Firstly, some news you have all been waiting for – we have phones and broadband thanks to Steve, the 6th BT Engineer to enter our offices on Thursday. It was as though a miracle had occurred! And so, we spent much of the latter part of the week working out how to transfer calls and other such earth-shattering excitement. The broadband speed is faster than lightning and being networked properly now makes such a terrific difference. Not only that …. the end of the week saw our Planning Application for change of use from retail (A1) to office (A2) approved by Wiltshire Council. It’s a shame that our letter hasn’t, as yet, been included online but not to worry!
The end of the week/early weekend was somewhat different from ‘normal’ (whatever that is). Leaving the office at 1:30pm, I headed to Swindon…. the Society for One-Place Studies Conference began early, with an ‘optional extra’ of a trip to the Historic England Archive. I am rather embarrassed to admit that in five years of living in Wiltshire and working in the field of local and family history full-time for many years, I had never visited before and it’s 16.5 miles door-to-door. It is most certainly a hidden treasure and, if you haven’t looked on their website, I would recommend searching for your place/s of interest. Staggeringly, 31 results for my tiny parish of Tetcott!
The evening saw 17 of us join together for an evening meal before the actual Conference on Saturday. Genealogy can be a very isolated pastime/hobby/obsession and it was hugely motivating to meet with so many enthusiastic and knowledgeable members (and several partners who braved the event too!). The talk lengths were varied depending on what speakers requested (rare for conferences) and their topics all fell under the Shared Endeavour for this year – Visualisation. So many ideas and so little time…. I think we’ve got lists long enough to last us for months of full-time work on our places!
And today, Invoice/Catch-up Sunday has been fun and games with lots of introduction/follow-up emails still to do. And then, normal office life can resume tomorrow …. bring it on!
