We’ve had beautiful weather the last couple of days - lots of sunshine. Bad side of that - hay fever! I never used to get hay fever now I can’t seem to escape it.

Looks like I’m going to have to invest in some summer clothes suitable for the office if it stays like this. You know what will happen, as soon as I buy new clothes the weather will change again!

I’ve spent all weekend on my websites again. I removed b2 from this site and MCO since it is no longer supported. Decided to do a fresh install on both with Wordpress. A fresh install is a lot easier than importing all the old files! Means I lost all my old entries but there was nothing really important so it doesn’t matter. Means I can start with a clean slate.

I also decided to finally pay for the Opera browser to get rid of the adverts. The new beta version looks very cool! Losing the ads gives you so much more space too!

I bought this amazing book full of old photos of how my town used to look way back at the beginning of the twentieth century. My interest has stemmed from the family tree research I’m doing and just wanting to get a feel for the place as it would have looked back then.

Strangest thing: I started to feel really depressed after mentally trying to picture the old town and comparing it with how it looks today. It’s really hard to explain why but I suddenly felt that something had been lost forever. So many beautiful old buildings were demolished to improve traffic access and they have been replaced with characterless shopping malls that can be found in every town in the country. At one time the town had so many thriving businesses and was a world leader in the iron industry, they have virtually all gone now.

Grandma asked me if I felt the town had improved for the better and I had to admit that I didn’t think so at all. The town was far from perfect back then and it had its slum areas just like anywhere else, but it least it had character. It makes me so sad to think about what’s been lost. The automobile age has a lot to answer for.