It's 5 in the morning...

... and I'm on my way to a much anticipated holiday in New York...

The flight doesn't leave until 0930 but allowing for the recommended 3 hours for check-in and security, Graham's unique blend of travel paranoia and the vagaries of the 724 bus service results in a get up at 4AM!

Oh well, at least I'm on my way...

And the winner isn't...

...me

I finally got around to checking the postcode for the Leisure Centre from Sunday...

I had BH2 1DT and it should have been BH21 4DT

My bad - sorry Jeanne, sorry John

Wimborne, Family History, Car Navigation

Here we are on Sunday morning, up at 6 so we could be on the way by 7...

It's a family history fair (The Dorset and South West Fair) run by Alec Quartmain - this link http://members.aol.com/aquarterma/familyhistoryfairs.html will get you to his website for other places and dates.

It should have taken us about and hour and a half to get there - if the TomTom navigator could have found the right place. The trip itself was relatively uneventful although the weather was quite atrocious - it rained for most of the way there and the late rising of the sun in the early mornings here at the moment just adds to thrill!

The navigator indicated we were at our location giving us plenty of time to find somewhere to grab some breakfast before getting into the leisure centre to set up our tables. Unfortunately the leisure centre itself was nowhere to found. After a couple of minutes I noticed that we were not on Blandford Road as we should have been, so we input that as a location and was told that it was another 6 miles down road...

It was 'A' Blandford Road not THE Blandford Road that we needed... we tried calling both Ron and Carol (Genealogy Printers) but both of their phones we not accepting calls (bummer) - we reverted to the ol' Road Atlas to find a place called Hillbutts (a name included in the address but not available on the TomTom. We finally got close enough to where we needed to be that there were now signs pointing us towards the Queen Elizabeth Leisure Centre - woohoo! and it only added an extra half hour onto the trip...

Of course it was still raining (having escalated to hail for a short time earlier) so it was a mad dash to get the car unloaded as quickly and as dryly as possible.

Once the car had been parked we were able to get our tables setup prior to looking for some kind of coffee and breakfast. We had three tables for this fair (normally we do with two) so it meant we could spread out a bit. John was able to establish reasonably quickly that we could get a signal on the data cards so we set about getting the rest setup.

We (Jeanne, John and I) have laptops for these events. The people at FindMyPast provide Jeanne and John with data cards that connect into the mobile phone services to provide 3G or GPRS connection to the internet. I have a setup that allows Jeanne and I to have a small LAN environment to I can share her internet connection - I also bring along a laser printer to share on the network for doing any ad-hoc printing. We normally have a banner announcing our wares but this time we managed to not bring it - it had been shifted and partially hidden in the room at Jeanne's place, so was overlooked - a temporary solution was found so at least people could find us...

And speaking of finding - Jeanne went in search of coffee and bacon rolls for breakfast, except there were none - the leisure centre had closed down it's cafe so nothing was provided on-site except for chips 'n chocolate from a vending machine - at a 'health' centre - and staff on duty didn't seem to think that was out-of-place...

Jeanne and I headed into Wimborne in the hopes of finding a cafe or bakery so that we could also get something in for lunch... all that was open on this Sunday morning (excluding the church) was a Martin's newsagent which fortunately had (just) enough in the way of sandwiches to provide some chewy goodness(?)

The day itself was surprisingly busy given the weather. We managed to see about 40 people (I think) between us. It still amazes me how many people will go to a family history fair, where they'll be able to talk to family history societies, us and others, to get advice on their research... and they fail to actually bring any of it with them! Some do turn up with notes and charts so we can help them through some difficulty or other but there are still a large number that will be trying to remember the dates and names and then get frustrated that we can't help when presented with such scant information - c’est la vie

The trip home was easier with only a minor(ish) delay caused by an accident on the M27 (or it might have been the M3 by then...)

This was the last fair for the year, so it was good to do a final catch-up with the regulars Ron & Carol (Genealogy printers), Mick and Tom (Stepping Stones), Howard (GoONS bookstall) and others. Next fair that we will be going to is the East of London in late January - check out the Outreach page in the events calendar on the Society of Genealogist website (link is on the side panel).

GoONS in Hounslow

The Guild of One-Name Studies (GoONS) held a seminar in Hounslow today.

The Guild is an organisation for those family history researchers who study all occurrences of a single surname. Often the surname examined is that of the individual or, as in my case, I've chosen the surname of a Great-Great-Grandmother (HAYTER) because I had hit a bit of a brick wall tracing her ancestors. The idea was to do a blanket search in the hopes of picking up the appropriate thread... more of that at another time.

The seminar today was about "Organising records on a computer" and was held at Montague Hall (I wonder if there's connection with Let-make-a-deal!**) in the middle of Hounslow. We (Jeanne, John and I) eventually managed to get to the place after dealing with a Tom-Tom navigator that didn't know the Hounslow one-way road system at about 8ish. Plenty of time to head to a café for a timely english breakfast...

Returning to the hall we were faced by a Hall supervisor who was not prepared to let us at 9 (so we could setup) but at 10 (when the seminar was due to start). Fortunately Jeanne (ever prepared) was able to provide some printouts of what had been paid for and arranged, so we were able to get in an get things organised. Howard was also there early as well to setup the GoONS bookstall.

The program consisted of five presentations:

Overview - Jeanne Bunting
Using General Purpose Programmes - Sue Turner
Custodian - Brian Horridge
The Master Genealogist - Teresa Pask
Family Historian - John Hanson

It was a full day and very enjoyable - Brian's talk on the software package Custodian has given that extra push I needed to give it another try. Custodian is an all-purpose database designed to hold the bits and pieces of information collected along the way in family history research. I find the interface a tad over-done and 'busy' but I might try again with it.

I think the attendance was about 50 so quite a good turn out.

Although we managed to pack reasonably quickly at the end we found ourselves stuck in traffic jams trying to get back to Jeanne's house back near Guildford. Apparently there was a rugby game at Twickenham and there were quite a few road closures. What should have been a 40 minute trip ended up taking about an hour and a half...

Early night tonight as we are off the a Family History show down in Wimborne (Dorset) at 7 in the morning...

** Monty Hall was the presenter of the TV show "Let Make A Deal" in the US from 1963 to 1977

OK, I've got this whole email-to-blog thing worked out, so I should be able to get posts into this beasty a bit more easily.

That being said I probably should get back to work...