Asking for it

 Despite her cold, Ellie slept well. She woke briefly at 6:15 then after some attention from the Silver Vixen, she went back off to sleep for another hour. The decision had already been made, that she wouldn't be going to Dizzy Ducklings, but it was clear that she wasn't really up to it. We got her up and about and before long Urban-Cub arrived to take charge. She had a rest day, so she would have Ellie with her for the day.

The door closed. The Silver Vixen finished preparing for Zoom Pilates, and the Gorse Fox drove across to Worthing for today's football. He felt fine, after yesterday, but realised as soon as he started to warm up, that the muscles (so abused after a long lay-off) were not going to cooperate without some degree of complaint. 

Warm-up complete, we had the first game. It was clear that we were under the cosh, at the back. The first game finished 2-1; but not in our favour. The Gorse Fox almost scored a carbon copy of yesterday's goal, but today's keeper just got a hand to it and pushed it round the post. At the end of the game we had a 30 minute break before our next match. This was played at a much slower pace. People were, clearly, tiring. The Gorse Fox thinks the final score was 1-0 to his team, but to be honest he can't remember.

This afternoon, the muscles are tightening up and it is clear that the Gorse Fox was asking for it, playing two days in a row after such long layoff.

It's all in the timing

Ellie had a wonderful party yesterday, but this morning she woke up full of cold. She is a veritable snot-machine. The Gorse Fox went round to meet them and walk with them to Dizzy Ducklings. Though clearly unwell, she insisted that she wanted to go.

Back home the Gorse Fox did a quick change and headed out to Worthing. Football restarted today. The Gorse Fox was one of the 14 players booked in for today's game. (He only booked for the first hour, the second hour - pure running football - will have to wait a few weeks). The teams were evenly balanced and the new chap in charge of the football was playing on the Gorse Fox's team. It was a good start to playing again. The Gorse Fox managed to score a good goal and hit the post twice. We played three games, drawing the first two, 2-2 and 1-1, and then losing 1-0 in the final game.

The Gorse Fox was delighted with how things had gone. He had played well and wasn't too tired at the end. Time will tell if he stiffens up overnight. There's another game scheduled for tomorrow morning.

We had a message, Ellie was fading fast and we go and collect her. We whizzed around to pre-school and collected her. Her cold was in full flood. 

We brought her home and spent a quiet afternoon with her. Fortunately, we had a few more Birthday presents for her to unwrap and that occupied her for a while. Then, with a new doll and cot to play with, she spent the afternoon mothering the new addition to her family.

Four!

 It's a big day, today. Today, Ellie reaches the grand old age of four. We're not expecting a telegram from Her Majesty, but with the timely releasing of some lockdown conditions today, there is a little party planned.

Urban-Cub has gone to town, so to speak. She has arranged for a company to set up a soft-play zone in her garden.

This to wait until after Dizzy Ducklings, though.

Urban-Cub and the Gorse Fox escorted the Birthday Girl (wearing her party dress) to pre-school. Then left them to it.

The Silver Vixen spent the morning with Urban-Cub making sure everything was set and ready for the mayhem that would ensue.

At lunchtime, the Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen went round to Dizzy Ducklings to collect a little band of children and escort them all back to the party. It was like herding cats. Some ran ahead, some dragged behind, one fell over and needed comforting. Somehow, we all made it back safely, and without mislaying any children.

As soon as they say the bouncy castle and soft play area, they were gone. Charging about, up the slide, down the slide, bouncing on the "stage", and wallowing in the ball pit. it was a huge success and all of the kids played nicely and enjoyed themselves. There were no tantrums, no tears, no shouting; just good cheerful, happy children.

Urban-Cub has set a precedent. How she will top this next year will be interesting to see.

Leap forward

 Well, the clocks went forward overnight. Despite this, we both had a very good night's sleep and a very gentle start to the day.

Urban-cub dropped by on her way to work. She had two lovely joints of beef for us. They had reached their expiry date and were being sold off at £2 each. Seemed too good of a bargain to pass up. They are nestling in the freezer for future use.

The Gorse Fox returned to his family tree. A few hundred more locations and addresses have been resolved and standardized. Unfortunately, these do not get carried up to Ancestry and back down to the laptop in such a way that it realizes that the locations have been resolved. This is another case where backup/restore is the way forward.

Meanwhile, the Gorse Fox has tried to generate the first cut of a book for his "Law" relatives. Because of the size of the family, he is now in the middle of generating Volume IV... which is the 10th generation. Only a few more to go now.

Addresses

 The day started with the regular weekly call with the Gorse Fox's cousins. As usual, it was a bit of a hoot, though some were experiencing connection problems. The draft of the book that the Gorse Fox had sent has gone down well. He now awaits feedback, photos, and more stories.

In the meantime, his task of rationalising addresses and places in Family Tree Maker continues. There are some 1600 items to check, so it is somewhat time consuming. Worse still, some of the places refer to locations or streets that no longer exist. This means bring to track them down on old maps and then entering the GPS coordinates. The Gorse Fox has been at it all day, but suggests that there are still many hundreds to go.

We had a nice long chat with Tinkerbell on the doorstep this afternoon. The Gorse Fox made his excuses and left the Silver Vixen to it when they got onto the subject of hairdressers and hair colouring.

Plodding On

 As usual, the Gorse Fox popped round to accompany Urban-Cub and Ellie on the walk to school. It was clear that Ellie was in a defiant mood.  This was not going down well with Urban-Cub. After a battle of wills, Ellie finally donned her coat and we were able to head off to Dizzy Ducklings.

Back home, there were accounts to be checked and some domestic chores to tick off before the Gorse Fox could head up to the study. There he returned to the rationalisation of place names in his genealogical database. This is proving to be a very lengthy (and somewhat frustrating) process. It was the focus of the rest of the day until we had to collect Ellie.

Ellie was only with us fo just over an hour before Pistol Pete arrived to collect her for the weekend. Well, he arrived for the first time. We handed over Ellie and her bags. We asked the question "Has she got bunny?" and were assured that bunny was in the suitcase. Pistol Pete and Ellie left.

The Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox went to tidy up. There, under a cushion, was Bunny. Even though we had noticed her remove it from the case, and replaced it in the case, we hadn't noticed that she had removed and hidden it again. We phoned Pistol Pete. By this point he was several miles away, but knew it was more than his sanity was worth to ignore the call. He turned round and came back for Bunny. We handed it over and Ellie sat in the back of the car with a big grin on her face. Somehow, one suspects there was a cunning plan, or sheer devilment. 

Too Cool for School

 A bit grey again today, but it remained dry until early afternoon. Then we had a few showers. 

The Gorse Fox wandered round to Urban-Cub's and met them for the walk to school. Ellie zoomed off on her scooter and, once she had met up with a little friend, Riley, we had real trouble keeping up with her. The Gorse Fox has commented before that on arrival, there is often a little welcoming party for Ellie. Today this had escalated. She is clearly the cool kid in the school because as she hove into view all the kids started chanting in unison "Ellie, Ellie, Ellie". It was almost as if she had scored a goal at Wembley. She went through the door and was immediately consumed by the throng.

It's Thursday, so the shopping was the main item on the morning's agenda. Ocado did their bit, then the Gorse Fox went round to Sainsbury's for the top-up. It was a little worrying that we couldn't get any of the food that Jasper eats. (The fish-based food was available, but he won't eat that). None of the meat-based pouches that he likes were there. Sainsbury's had sent an email to say they were likely to experience difficulties, but this is the first time it has affected us.

Back home, the Silver Vixen was making clothes for Ellie's dolls. With her birthday next week, the Silver Vixen is on a deadline.

The Gorse Fox returned to the "book". Some more text arrived overnight, along with a few photos. These were added into the database and the book was regenerated. There was more editing to do, and further rationalisation of the place names. Now, at the end of the day, the Gorse Fox has just started to generate the next draft.

And the beat goes on

 It has been a pleasant, if slightly cool, day. Ellie was a bit defiant when it came to going to school. She demanded that we go by car. The Gorse Fox was having none of it. In the end she went in the buggy (but only if the Silver Vixen pushed her). Clearly, grandpa was not flavour of the month. The whinging continued until we were halfway there. Then we heard "Ellie!, Ellie!" called from an intersection. Fifty metres up the path was Bonnie. Bonnie is he friend. They ran to greet each other, hugged, and the World was, once again, in equilibrium.

The day was spent working through the "book". It's pretty much done, in terms of content, but there's a lot of tidying up that needs to happen. For example, there must have been a dozen variations of "Dover" that need to be rationalised. There was "Dover, Kent", "Dover Harbour", Dove St Mary the Virgin", "Dover Charlton" and many others. These needed to be standardised, and what was true of Dover was true of many of the places cited in the text. This isn't a feature of the Gorse Fox being inconsistent, he should add. It is caused by all of the different ways in which locations are identified in source documents.

The Gorse Fox did contact several of the cousins for a bit more information. Hopefully, that will turn up overnight. One cousin, it turns out, lived in Hoddesdon for a couple of years during the 1970s. He was there, in the next estate, to where the Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen lived. Even walking slowly, it would only have taken 15 minutes to get there - had we known!

We collected Ellie from school and she stayed with us for the afternoon. After we had given her dinner, and had our own, we cleared away and then walked Ellie round to their house. As Urban-Cub wasn't scheduled to finish until 19:00, it was easier to get Ellie settled in her own home, rather than have to uproot her once Urban-Cub got back from work.

