pubs, gyms, parks, churches, roads, closed... but not the mighty pen

this has been a very long Christmas, betwixmas with an interminable crawl back to civilisation following the nadir of New Year's Eve. And so it has proved useful to have 24 letters to pen to new cousins around the world. It takes something of military planning to create and despatch these packages but I shall expect a rich return when I do. I ploughed through all my notes from this Christmas's bumper plunder. I tried to pick a shortlist of one person from each twiglet of the tree. My Swansea Harrises yielded 8 new cousins. My Salisbury Taylers served me 4 new correspondents, Cornwall, Derbyshire and Somerset fished up 4 each across sundry other lines. Many of this last group were the result of intensive work to bring mid Victorian forebears down to the current generation. I especially salute 1) the Times which let me work around Lt Col Hudson's service overseas with the 9th Gurkhas 2) UK phone books on Ancestry which gave me the initials of E H Pearce's
widow in Somerset 3) the LMA marriage records on Ancestry which found me the missing Broad sister, Louisa's, nuptials and thus her offspring hitherto unknown to add to a colourful tree.