Gas, Plugs and Spots

It's been a very funny day! I dropped Ethan off at nursery to find it in darkness - they had identified a smell of gas in the kitchen and had turned the electricity off as a precaution. Nonetheless, it was still nice and warm and the kids were quite happy to go along with this new adventure in their day. However, they rang me at lunchtime to say that they were going to close for the afternoon as Transco hadn't been able to identify and fix the problem ... cue a hasty exit from work to go and pick him up.

Halfway up the bypass, my beloved car decided to do a tractor impression and chugged its way in a very sorry fashion the rest of the way to nursery. I hate it when my car doesn't work properly! At least we managed to get home. Luke from the garage had a look for me this afternoon (we're lucky that there is a Hi-Q garage at the end of our road), and he confirmed what Colin thought was the likely cause - the plugs and leads have had it (hardly surprising as I've had the car for two years now and not had it serviced in that time). Thank God it was nothing major! Anyway, the car will be ready some time tomorrow morning - and for the reasonable price of £65 it will be fixed and serviced - so one less thing off my long long list of things to do.

Ethan seemed glad to be home early today, but he said he was tired and cold, and so I let him have his duvet downstairs in the lounge so that he could snuggle up on the couch and watch TV. He came for a cuddle with me and as he had a temperature I had to do a belly inspection for spots (there has been a bout of chickenpox making its way around nursery recently) - and I found one lurking up under his arm. By the time he's gone off to bed there are several more little spotties having made an appearance - so it looks like there will be no nursery for little man for a few days, bless him. And the worst thing is that he has been really looking forward to going to Southport at the weekend for Kieran's christening and seeing Grandma and Grandad, and now it looks as though we will be staying here while Colin and Sean go without us.

Having an afternoon at home has been good for me too - on surfing Genes Reunited I found someone who I thought might have a match for William Clark, who was my greatgreatgreatgrandfather. I sent him a message, and then discovered he has lots of other matches to my tree too (you get a red 'contacted' icon next to anyone in his tree when you go looking for specific names) - he's even got Gav (my cousin) in his tree; so I sent another message saying that with so many matches he just has to be related and hoping for more information. I have been speculating with Mum that he is a descendant of my greatgrandfather's brother - this family tree is getting more and more complicated! My greatgrandfather George married a Rosetta Hastings (who he lived next door to), and then two years later his brother William married Rosetta's sister, Eliza.

They must have started a tradition ... cos my Aunt Maggie (Dad's sister) came over from Ireland in the early 1950s to work as a housekeeper to a man (who was widowed with kids) that she later married ... that man was my greatuncle Alf, whose eldest brother was my GranGran, George (son of George and Rosetta). Maggie's sister, Dolly, then came over to help Maggie with the kids ... and married Ken, George's son. Confused yet? Okay ... then Maggie and Dolly's brother Joe (my Daddy!) came over and married Carole ... George's daughter and Ken's sister. Phew! Talk about keeping it in the family - maybe that's why we all have seven toes on each foot (I'm joking).