Awake

 By 3:30 this morning the Gorse Fox was wide awake. He was determined to lie still and go back to sleep. Hi brain disagreed. His brain had started reflecting on the development of the book. When he tired of that it started to analyse the (ridiculous) Council Tax banding that Urban-Cub had just received. Then, when his brain started to switch off. his hip and his knee started to ache. Sleep was clearly going to evade him.

Once up and about he popped round to Urban-Cub's to meet them and walk with them to Ellie's school. It was a pleasant stroll in the cool (but dry) Spring morning.

Much of the morning was spent doing administrative chores, but once completed, the Gorse Fox returned to the nascent book. He listened to the oral history, recorded by Poopdeck Pappy. It was riveting, hearing how it was in the gun turret of a Naval cruiser during a battle. How he worked the cordite supply for the guns, clearing one charge every six seconds, and how they were temporarily disabled by shell from the Graf Spee. All of this filled in more details and enabled the Gorse Fox to construct more of a narrative for him. 

The afternoon saw more of a concentration on his children. Fortunately, one had a presentation available. This had been prepared for his local Rotary branch in Australia. This made it a little easier to construct his narrative. Now thug just has to get to grips with his 6 siblings. By now, the book has reached 140 pages, and the Gorse Fox hasn't started to edit it or elaborate further. He's hoping to have a draft for the weekend.

In other news, South Downs Leisure is restarting our football sessions next week. The Gorse Fox has managed to book an hour on Tuesday and ninety minutes on Wednesday. He suspects he will be as stiff as a board by Wednesday afternoon.

Oral History

 The day started well. By that, the Gorse Fox means that both he and the Silver Vixen were awake and about before Ellie stirred. We got her going and, quite clearly, the full night's sleep had done her good. She was in a lovely cheerful mood and everything went very smoothly.

Once back from taking her to Dizzy Ducklings, the Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen got on with their plans for the day.  The Gorse Fox returned o the Empson book and has now managed to get down to the generation equivalent to his own parents. Bit by bit he was able to add more flesh to the bones (so to speak) and get more of an idea of the history of the family. The last thing he managed to find (before having to break off to collect Ellie) was that one of the Empsons had left an oral history, of his time in the Navy, with the Imperial War Museum. The Gorse Fox hasn't yet had a chance to listen to more than the first minute or two of a thirty minute recording. It is clearly going to be an incredible source for his research.

Since Ellie came home, we have played in garden. The Gorse Fox has read her stories, we have played with flash cards and letters, and she has coiffed the hair of her doll. The Gorse Fox knows when he is out of his depth, and used that as an excuse to start on her dinner preparation. Urban-Cub collected Ellie later than planned after a bit of trouble at the store that needed her attention.

Things that make you wonder

The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen have had another day quite similar to yesterday.

The Silver Vixen has been pottering in the garden and the Gorse Fox has been on-call to help with any moving or shifting required.

The Gorse Fox has been in the study, still working on the family tree and the Empson book. This has thrown up a strange problem. Backing up the master file and media from the iMac (Condor) and restoring is to Windows (Osprey) the Gorse Fox had been seeing these 800+ seemingly damaged files. Mackiev (the developer) suggested re-downloading the tree from Ancestry. Willing to try, the Gorse Fox cleared Osprey and download the tree. It completed without incident. What was worrying was that the media folder is now some 1.8GB, whereas the same folder on Condor is over 6GB.... He will have to keep both on the go for now, until he is happy that there are no problems. If that is the case, Condor may well get a clean download!

As an aside it is Cousteau-Cub and the Coventry Hobbit's 8th Wedding Anniversary today. They celebrated with a two hour walk along the canal with the dogs. They also discovered that Harley, the new dog, clearly likes to swim after ducks.

We are expecting Ellie later. She'll be staying with us overnight.

Talking of family trees and associated data for genealogy. This weekend was the time to complete the 2021 Census. The Gorse Fox only hopes that genealogists of the future are as excited to open up the 2021 data, as the Gorse Fox is to open the 1921 data, later this year.

DIY

 It's been a nice day, but did start to get a little chilly after lunch. 

The Gorse Fox had his, now regular, Saturday call with his Empson cousins. As usual, it was a bit of a hoot. Several new family snippets emerged and will add colour to the work on the family book. Like last week, the Gorse Fox asked them to forward any photos they would like included. Only time will tell if any arrive!

The Silver Vixen was intent on doing a spring clean of the garden. The Gorse Fox helped with shifting furniture and so forth, but then remained accessible for further requests or instructions. 

While waiting, the Gorse Fox went round to help Urban-Cub. Ostensibly it was to mount a pin board to the wall, but by the time he arrived there was also a small mounting rack for the iron, and a large glass picture. These were soon done (though the glass picture needs a little adjustment).

