Spackle

 It was another pleasantly relaxed start to the day. When breakfast was over and the news had been consumed we set about a first stage of the post-Christmas clear up. Think of it as a warm up gig. Between us we returned the Orangery to it normal layout and function. The next stage will require the Gorse Fox to move the cars so that he can access the loft in the garage. That can wait until later in the week.

When chores were finished, the Gorse Fox returned to admin functions. The switch of energy supplier has meant a switching of the dates on which he reads the meters. In turn, this must be accommodated in the spreadsheet that he uses to manage and monitor our energy consumption. Spreadsheet has now been adapted and should reflect our data irrespective of the dates of the readings.

The Americans, refer to some forms of decorative filler as spackle. The Gorse Fox has been using spackle on the family tree. The structure was all there, but there were gaps that needed to be filled among the new entries made over the last couple of weeks. Research spackle has been liberally applied throughout the day and details are looking a lot better for it.

As so often is the case, the Gorse Fox found other researchers who have family intersecting our tree. This can, sometimes, give the odd clue but more often than not it is useless. Today he found a chap reportedly born around 1749 that had his first child in 1759 and didn't get married to her mother until 1793. There are times when the Gorse Fox wants to (metaphorically) pick these people up by the throat and check they have the requisite number of brain cells. In fact, today, he found so many ridiculous anomalies in the work of other researchers that for his own sanity, he gave up.

Ellie was dropped round after a day playing with a friend. She was here from about 16:00 and we gave here some dinner. She was very good and has just left to go home with Urban-Cub. Here first day back at work went well apparently, and the store is in good shape.