Oh the joys of presidency. Two years ago a qualified historian published a book about a local building, asserting it was one and the same pub as the one holding a different name - the argument being that it simply changed its name as pubs do. The owner of the other building took umbrage at this as it effectively denied the history of her own building as she understood it, so she commissioned a former journalist to write a rebuttal. We received said rebuttal on Friday and have several posters in our windows proclaiming that we are selling it. The title is somewhat inflammatory but the content is downright defamatory in that it implies shamelessly that the owner of the first building and the historian (of some repute) colluded to retain the heritage listing on that building while the other would fall off the Heritage Register - thus achieving financial gain.

I expressed alarm, having read it, and have been told by Steph that she had a conversation with the author who claimed it was not actionable. My concern is that the History Room might become embroiled in a very nasty fight as the owner of the first building is rather litigious.

Sigh. Fortunately we have a former editor of a Western Australian newspaper in town so I have messaged him for a confidential meeting to seek his views on our position (frankly I don't care about the author who is an arrogant piece of work.

On the plus side, the rebuttal does provide evidence that the professional historian appears to have overlooked some considerably important documents regarding the age and prior existence of a pub in the town which does not meet the description of the one to which she refers, so at least historically it is reasonably accurate, if incoherent.

Friday was a cool day with strong winds and general chilliness, and yesterday dawned with a hard frost, but warmed up to a rather delightful spring day. As a consequence I made a start on reducing fire hazards and also did umpteen loads of washing which have yet to be put away (tonight).

Tomorrow the temperatures will continue to rise (today was somewhat warmer than yesterday), but will remain in the moderate range so more slashing will be done. This trend will peak on Wednesday which is forecast to be 25 so I doubt I will be doing anything energetic then, but we will see how much progress I make.

I did have a rather nice visitor at the History Room today (who I just remembered I failed to note in the book), who has moved into town - his family comes from here a couple of generations back and not much of the family remains here at present (but I gave him an idea of how to get in touch as I know the bloke and he is a good chap). He is a carpenter so I talked him through my plans for the HR which he approved, and he made a couple of sensible suggestions that we can implement if we don't get our grant for the roof. The cottage he bought previously belonged to a hoarder whose three sisters took one look at the contents and piled a lot of it in the back yard and simply set fire to it. He found the burn scar and poked around a bit and discovered undischarged munitions among the debris. I suggested he gets a  metal detector and involves the police in a yard clearance, haha.

And I sorted my way through about half another filing cabinet drawer, archiving most of the contents and adding a few additional labels so that things are easier to find.

As a result of his visit I did not get a chance to go to the Lucky Ewe which is probably a good thing as there is nothing I actually need at this point in time.