Home! Where my Berry ancestors once lived. Researching family history is a minefield for the novice and the unprepared. This lesson was quickly learned with my first foray into searching the archives in the hope of finding clues to my lately discovered Welsh ancestry. To contact any Public Records Office or similar repository and merely state you are researching the Smith family will get you nowhere in a long time. However, there is every prospect of achieving a result by saying you are tracing the marriage of a John Smith from such and such a parish around about 1815. Names,… Continue reading

The elephant is back in the room, wearing his tinsel, Santa hat and stupid grin. Continue reading

Where will it all end? When will the unwanted guardians who loom over everything we do give us our lives back? Today we have been warned of the health hazards in that time-honoured childhood pleasure of licking the bowl at cake-making time. Gawd help us. If that were so, I… Continue reading