My dad was the last of his generation in our immediate family. One of the consequences of his passing has been the sorting out of all the nooks and crannies of his house, which revealed a lot of things I’d completely forgotten still existed. Not only parental items we grew up with from childhood, but also things left behind by us kids as we moved on in life. As the artist of the family I’ve by far been the worst offender – when I set off to art college all my school art work

Okey, this is definitely the last post on my family, the howling wolves of deadlines are baying at the door, henceforth I’ll be focused on the present and the tasks in hand. However I just wanted to show what a wonderful tool Photoshop can be for retouching. As various older members of the family have passed on my father’s house has become a repository for a growing collection of old family photos, some of them in very poor condition. So I’ve been scanning them in and doing w

I’ve been researching my family history for some time now. A couple of years ago my dad had reached a blank on tracing his grandfather, and asked me to see what I could find on the Net. For a history nut like me this was an invitation to open a door into the past – I was instantly hooked. Since then I’ve not only traced my great grandfather, but his father in turn and generations before that. I’ve traced the Shelley line back to 1715 to the small village of Broadwell in Oxfor