Back home, the creation of the family book continued for the Empson cousins. This is progressing moderately well, but is likely to take a few more days.

Accelerating

 Ellie slept through to 7:00am this morning. She rushed into our bedroom and requested the "iPad". We got up and got going. Urban-Cub turned up by 8:00am and helped Ellie get ready for school then the Gorse Fox walked with them to the school gates.

Back home, the Gorse Fox dived into the pile of leaves that surrounds the family tree. Family Book Creator had more to reveal. The rest of the morning was spent working on clearing up various facts in the master file so that they would display properly when published, and modifying data around the media so that they display in the correct sequence. It is immensely time-consuming, but the results are excellent. His final act today was to try and compile a book for the cousins that he speaks with on Saturday morning. The first attempt failed - it had run out of memory. The Gorse Fox shutdown the program and restarted it. He then fired up the book compiler again. This time it worked. A 108 page book about the Gorse Fox's Empson cousins nestled on his file system. He spent a while this afternoon browsing through it to determine what changes would be needed to the master file to ensure that next time it is compiled, it is in a state that can be shared. At the moment the media is shown in a somewhat haphazard form, there are some phantom spouses, and there are a few formatting items that need changing. For a family this size, it will take several days of work, but the experience will put him in good stead for future families.

We collected Ellie from Dizzy Ducklings. As it was such a lovely afternoon she just wanted to play outside. We stopped at the playground on the way home, and once home she raced back and forth on her scooter in the garden, and chased bubbles until they disappeared or she had popped them. Urban-Cub finished work a couple of hours earlier than expected so collected Ellie and then left us to our own devices.

Slow progress

 Being Thursday there were domestic chores on which to concentrate once the Gorse Fox had wandered round to meet Urban-Cub and Ellie and walk with them to school. We had the Ocado delivery, then went to Sainsbury's before finally heading to the local pharmacy to collect a prescription that they hadn't yet filled.

By the time we got home there was only about an hour before we had to collect Ellie. An hour wasn't really enough. The Gorse Fox experimented with a few ideas that he had picked up from YouTube. These look promising but there is still a large number of errors in the media files that were meant to be transferred to Osprey.

One thing that became clear is whilst Osprey, Condor, and Harrier all have Family Tree Maker and sync with Ancestry, that sync can loose some FTM specific data. Clearly, it will be necessary to sync sideways by means of Backup/Restore. In turn, the Gorse Fox will have to get to the bottom of the 800+ media items that didn't transfer as part of that backup/restore between the iMac and Windows systems (but works between the two Macs).

We have Ellie with us overnight as Urban-Cub doesn't finish until 10:30pm or 11:00pm.

Author

 Well that has been a good start.

The Gorse Fox fired up the only remaining Windows laptop (Osprey) and triggered the update process... after all, there's always a bunch of updates to apply to Windows. Then, when everything was underway, he downloaded a copy of Family Tree Maker (FTM), and Family Book Creator (FBC). Both installed seamlessly. The next task was to backup the FTM files from the Mac (Condor) and take a copy across to Osprey. The files were then restored to FTM. There were several errors reported, but the Gorse Fox ignored them for now. The important thing was to try FBC and see if he could get any output that would be useful and presentable.

The Gorse Fox picked an ancestor at random and told FBC to create a book of the individual and his descendants. It blinked, then started to wade through the data. Ten minutes later, the Gorse Fox had a very presentable booklet. He tried again, on another ancestor, 30 minutes later he had a 108 page book. The Gorse Fox is very impressed. Now, that's not say that the output is perfect. There is clearly some tweaking to perform on the images, and some of the text. This will take some time, but is best done back in the FTM database so that, once correct, it will always be correct in any future publication.

Tomorrow the Gorse Fox will start to review some of the YouTube videos so that he can try to pick up all of the best practices.

In the afternoon we collected Ellie from school. She spent the afternoon playing schools with the Silver Vixen. Once we had all had our dinner and cleared away, we took Ellie home so that she could settle in before Urban-Cub got home just after 7pm. This worked quite well and we will probably do this again when she has a shift ending after 6:30pm.

Ditto

 Today was much like yesterday. Urban-Cub dropped Ellie off at 7:30 and headed off to work. Today she was working at the Chichester store, but more about that later. Ellie had already had breakfast and was eager to play. The Gorse Fox found himself, after his first coffee, on the stairs chasing a slinky down the steps then retrieving it and repeating the game. Eventually, it was time for Dizzy Ducklings. We got our coats on and, all of sudden, Ellie demanded we drive there. Given that the venue is only 600m from home and the weather was dry and mild, that was not going to happen (and the Gorse Fox certainly wasn't going to give her the car keys). She was not happy and we had tears for most of the way to pre-school. Indeed, they only dried up when we met up with one of the helpers en route.

Back home, being Tuesday, it was the online shopping list and a return to the family tree. The former was a simple formality, the latter was a chore today. The Gorse Fox had no real breakthroughs, and even those individuals he could work with, were not supported by sufficient corroborative information for the Gorse Fox to commit them to the tree.

As we wandered round to Dizzy Ducklings to collect Ellie, the Gorse Fox's phone rang. This is an immensely rare event, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. It was his cousin Maggie. She had found her notes about the family and was eager to pass them on. Well, the Gorse Fox couldn't take notes whilst on the move so he asked her to call back.

Maggie called back mid-afternoon. Gosh she can talk! It was about 75 minutes later that the Gorse Fox had to wind things up as he still had to prepare Ellie's dinner. The call was very interesting, however, and certainly added some flesh to many of the folk for who the Gorse Fox has records. Additionally, it added several new folk across several generations. It was a very interesting (if long) phone call. It doesn't help that the family had a propensity for calling people by nicknames: Auntie Rosa was Auntie Ron, Alice was Babs, Douglas was Dick, Percy was Arthur and so it continued. It will all take some sorting out in the morning.

Urban-Cub has just collected Ellie. She had had a really good at Chichester and met with the manager who is assigned as the regional trainer. She immediately saw the benefit of his mentorship and is arranging to transfer into this region (which is really where she was meant to be anyway). She's hoping that she'll move across permanently on 1st April.

Leafing about

 It was an early start. Ellie woke at 5:15 and, though she was fairly quiet, didn't really settle back to sleep. By 6:15 the Gorse Fox had taken the Android tablet in to her so that she could watch YouTube Kids. He went back to bed. For 90 seconds. The tablet was not doing what was expected and Ellie was demanding technical support. The problem was soon sorted and the Gorse Fox managed to go back to bed until 7:00.

After dropping Ellie at Dizzy Ducklings we went home for breakfast and then settled into the projects for today. The Silver Vixen was making some dolls dresses (and realising that the original patterns needed further embellishment to ensure longevity of the dress).

The Gorse Fox was back rifling through the leaves of the family tree. Whilst he hasn't driven it back any further, he has fleshed out some of the more recent branches. It's been quite successful really.

Urban-Cub has just collected Ellie, who will be sleeping at home for the next couple of nights. We'll see her early in the morning, though, so we can take her to school.

A Quiet Mother's Day

 We had a relaxed start to the day, though Cousteau-Cub messaged the Gorse Fox to find out if we were up and about; she wanted to drop off a Mother's Day card. So it was that we had our first visitor before nine o'clock this morning. She was dropping off a card and some decorative plants for the Silver Vixen. It was nice to see her as it has been a few weeks since her last visit. 

When she left us, she and the Coventry Hobbit were off to collect a new rescue dog as company for Bruno. This new dog is called Harley.

The Gorse Fox spent much of the day up in the branches of the family tree. He made contact with another researcher who, in turn, put him in touch with another one of the clan he he has been researching. In turn the Gorse Fox has passed on the information to his cousins so that they can choose to invite him to weekly Zoom call, if they should so wish. His research has also managed to push their part of the family tree back by another couple of generations.

Urban-Cub has just dropped off her Mother's Day cards and gifts, along with Ellie. Ellie will be staying with us overnight as Urban-Cub is on an early shift tomorrow.

Multiples

 It's been an immensely quiet and relaxing day. The weather has been mixed. Bright sunshine, high winds, heavy rain, have all taken their turns and it is fairly chilly out.

The Gorse Fox's focus has, again, been the family tree. This was stimulated by another Zoom call with his cousins this morning. He must say that he wishes he had got to know them all when he was much younger. They really are a very nice bunch of people and a result of the call he has burrowed further into their section of the tree. This has taken much of the day and revealed that his twin cousins were not an anomaly as, tracing back through their ancestors, we find that that their 2nd great grandmother had triplets and two sets of twins (among her brood of 14 children).

One of the nice features of the cousins' Zoom calls is that they usually have a theme.Each weelk they set a theme to be discussed the following week. Recent themes have included a music playlist for the family, a movie playlist, and coming up we have a dinner party guest list. They are expected to suggest 6 guests to attend a dinner party. As one cousin said about another's "special needs" she will have to treat her Bee Gees obsession as one single tricephalous guest. Another wanted to extend that idea to all of the Orcs from Lord of the Rings (which, needless to say, made the family movie list).

The Gorse Fox got a message from Urban-Cub. She needed to know the size of her garden. This is not the sort of information the Gorse Fox has at his finger tips (yet). He wandered round the corner with his laser device. Twenty minutes later we had all the relevant measurements to the nearest millimetre. The Gorse Fox knew it would come in useful!

