Apart from a week off for half term, I continue to plough through box after dusty box of material in the Archive Centre at my old school. Sadly, my efforts are not producing the hoped for results, though much of what I find is absolutely fascinating to me. This is disappointing because it is the first time they have asked for my help with anything, and I am drawing a blank. I have plenty of ideas for how their impending 125th birthday might be celebrated, but so far my suggestions appear to have fallen on deaf ears. However, this has not stopped me from surreptitiously initiating a couple of them!

Because I wasn't finding anything, I asked to be allowed to go to 'Head Office' to see what they held in respect of my school. I went with a friend (the two of us were described by the Deputy Head as 'a formidable pair'!), and we found that they had even less stuff than we did! I suspect that this is because the school borrowed material from them for the Centenary (in 1983) and never returned it!!

As a consolation I invited the Archivist to visit us, to see what I was doing. The promise of returning some archives seemed to produce approval for my efforts!

Proof reading of volume III of my memoirs is a slow process because I have to ask more people to do so than with previous ones. The subject matter differs widely and so I need to seek the help of friends involved with those particular parts of my life.

My eldest cousin appears to have been encouraged, by reading volume II of my memoirs, to publish his own. I received these late in the month, and have already learnt much about his early life, in South Wales and Yorkshire, which I did not previously know. His book is imaginatively titled 'The Son of a Preacher Man', for his father was a Methodist minister!

After submitting maps and drawings, all in quantities of six, costing £100, I received a letter telling me that planning permission for my conservatory is NOT necessary! Talk about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing ...