My name is Petra, and I have just joined this list because what follows is relevant to this list. My usual haunt is the Cumberland list. In July 2009, I spotted an item on eBay labelled as "1889 Cumbria Hunting, Shooting & Fishing Diary". Although the seller stated that the name of the author of the diary was not known, I thought that it may be possible to work this out from the information given in the diary with the help of other sources, such as local newspapers or census returns. I successfully bid for the diary, and have now transcribed it. The daily entries are only short and often rather cryptic. The seller thought the diary was from the Carlisle area, on the basis that a child had scribbled a Carlisle address near the front of the diary. During transcribing, it quickly became apparent that most of the locations mentioned were in Westmorland, and particularly in the Kirkby Stephen area. Unfortunately the author does not mention his own name, and although he names friends and men who work for him, he rarely gives a first name and surname together, and at times uses only initials! So trying to establish the identity of the writer of the diary is quite a challenge. (I think I've cracked it, but I'm not giving it away just yet!) What did become clear quite quickly was that this was a man of considerable means. He was engaged in farming pursuits but appeared to spend most of his time hunting. He mixed with other very well off people, mostly young men. He went to Leeds for a pantomime and several times to London where he dined in a club, attended shows, clothes shopped and went to the Derby. He also spent a 10-day holiday in March in Menton on the French Riviera and during that time regularly gambled in Monte Carlo. At home, apart from hunting, he enjoyed pidgeon shooting, tennis, playing cricket for his local team, dining with friends, and the occasional round of roulette. He also attended local Board Meetings and clearly was conservative in politics as he attended a meeting of the Primrose League. The diary itself is a printed hardback book measuring 22 cm x 14.5 cm. It had three pages of advertisements both in the front and in the back, but one sheet of advertisements in the back has been torn out. There are several unnumbered pages of general information in the front. The numbered pages start with three blank pages for memoranda, which the diary writer left blank, but on which some children later scribbled. Several of the diary pages have children's pencil scribble all over them, and unfortunately one sheet in November and five sheets at the end of the diary have been torn out. The writer's handwriting is fast and sloppy and can be quite difficult to read. As far as possible, I have tried to check partially legible entries against maps etc. to ascertain the correct spelling. However, there will inevitably be some transcription mistakes. The diary pages are laid out as two pages to a week with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on the left hand page, and Thursday, Friday and Saturday on the right hand page; Sunday stretches across the bottom of both pages. Each day has the day, date, a countdown of which day in the year it is and how many more days to go in square brackets, and as appropriate phases of the moon and Bank Holidays etc. In transcribing, I have used italics for handwritten entries, and any transcriber's queries I have put into square brackets. Surnames have not been capitalised because I could not always be sure whether a name was a surname, a first name, an animal's name or a place name! Unfortunately, as the Rootsweb lists use plain text, a lot of the formatting is lost in these postings. The phases of the moon come out as ~ for a new moon, a comma for a waxing half moon,  for a full moon and f for a waning half moon. If someone is desperate to see the formatted version, I can send them the Word document on request. NOW FOR THE CHALLENGE ! ! ! Can anybody work out who the writer of the diary was? Suggestions to the list please. There isn't a prize except for the title of "CUMBRIAN MASTER SLEUTH OF THE MONTH"! As this will be cross posted to the CUL Googlies list and the Rootsweb Cumberland list, I shall endeavour to post updates to all lists how the quest is progressing. I'll post the diary in monthly sections to avoid overly long postings. Happy sleuthing! Petra