Dot is still not feeling great, but her coughing seems to be subsiding a smidgeon: she went to the doctor on Tuesday, and he said it was a virus and could linger on indefinitely, which is encouraging. However, he did tell her that her potential cyst had just about vanished, and she no longer needed it cut out. So that’s all good, as they would say on Twenty Twelve. In fact Dot is now out with Anne in the city. There has been plenty of rain in the last two days, but it’s sunny at the moment.

I cancelled Andrew’s visit completely after debating whether to go over and take him our for a day instead; the weather forecast was horrible, and I wasn’t feeling brilliant. I’m much better now and have managed to write the narration for our Paston event – at least, the first draft thereof. Caroline was also ill, so Rob and I met on Tuesday and allocated a few tasks. He is is researching publicity.

Otherwise it’s been a quiet week. We had our hair cut, and I’ve been to the supermarket and into the city to pay in some cheques while Dot has rested, by which I mean done extensive sprucing-up work in the house. I wrote a rather bad sonnet for the poetry group, but it wasn’t as bad as one or two other things that were presented to us. NG and TN, however, made a good job of theirs. Especially NG, for whom I have a growing admiration. Meanwhile I have had a poem published on the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears, which is nice. The fact, not the poem.

The computer is going well. David did a trick with Dropbox which got my capacity down to nearly 80%, so that’s now working at no further cost. I am toying with the idea of deleting all the pictures in my Pictures file to reduce it even further. After all, they’re just duplicates of ones in iPhoto which I’ve exported for various reasons.

I took some old books up to the Christian Resource Centre and also left them a box of my poetry books, which I said they could sell for whatever price they liked. I still have three boxes!

I have discovered, thanks to Genes Reunited, that the name Lenton is a very early English locational surname, and derives from the places called Lenton, one in Lincolnshire and the other in Nottinghamshire. The former is recorded as “Lavintone” in the Domesday Book of 1086 and means “Leofa’s village”, derived from the Olde English pre– 7th Century personal name “Leofa”, meaning “dear, or beloved” and “tun”, a settlement or farm.

John Leynton (1455 – 1505) represented the Borough of Cambridge in the Parliaments of 1489 – 1490 and 1491 – 1492 during the reign of King Henry V11. He was the first Recorder of Cambridge in 1494. Rather pleased to discover that in 1584 Arms were granted to the Lentons of Aldwinkle in Northants (where I visited the church a few years ago). These have the blazon of a silver field, a bend between two gold dolphins embowed.

Oliver would be pleased. He likes dolphins.