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The power of ten

January 27, 2022 in Life as we know it | 2 comments

I posted to this forum a little under a year ago a somewhat reflective missive entitled ‘Time Passes’. The subject of that post was this very journal; the trigger for my writing it the circumstance that the ninth anniversary of my very first blog post had then but recently occurred.

I pondered the actuality that I had certainly not set out to embark on a project that would shamble on for quite such a long time – its longevity having surprised me just as much as I imagine it would anyone else who devoted so much as a moment’s thought to the matter.

I wrapped up that epistle by musing that – having gotten so close – I really did feel inclined to keep things going for long enough that my efforts would have encompassed an entire decade!

And here we are! Hoorah!!

I can’t help thinking that some sort of celebration might be in order, though not – heaven forfend – anything that breaches Covid protocols (or indeed breaks the law). I am not sure what form that might sensibly take.

Last year I included some statistics – for them as likes such things. Here they are again – but updated (with last year’s figures in brackets).

In the nine ten years that I have been writing this blog I have written 1025 (925) posts (averaging just over 100 posts a year – approximately two a week). If the internal statistics are to be believed I have written a little over 401,000 (365,000) words in that time and uploaded some 2,845 (2,590) images – many of them my own photographs.

As I wrote last year – “Not bad, huh“?!

In last year’s post I toyed with the notion of it long being time to wind things up. In the light of some most kind and affirmative remarks from gentle readers I determined instead to keep things going.

My thought this year would be that I could perhaps reduce the frequency of my posts, from the current average of around two a week to just a single weekly post. It is not that I mind the discipline of knocking out regular posts but as I get older I do wonder if there is still enough of interest on which to report.

Do let me know what you think…

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Change

April 15, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.”

Irene Peter

Those who receive these postings by email digest will have found yesterday in their inboxes an unfamiliar message which may have caused in them them some alarm. There is nothing to worry about – but I am sorry that this strange new message came without forewarning.

Since I started this online journal back in 2012 it has utilised a service called Feedburner to send out the email digests. Shortly before I started so doing that company was purchased by Google. Various pundits warned even then that – because it was a free service – Google would probably shut it down before very long. Now – ten years on – they have announced that they are finally so doing.

I have thus been obliged to switch to a different service and the email that went out yesterday was just the latest post going out from that new platform. Now – I had no idea what format that message would take or what I could do to make it look more friendly – so the somewhat confusing missive that was sent did not look very appetizing and nor did it sufficiently explain the change.

I have now done some more work on it and I hope that it has a more friendly appearance. I will find out at the same time that the gentle reader does – when this post is circulated!

Please do get in touch should you have further questions or observations.

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Time passes

February 3, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Marcel Proust

I receive a sharp reminder once a year of the passage of time… and in particular of the passage of time since I started writing this blog. That reminder comes in the form of the renewal demand from my hosting company for the pleasure of supporting my various websites – of which this blog was the first, having been created back in 2012. I started blogging at the end of January that year so now is the time that I must stump up in order that I may continue so to do.

For those gentle readers who don’t really get this whole blogging thing – there was a time when blogging was all the rage. That was the few years before I took it up, naturally, and by the time had I started keeping this journal the youngsters were already saying – “Blogging?… Nah!”

Now, of course, I am nearly a whole decade further behind the times – and you know what? – I really don’t care that I am old-fashioned. I am sixty seven, for goodness sake. I am allowed to be old fashioned.

For those of you who like statistics – in the nine years that I have been writing this blog I have written 925 posts (averaging just over 100 posts a year – approximately two a week). If the internal statistics are to be believed I have written nearly 365,000 words in that time and uploaded some 2,590 images – many of them my own photographs.

Not bad, huh?!

I started blogging when I learned that The Girl was going to take up a good job here in Victoria, even though I still needed to work for a few more years in the UK before I could retire and move to Canada to be with her. Faced with the prospect of carrying on a long distance relationship with an eight hour time difference I figured that I would need to find things to occupy my time (other than working!). When her job fell through and she came back to the UK some ten months later I decided to keep the blog going – documenting our eventual move to British Columbia, which was rescheduled for 2015.

I could have stopped once we settled here but I decided to keep it going – as a way of keeping a foot on both continents. I am blessed to have regular readers on both sides of the pond who seem happy to keep up with my chunterings.

Has the blog changed much? It is certainly less verbose than it used to be and I don’t reach for the thesaurus quite as much as once I did. I enjoyed getting to explore the language and to play little games with prose, but as I have grown older so have I started to keep things a little more simple – more straightforward. I have noticed that I do the same with song lyrics – which is no bad thing…

Having made it this far I will, naturally, be shooting for the complete decade.

After that – who knows?

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Cinquecento

October 14, 2016 in Getting started | Permalink

Image by David Bellot - Berkeley, CA, USAWell – who would have thought it?

It is to be hoped that the gentle reader might indulge me just a little if – with not the slightest intention of sounding my own shophar –  I express my astonishment at the relative longevity of this enterprise…

…by which I refer, of course, to this attractively eccentric almanac!

Yes – since I took my first faltering footsteps into the anarchic world of blogging on January 26th 2012 I have contrived to make additions to this agglomeration of arbitrary articles at roughly bi-weekly intervals. The end result of all of that tapping and scratching is (and I know that you have been keeping score!) that this is the five hundredth post since the imperceptibility of the immigrant was first imparted.

Very many humble thanks to all of those die-hards who have stuck with it.

I think a small celebration might be in order – and as that is something that is decidedly better done in the ‘real’ world rather than in the ‘virtual’, the Kickass Canada Girl and I will just have to do something appropriate here in BC! The reader may choose to take the opportunity to raise a glass for this (or indeed any other) reason at his or her own whim or fancy!

Cheers to all!

 

PS – Serious kudos to anyone who can glean the relevance to this post of the image thereto attached!

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