As a rul, on Saturday, the Gorse Fox has a Tadka Dahl. This is usually a pre-prepared dish from M&S. This week we failed to order one. The Gorse Fox raided his spice mixes and created his own. It was delicious and was loosely based on an East African mix used heavily in Ethiopia. He modified it by adding extra vegetables (carrots, green peppers, celery, and spinach), but was delighted that there was sufficient left to freeze and use next week.

Assembly

 Ellie slept through last night. She disturbed briefly at 6:20 to shout "Dummy", then we didn't hear another sound until 6:50 when she got into bed with us and requested access to the Gorse Fox's iPad (it's not an iPad - the device he keeps by the bed is an Android tablet).

Urban-Cub arrived in time to take Ellie to school (though, for once we went by car rather than walked). Then it was time for another coffee, some domestic chores, and a quick review of the accounts. The Silver Vixen had a phone call scheduled with Betty Rubble. This took the rest of the morning, so the Gorse Fox buried himself in the study.

He's still working on the family tree website. He's still struggling with the plug-in that displays PDF files. Why? Well, though it does a wonderful job of displaying the underlying PDF (created by Family Tree Maker), it is very slow to render the the first image. In fact, it is often quicker to click on the button to "Show Full Screen", then revert to the original image and refresh the frame. This is driving the Gorse Fox to distraction because if it worked quickly, then he would have a really neat way of developing each of the web pages that he wants to display. As it is, he is floundering somewhat. He really doesn't want to have to try and develop these pages in raw html.

After lunch the Gorse Fox popped around to see Urban-Cub and help her by assembling a small chest of drawers that she has purchased to fit inside her wardrobe. Like one of the last projects, the Gorse Fox was delighted to find the various parts properly numbered and a set of instructions that made sense. The finished article looks good and is very robust.

Wind

 The winds didn't seem quite as bad as forecast. Having said that, the Gorse Fox was surprised to see that one of our heavy garden chairs had migrated the whole width of the garden overnight. He went round to meet up with Urban-Cub and take Ellie to Dizzy Ducklings. Once back home the normal Thursday schedule clicked in. Ocado delivered, then we headed off to Lidl and Sainsbury's - nothing special, but it did consume the whole morning.

The Gorse Fox managed to get little reading and family tree research done this afternoon while Ellie insisted on play the "school game" with the Silver Vixen. This seemed to involve the two of them pretending to be teachers to a room full of invisible students.

Not so calm

When the Gorse Fox got up this morning, it was still dry outside. By the time he had is coffee on the go, the first few drops of rain were hitting the pavements. Urban-Cub dropped off Ellie and we sorted out her breakfast and got her ready for pre-school. The rain still hadn't started in anger by the time we had to go to Dizzy Ducklings so we walked as usual. (The Gorse Fox thinks we were the only family that walked - it appears that the threat of rain is enough to drive everyone into their cars).

The Silver Vixen headed home. The Gorse Fox, however, had to go and house-sit at Urban-Cub's. She is having trouble with here lock barrel on the front door and it was scheduled for replacement. We were told it was scheduled for soon after 9 o'clock. By 11 there was still no sign. The Gorse Fox headed home. The rain was now quite heavy. He took off his jacket and headed for the study. (The Silver Vixen was doing Zoom Pilates). No sooner had he sat down than Urban-Cub called to say the locksmith was outside the house. The Gorse Fox donned his rainwear and headed back. It must have taken the chap no longer than 90 seconds to replace the barrel, then a further 10 minutes to do a complete survey on the door and how it had been hung. With a tick in all the boxes, he left, and the Gorse Fox headed back home.

The Gorse Fox has been doing some more fiddling about with the Family Tree. As usual, this has caused several distractions and the inspections of several proverbial rabbit holes.

This afternoon the Gorse Fox broke into a pack of spice mixes that he had received as a birthday present. He reviewed the various mixes and the accompanying recipes. In the end, he decided on a Malabar curry. Well, all he can say is "what a success". It was absolutely delightful and even the Silver Vixen enjoyed it (and she has very few curries that she likes).

Urban-Cub has just collect Ellie (who looks ready for bed). Hopefully they will both get a good night.

The wind has been picking up. It is forecast to be troublesome overnight and throughout tomorrow. It's nice to be inside and not have to venture out.

Calm before the Storm

 It was a lovely, bright, sunny day today. No cloud dared to sully the blue skies as the Gorse Fox left to meet with Urban-Cub and walk Ellie round to Dizzy Ducklings. It was chilly, but it was gorgeous.

Once home, the Gorse Fox returned to the Family Tree. The changed, suggested yesterday by the author of the plug-in, had to be rolled out and the Gorse Fox needed to review some of the other charts and diagrams that were available from Family Tree Maker and could be displayed using the plug-in. With a few selected to start the process the Gorse Fox rebut a couple of the web pages. The files displayed beautifully. The only problem could be how responsive they are. That is something that will have to be monitored.

