Not a great day today. The conservations volunteers have done a wonderful job, digging out ditches that have been out of use since before I came here 22 years ago. It's good to see water flowing where it had not done so before! But it was wet - one of them, an older gentleman, said that he hadn't been so wet since he last had a bath! They had a journey back to Glasgow and beyond - I was able to come home and drop into a hot bath myself!

It's brightened up a bit now but I'm having an afternoon inside doing some more family history research. This time it's my father's mother's family. This picture, recently acquired, was dated 'Midsummer 1901' and shows my great-grandmother Catherine, aged 47, with her six children. Her husband died in, I think, 1894, the year his youngest daughter was born. He had some sort of government position in Dover Castle, still to be researched. My grandmother is seated on the left. I remember her well as she lived until 1971.