In my old job, one of the things we were told not to do was to use jargon words or terms. A lesson I probably should have taken onboard before starting to write a blog.

I was asked what my “Alice Shoes” were, so I thought I would give a little explanation so I don’t confuse everyone when/if I mention them again.

When researching family history, there is a great temptation to lose focus on your research question and follow other interesting pieces of information which may be totally unrelated by the time you realise it’s time to log off the computer. A lot of family historians and genealogists label this as “disappearing down a rabbit hole”. Believe me, I have fallen into a few warren’s over the years!

My “Alice Shoes” is that temptation, like Lewis Carroll‘s Alice from Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, to follow the white rabbit down into the rabbit hole. There are all sorts of wonderful records you end up finding or stories completely unrelated to your person of interest. This can take up a lot of your valuable research time. When I put on my “Alice Shoes” I know that I will end up reading about people who have died swallowing their false teeth in the newspapers or someone with the same surname in a different part of the country ending up being sent to prison for robberies. Fascinating stories, but not really what I was looking for when I started that morning.

Often there are many cups of tea that end up cold and you have to get another cup of tea before you lose your head!

I do hope that clears up my first blog. If you do have comments or questions about ANY of my blogs, do please feel free to ask in the comments section below!

P.S. The lure of the rabbit hole made me realise, Lewis Carroll was a pen name. Something that he and I both share.