Bilaeva

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 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.

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!!!

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

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.

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.