Phew, back home ( by way of the Fens and Caerdydd!).

Really enjoyed being a groupie for Jeremy and the band at NAFOW in Milwaukee this year. Calennig have performed all over the world and play a dozen instruments between them.Available for hire too, this is the band with Y Mari Lwyd at the opening concert in the grand ballroom at the Hilton in Mlwaukee!

The workshop 'Write Your Family' went well, infact we went into overtime, sending out for extra tea

and Welsh cakes! The attendees at NAFOW are passionate about Wales and all things Welsh - shaming some of us in a way. Many of them have learned Welsh and are extremely knowledgable, not just about their own family's history, but about the history of Wales in general.I guess it can be a case of the Jodie Mitchell 'Don't know what you've got 'til it's gone'...

I really enjoyed giving the two lectures on life in Eighteenth Century Ceredigion too - at times excruciating ( 'Entertainment', 'Death and Burial', Crime and Punishment'), the research helps me immerse myself in the world of Plas Nanteos and the people who worked in the silver and lead mines and on the estate farms. Unbelievable that my ancestors, Welsh peasants themselves, survived it.

Highlights of the trip? Reading in public from the MS of The Dipping Pool for the first time ever; paddling in Lake Michigan and looking at TRUMP in huge letters on the side of his building in Chicago as I fell asleep. Imagine putting your name on a building: B.L.A.N.K.