Guest Blog by Claire Langton-Genealogy Lockdown Lessons

When lockdown was first mentioned I wasn’t too concerned because I work from a homebased office, anyway. I was a little worried about acquiring three new co-workers, Hubby and my two Daughters aged 12 & 18, but I took it in my stride. We are used to muddling through in school holidays etc. what could possibly go wrong?!

I was worried when thought about the General Register Office (GRO) having to reduce their staffing levels, which meant that the production of birth, marriage and death certificates would slow dramatically. Being a Genealogist without birth, marriage and death certificate is like being a builder without bricks and cement – it doesn’t work very well! Of course, genealogists do have other resources to use but GRO being so massively affected certainly had a big impact on my business.

Having said that, since the changes in lockdown, GRO has been able to start to increase their staffing levels slowly which means that business is now moving for me, which is wonderful; they are doing a great job. It is surprising, the knock-on effect.

For the first six weeks of lockdown work slowed down for me, but I have used that time to do some of those jobs I have been putting off and I think my life-saver has been networking via Zoom, Teams etc – how did I not know about these magical platforms that could help me communicate across the world?!

This weekend we had a family catch up with four households, two locally, one in London and one in Newcastle. Before lockdown, it would never have occurred to me to use this kind of method of communication, but I feel sure that it will be making a difference for the foreseeable future.