As Urban-Cub had a day off today, her pain was to take Ellie down to the seafront after Dizzy Ducklings. We were invited along so the Gorse Fox decided it was a good opportunity for a walk. He set off to walk to the beach and meet up with the others there. It was a lovely day for a walk, warm enough to be pleasant, and cool enough to be refreshing.

The Gorse Fox arrived just as the girls were walking towards the playground.

Ellie, as usual, was like a whirling dervish as she raced from one item of apparatus to another. In the end, she settled on the swings - for all of about 3 minutes. Then she charged off again to the slide and the climbing frame.

She got bored. She wanted to go down onto the sand. We hoicked the buggy and ourselves over the pebbles and down onto the beach. 

It took a couple of minutes for her to prepare her bucket, but then we were off down to the shoreline where she scooped sand and seawater into the bucket and deposited it a few feet away.

 When she had had enough and wanted an ice cream, we all traipsed back up to the Esplanade, hauling ourselves up the huge bank of pebbles. 

Ellie, Urban-Cub, and the Silver Vixen stopped by the ice cream stand, the Gorse Fox wasn't too fussed (it takes great self-control to maintain a physique such as his !!!). He took this as an opportunity to start his walk back home.

It had been a lovely little interlude in a gorgeous day. Given that we have severe weather warnings for the next couple of days, it was a case of taking the opportunity while it was there.

Fixed

 It was an early start. Urban-Cub was planning to drop Ellie off at 6:45 - and for once she was on time. Urban-Cub had to rush off to work while we sorted out Ellie’s ablutions and breakfast prior to taking her to Dizzy Ducklings. The Gorse Fox even had time to do a jigsaw and read a couple of stories to her before we left. 

Back home the Silver Vixen got on with cleaning her sewing machines then getting ready for her next project in the sewing room. The Gorse Fox returned to the study and continued working on the family tree website. By lunchtime he had the article, that he had been working on for the last couple of days, completed.

Mid-afternoon he received and email from the author of the plug-in that had been giving him trouble. He suggested that the Gorse Fox flip a single flag from Yes to No, et voila! It worked. This really is very significant. It means that many of the files he extracts from Family Tree Maker can be displayed without any refactoring or modification. He can wait to get a run at it tomorrow.

We collected Ellie and she’s munching on her tea at the moment. The Gorse Fox has some meatballs planned for tonight, and have invited to Urban-Cub to stay for dinner when she collects Ellie.

Stroll

 It has been another day very similar to yesterday. After a very leisurely breakfast the Gorse Fox went back to the study to catch up on the accounts and then do some more work on the Family Tree. This has taken much of the day. (More than it should, given that a load of uploads the Gorse Fox had triggered were wrong... they were uploading files from yesterday, not the new ones from today! Stupid.) Progress has been slow, but it has been steady. For the family he is working on at present, he should have a finished article tomorrow or the day after.

The Silver Vixen had been in her sewing room, pottering around and reviewing her library of patterns. It will be interesting to see what she starts on next. She did pop round to see Urban-Cub for a while to help her decide on a cloth-covered cork board for Ellie's pictures. She was back by lunch-time.

Immediately after lunch, the Gorse Fox set off on one of his favourite walks (the Shripney loop). The glorious sunshine made it an absolute pleasure to wander through the countryside... but it will be nice to be able to stray further from home when the lockdown lifts. While walking he was listening to one of the Peter Crouch podcasts, which kept him chuckling to himself as he wandered along.

Talking of podcasts, the Gorse Fox also records from the TV. One of his "go to" recording is "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" which reviews restaurants in the USA. The Gorse Fox realised today, as he fired up the TV while cooking dinner, that he now has over 400 episodes stashed away to review! He may be gone some time.

Zoom

 Like last Saturday, today began with a Zoom call with the Gorse Fox's second cousins. In fact this call included two additional second cousins from, yet another, branch of the family. It was hardly, what you might call, riveting but it was nice to all touch base.

Once the calls was over, the Gorse Fox fired up the Family Tree and carried on working on the website. He did manage, by the end of the morning, to complete the updates for one huge section of the family. He has now shared the link with all those on the call.

The issue that he was having yesterday with the display of PDF files, is ongoing. He has now raised a support query with the author of the plug-in to see if he can offer any suggestions. No reply so far.

The Silver Vixen has been in her sewing room for most of the day. Every now and again the Gorse Fox can hear the rustle of patterns, or the click as scissors are dropped onto the desk.

