Month in Review - January 2011

January is always a funny month, and is often depressing, the anti-climax from Christmas. The Festive season in this house passed by fairly quickly. The workload in the run up to Christmas was huge in the day job and compounded by the dreadful weather. I was glad to have the early part of the month on annual leave, especially as there is always a strange feeling when one is in the middle of their notice period. In addition to that,the cold and flu season was dreadful with Stuart getting flu, yes proper flu not "man flu" despite having the flu vaccination. After the flu followed an infection and now 5 courses of antibiotics later there might just be some improvement. Meanwhile I did not remain cold free, Stuart's cold ping ponging its way back and forth between us, and I have had three colds since November, stress and weather driven I suspect. Also, as I have mentioned elsewhere, my Aunt passed away on 29th December and the funeral was on the 11th January. So we started off the new year, that I had high hopes for on a rather sad note.

I had two books turn up, unannounced from the publishers - thank you!

1. South Riding by Winifred Holtby
2. Seperate Beds by Elizabeth Buchan

I've not started reading them yet, but they are high on the agenda.

I had a rather good month on the blog and genealogy front. Firstly, I was approached to have my Grave Encounters blog featured on the Graveyard Rabbits blog. At the end of January I was asked to write a guest post on the Geneabloggers blog about Robert Burns Day (Burns Night) for 25 January. I was Inspired by the post on Twigs of Yore in commemoration of Australia Day on 26 January, which doubled up as my Ancestor of the Week post.

Since the beginning of January I have been posting two regular themes.

1. Ancestor of the week about an ancestor, which is actually a good way of taking stock of what is known about an ancestor.I am attempting to post every Saturday, even if they are a bit late.
2. Treasure of the Month is attempting to discuss an item each month which is considered a treasure by me. Posting will usually be on the last Saturday of the month. (January post is a week late!)

Following my creating Grave Encounters and loading some photos onto the site I decided to add some extra details to the graves that I featured, which are those relating to the Bowring family. I then received an email from the editor of the Bangalore edition of Time Out which asked if I had some further information about Lewin Bentham Bowring.

This blog was nominated for an Ancestor Approved Award by Allin at Australian Genealogy Journeys.

On the whole, the month ended on a good note and from where I am standing February is looking to be good too!