to be wild and wet and windy today - they weren't wrong this time. It has been remarkable wet this year, day after day of rain and record rainfalls. I suppose that, if it were a bit colder, it would be snowing now, so have to be thankful that it is only raining.

This weekend, Sunday 22nd November, we are trekking down south - is it any warmer down there? - to the Milton Keynes Family History Show, at Bletchley Park, where we expect to see Dr. Nick Barratt, of the BBC programme "Who Do You Think You Are?" He is going to be giving a talk on researching the history of a house and also one about Family History & the Media.

There is also a chance to look around the Enigma site and a talk about that.

Dr. Bruce Durie of Strathclyde University, Glasgow, talking on researching family history in Scotland, with the title "Not all Clans and Tartans."

Since the census are now all online, I have found some of my ancestors who originated in Scotland - none of them stayed there - must be warmer down south!

Talking of Scotland - have you seen our publication, "The New Testament in Braid Scots" - this is a fascinating read! Actually, surprisingly, the translation of the Bible into Scot's dialect makes it quite easy to read, and also makes some stories a little more easy to understand - give it a try - it's on our shop page. I will try to put up a sample, so you can see how clever it is. It was written over 100 years ago and was a best seller at that time, running into several reprints!

More poetry:

If November sky was less grey and more blue

I wouldn't be here writing this for you

I'd be out in the sunshine, walking the dog

Instead I am inside and outside is fog

We got all this new equipment, so now we can scan slides and negatives at fantastic high definition and enhance the results to revitalise the colours. Brett is fine tuning his techniques and doing a great job of removing scratches and dust specks from old slides and producing some really first class results. The colour and definition are so good. We found an old slide about 40 years old, of a child playing on a carpet, and enhanced it. Now you can even see the dust on the carpet! No, you didn't need to see that, but it just shows how much clarity you can get from a 600dpi scan. Slides were originally intended to give a much better quality of photo than a print, but they detiorate

At last  summer has arrived! Well, we had two whole days when it didn't rain at all, so I suppose that makes it summer. We are travelling again - this time we are going to the West Midlands Family & Local History Fair at the Racecourse at Worcester. This is uncharted territory for us, so if you see us there, please stop and say hello.