A rest day today after several exciting ones. I've washed my hair and clothes and generally sorted myself out a bit after my visit to Scholes and South Kirkby. John and two other e-cousins, Peter and Jane, took me to the cemetery of St Thomas's church, Kimberworth, where we paid our respects at the graves of many ancestors including that of my great-great-grandparents David and Susannah Jane (BROOKES) ALLEN, who moved over here from Sedgley in Staffordshire in the late 1800s. One of their sons is buried with them: he died a terrible death after an industrial accident in which a vat of molten steel tipped over on him. It took the poor boy several days to die. Tales of industry in Victorian times give me the shudders, not only because of their lack of health and safety regulations but because it's easy to see that we could return to those times of low wages and long hours that really amounted to slave labour. Will someone please remind John Howard?

Yesterday I met up with some more cousins from my father's side. Several families - the Allens, the Brookeses, the Harpers, the Flavells, the Hydes and the Porters among them - moved over here from Sedgley at about the same time and continued to intermarry with each other for a couple of generations, as ex-pats are wont to do. My dad was an exception: he married a real Yorkshire lass from Featherstone:-) John and Betty and I had a very pleasant pub lunch in South Kirkby with cousins Jan, Jean and two Evelyns. Then we went to visit a third Evelyn who is ninety-one years old and still looking after herself and doing her own housework. I would love to live to that age if I could be as fit and active as Evelyn.

On Friday I head north to Richmond to spend time with Jagannath and Laxmi, old friends I first met in Nepal in 1995. They subsequently spent a few years in Perth, Western Australia, where their children acquired Aussie accents. Now they sound on the phone like girls Yorkshire born and bred and I'm really looking forward to seeing how much they've grown!