Well it doesn't take much to have a day off as a carer, you just ignore all the things that don't need doing and do what you want to do for a change. I mean you still get up, cook breakfast, change the bed, empty the bin etc. You just do it at your own pace. Then you tackle the next dozen jobs or so and voila! a day off. (Okay so I am not really telling you anything you didn't already know, there is no such thing as a day off!!)

I had a day "off" today. I sat up late last night and finally got a rough draft of the family tree branch I have been working on completed. I emailed it off to an older man in Canada who shares a mutual, great etc ect grandmother and felt that was a relief. It has taken a lot of my spare time for the last couple of weeks to do it. This morning I got an email pointing out the first two mistakes but I was expecting that.

Then mid-morning I got a phone call from my sister (yes, she is back in touch again) saying she had a friend who had access to some family sites and did I want to ask her anything, yes I did. So she may be working on one of my missing pieces for me. It is expensive to do all your research yourself so sometimes you have to decide that near enough is good enough and take someone else's research and add it to your own. I'm at that stage now.

Then we went off to our local Family History group. We haven't been for a while so it was a bit strange walking in but turned out okay as we had left ourselves plenty of time to settle in before the guest speaker. He was excellent and gave us a run down about the British Marines, their history up to the time of the founding of the first colony here in Australia (Sydney) and their part in that. He was in full dress uniform and even demonstrated a "brown betsy" to us, it was the first gun to use the bayonet. I believe it is involved in the history of the Battle of Bunker Hill too.

We met up with one of our friends there and invited him home for an early tea. That is what we call an evening meal which is early and light, a heavier more formal meal is called dinner.

So far , so good. But then Ray became ill and I just got him to the bathroom on time. I hoped P didn't hear the noise that all that involved and after I had cleaned up we resumed our meal as politely as we could, all just picking at what was left.

Ray went down for a sleep, I cleaned up a bit,our guest went home. Ray just got up again, still unwell and I just cleaned up again. Hopefully that is the last time tonight.

It was a day of mixed blessings.