History is not what you thought...

...as that peerless work, '1066 and all that' tells us. it is what you can remember.

And there's the headache, when you combine work as an artist and heritage researcher.

It can follow that what people remember, never actually happened. And when you are all poised to illustrate it, that is, to put it mildly, a bit of a challenge. 

At the moment, I'm trawling through the records in search of people I'm hoping to immortalise as part of Lost Voices of the Settlement, a part exhibition/part living history project, this summer, and I have come to the conclusion that some of the lost simply do not wish to be found.

They are slippery customers - changing their birth dates, their occupations, even their spouses with brain melting regularity. Even the spelling of a surname is a moveable feast (and not just in the 18th century, when putting one letter in front of another was still an achievement, for many). Chasing lines on public family trees can throw up walls of wishful thinking. I can almost hear laughter in paradise as the ancestors watch me flounder.

But, to be honest, will future generations find us any easier to pin down? I've also moved house , married, changed my name, swapped jobs and been prone to bureaucratic misunderstandings and spelling mistakes. Life is messy, and that's what makes us human....although AI is becoming good at screwing things up, too. 

 Good luck, in the 22nd century!