The weather has been lovely and sunny today, if a little cool. The Gorse Fox made the most of it and went out for a nice walk in the early Spring sunshine. He bumped into his next-door neighbours during the walk and stopped for a quick chat and catch-up. They are such a nice couple, and it's good to know they have been keeping fit and well.

Frustration

 It has been a day of frustration. It all started when the Gorse Fox woke up during the night and, when trying to drift back off to sleep, he had an idea for the website. This kept him awake.

After breakfast he had the chance to start exploring the idea. In essence, it was sound. The information was easily extracted and stored on the website. The problem lay in how to display it. It seems that a "plug-in" is available which will display a pdf file within the web page. This should be ideal. YouTube was consulted and examples of its use demonstrated. The Gorse Fox thought he was on to something.

The "plug-in" was downloaded and activated. It was configured according to the instructions. A test page was developed and displayed. Nothing. Nada. Rien. The rest of the morning was spent trying to find out what the Gorse Fox had done wrong (the assumption that he is wrong it is always his starting point). The problem was still outstanding when it was time to collect Ellie. It will have to stay as "unresolved" until the weekend.

Arboreal pursuits

 There's not really a lot to discuss today. It was fairly usual for a Thursday... walking Ellie to pre-school, taking in the Ocado shopping, then going to do the top-up shop. Hardly world shattering news!

Most of the rest of the day was spent working on the family tree website again. The Gorse Fox has made some more significant steps forward and now he just needs to concentrate on updating or adding content, rather than the structure and navigation. The Gorse Fox tends to document how he has approached some of the aspects of managing the website. One was so obscure (a feature of Joomla, no the Gorse Fox's design) that he decided he couldn't write it up sensibly. He decided the only way to document it for the future was to do a screen recording of the process, and file it with his other documentation.

Drop and run

 Urban-Cub had to do a "drop and run". Ellie had been at home with her overnight, but timings were such that she needed to allow G-Force to take Ellie to Dizzy Ducklings while she headed in to work. There was no real drama. Ellie wandered in, had some breakfast, and then went to get washed and dressed. We dropped her off on time and, as usual, headed home for breakfast.

The Silver Vixen had her Zoom Pilates during the morning so the Gorse Fox retired to the computer and worked through a series of YouTube videos on managing a Joomla site. Finally, with some semblance of confidence the Gorse Fox started to make a whole series of changes to the site. It soon became clear that the code he had written yesterday was really speeding things up. This encouraged him to see if there were any further items he could add to the code.

By lunchtime we had to call it a day (both for Zoom and Joomla). It was time to collect Ellie, and the afternoon would be spent keeping her amused.

Menus

 It was 7 o'clock before Ellie woke. She wandered in to our room and leapt on the bed,,,, no "Good morning" just "Can I have you iPad?" and so the day began. It was a little misty and quite chilly, but it looked as if it would be a nice sunny day once the fog had lifted. We got Ellie ready for pre-school and walked her round to start her day.

After breakfast we cleared a few domestic chores, the the Silver Vixen went to her sewing room and the Gorse Fox to his study. At the moment the Silver Vixen is trying to adjust her dressmaker's dummy in preparation or her next project.

The Gorse Fox has returned to his Joomla project. Creating and updating the various articles is simple enough. The real problem lies with the Gorse Fox's lack of understanding of the intricacies of the menu system and how to get the best from it. He's make slow progress but this is another occasion when "Google and YouTube are your friends". He suspects it will be several more days until he has this nailed, and then he needs to transfer all of the old information across to this new format. Oh well, it keeps the little grey cells spinning.

Old King Code

 It's been a lovely day again. We were up as soon as the alarm went off this morning. Though Ellie hadn't been here overnight, Urban-Cub was dropping her off as she passed, on her way to Southampton for some training and an exam. Ellie wandered in, still in her PJs and a dressing gown. She wanted some breakfast then asked to go and get washed and dressed. The Gorse Fox went along to provide support - but she managed to wash her face and clean her teeth without any intervention. The Gorse Fox was only required when it was time to brush her hair.

We walked her round to DD and then came home for our own breakfast. This was followed by some domestic chores before the Gorse Fox returned to the study to do the accounts. While there he received an email on one of his mailing lists. Did anyone have some code that would take a bunch of photos and reset the file dates to match those in the embedded EXIF data. Well, as it happens, the Gorse Fox does. He wrote some code to file batches of photos, based on their internal date information, and it resets the file dates to match. Code was duly packaged up and sent.

Urban-Cub was delayed at the training facility. She had planned to collect Ellie, but it was clear she would escape until long after the end of day for Dizzy Ducklings. The Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox went on round to collect Ellie and bring her home.and look after her until Urban-Cub got back. In the end this was a couple of hours later than she had planned. She's taken Ellie home for tea, but she'll be back later so that Ellie can spend the night here tonight as Urban-Cub has to open up the store tomorrow morning.