Clarissa et al.

I took Joe to the archives in Lincoln to climb a few branches higher up his family tree. It is all so very different from the old days at the castle when we had the huge pleasure of handling the original documents - the readers are very isolating compared with the way two people could look at the same parish register and decipher the handwriting together. Joe, with his dyslexia, found the microfisch virtually impossible to read so went off to look at Kelly's directories etc. At one point he was getting very frustrated and stroppy, but lunch at Stokes sorted that out (Just like his mother - ratty when hungry!)

However we have gone back another generation in three lines and filled in a gap. We are still short of a maiden name as East Halton has not deposited its post 1837 Marriages Register and the Bishop's Transcripts are muddled and incomplete. We'll try the Rector or Churchwardens someday soon. Still, not at all a bad day.

Mind you, I suddenly felt like something up the family tree instead of my usually youthful self when I noticed the appointment of a headmaster to a local school; he was middle-aged, grey-haired, and I used to teach him when he was a little boy!

Today is my birthday - you can find which one by looking at my profile on the right of the screen, though personally I only admit to being 26. I also, with almost equal conviction, claim to be a natural blonde with a supermodel figure.

Last year I had a children's party for adults - silly and fun. This year it is to be a nice civilised dinner at Issy's with two more of my four best friends and my god-daughter among others. Moreover it's half-term in North Lincolnshire which means I am not at work.

Yesterday Joe and I went out to lunch on the day between our birthdays at Cafe Valerie on the Kingsway in Cleethorpes. (For my cousins - this used to be Slaney's bookshop where Nan bought "The Land of Green Ginger" by Noel Langley for us - 2 copies, mine several years after yours, but from the same slightly dusty shelf.) Joe's birthday was his twentieth! A teenager no more! He then went on to spend some of his birthday money on a silver tea-set and a bone china cup, saucer and plate in a junk-cum-antique shop (the only straight man of his age in the world who drinks his afternoon Earl Grey thus?). I bought him a collectable toy - an Austin 1300 boxed with Basil Fawlty beating it up with a tree branch.

There was a dog in church again yesterday - this time it was a guide dog, so legitimately a member of the congregation. Its presence raises an interesting theological question: when I received communion Jess (niece) came to the altar rail for blessing; as the dog also goes up to the altar rail should s/he too receive a blessing? We are all God's creatures.

On Friday I did the first of three talks in the village hall about Family History Research. This one was concerned with all the evidence you have of your family in your own home. The small group covered a wide age range 14 to 80. Some of the things one says about asking the older family members about their memories would seem not to apply with the older members of the group, but one of the oldest is going to consult his 94 year old uncle!

Joe has really got the bug, and - thanks to the web, not to mention Liz's enhanced access to family history records - has got back to a great-great-great-great-grandmother on his father's side, which is only five generations and just over 200 years short of what we know on my side. All this since he started on Thursday! Of course, it does help to have all three surviving grandparents in walking distance, not to mention me.

Saturday would have been Nan's 111th birthday. She helped me draw up my first family tree when I was 6: I wonder if she had any idea what she was starting?

Nan was not a lady who liked being photographed. The first of these (from the 1940s?) is very typically Nan, the next is her wedding portrait, and the last is one of the last pictures we have of her.

By extraordinary coincidence, a very, very distant cousin (seventh cousin twice removed), who is researching Cleethorpes fishing families, rang up this evening and has subsequently e-mailed a whole load of information.

It then gets even odder. Given just one new placename - Eskham near Marshchapel - and I find that my great-great-great-grandmother, Ann Coulbeck nee Pennell, is the sister of Liz's great-great-great-grandfather, William Blythe Pennell. We have both been researching our family trees (and swapping notes) since we were children, and have never spotted this link, although these particular ancestors have been sitting on our respective neatly tabulated family trees for more than a quarter of a century! So we are now officially fifth cousins, after a lifetime of being best friends.

Today the sun is shining, and the flowers are blooming; I can go outdoors without putting on a cardy or coat.

I'm happy, and not just because it feels like spring. After two days without internet access the computer is fixed. Five years ago I thought the internet was something for teenage nerds, and now I feel utterly bereft without it.

I went to work today prepared for the Victorian Laundry. I unlocked the laundry, opened up the shutters, put on the lights, filled all the dolly tubs, put out the activities etc., and went to meet the bus.

The school had booked for the Victorian Schoolroom - it was clearly marked on their booking confirmation, but was not what it said on my sheet.

So I sent them off to the lunch room while I went back to the laundry, turned off the lights, gathered my belongings and locked up properly; then I went across to the hall, explained the situation, went upstairs, opened up the shutters in the schoolroom, turned on the lights, got out the children's costumes, took off my apron, wrote on the board, collected the register, cane and bell, and went down to meet the children . . .

And then at the end of the day, I had two workshops to clear up after.

As I said at the top . . . grrrr! The office is making mistakes every week now, which it never did in Averil's day.

Josh, on the other hand, is very happy. He advertised his 50cc kiddy motorbike on e-bay, and has sold it for £100 . . . which he intends to put towards a 125cc bike! He is fourteen!

Josh on the old bike.