Earlier this month, this blog reached its fourteenth birthday. Though I am no mathmetician, I have worked out that "Yorkshire Pudding" has reflected more than 20% of my entire life. That's a big chunk.
Fourteen years ago I was the head of the English department in a tough secondary school in northern Sheffield. Statistics demonstrated the high levels of social deprivation in the school's catchment area. Every day I set off at 7.52 and most days got home by 18.30. It was challenging to say the least - to maximise the potential of our pupils and attempt to meet over-optimistic targets at exam time. It was sucking the lifeblood out of me and that's why I opted for early retirement in the summer of 2009 - a decision I have not regretted for one moment.
Fourteen years ago our daughter was working towards her A levels in a very different Sheffield secondary school - where articulate children had school bags and achievable dreams of furthering their education. Our son was working in a men's fashion store on Division Street in the city centre. The academic path was never going to be for him. And Shirley was working in the Lodge Moor health centre as a new practice nurse having moved on from hospital nursing.
A fourteen year old blog gives you a historical record of your life passing by. You can look back on holidays, country walks, books read, films seen, thoughts that arose and you can read about deaths and entrances.
This morning, for example, I was reading about my battle with Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase (ESBL) in August 2008. It was and is a deathly strain of e-coli that I must have picked up whilst on holiday in Turkey. It knocked me for six and without a week's course of third generation antibiotics that were dripped in to me in hospital I would now most certainly be dead. Thank heavens for The National Health Service.
Yes. Fourteen years of history. I was just 51 years old when I began this blogging journey. That seems so young when you are looking back from the age of 65. In another fourteen years I will be 79 years old - if I make it that far - and this 65 year old will also appear like a mere youth. But will blogging still exist then? I strongly suspect that it will.
2 years ago I caught the Norovirus just through attending an appointment at the Hospital with Tom. Like you I was healthy and didn't think that I would be vulnerable. I now use the hand dispensers like mad when visiting any Hospital.
ReplyDeleteYou were lucky to have been able to retire early. My youngest son is a Charge Nurse in the theatres of a Hospital and will have to work until he is in his seventies poor thing.
Briony
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I wouldn't have been able to retire early at 56 today. The shutters have come down. Washing hands is a very sensible thing to do.
DeleteTime...the years...they disappear like mist in the wind.
ReplyDeleteSuch a difference in your life these days to back then; and yet some things remain the same.
I'm glad I stumbled in to your blog, Mr. Pud...whenever that day was. I can't recall how I discovered it. The mooing of the odd cow or two may have led me to it. :)
I don't mean the cows are "odd". I always love your photos of cows...as well as your other pictorial splendours you have generously shared with your readers through the years.
I'm glad you over-dosed on antibiotics!!
And I am glad that I "met" you through blogging too Lee. Similarly, I cannot recall how I stumbled across you. Perhaps you were lying down outside our front door. I am warmed - both by your feistiness and by your sensitivities.
DeleteWill blog land exist in the future? now that is an interesting thought. A form of diary keeping, personal, political and outside interests. Some things worry me, you become publicised to the outside world, computers are so clever nowadays. So if the robots don't get us maybe blogging will survive.
ReplyDeleteI used to post pictures on a Google-powered photo site called "Panoramio" but almost overnight they pulled the plug on it and all those carefully mapped pictures disappeared from the internet. It is not out of the question that that could happen to blogging.
DeleteI had no idea that you'd had such a horrible bacteria! How frightening. And yes, if this were merely a hundred years ago, you would have died.
ReplyDeleteFourteen years blogging is a very long time. "Only" twelve years for me. We were both mere children when we started.
I'm glad you lived. I'm glad you blog. I'm glad to have met you in this virtual world.
The feeling is mutual Ms Moon.
DeleteSomehow I always assumed you'd started your blog when you retired, not while you were still working. However did you find the time for it back then!
ReplyDeleteMy journey through blogland started later, but I was younger - I am 51 now, the age you were when you started blogging.
Steve was still alive, I worked at a different company, my parents were younger and healthier than they are now.
I didn't blog as much in those early years and I didn't check out other people's blogs so much. Steadily, life goes on.
DeleteI love looking back at my blog and at all the things I've forgotten about my own life. Blogs DO make a terrific record, don't they? I started in 2006, when I was 39. Fortunately, no e-coli yet! Congrats on your 14 years!
ReplyDeleteThank you Steve. You were just a boy when you started blogging. Sometimes I look back at old posts and I can't believe that it was me who wrote them.
DeleteThank goodness you were able to be treated and healed from that awful infection. I've heard many other bloggers talk about how they can look back at their lives through their blogs. You have your own personal history book in a way. Fourteen years is a long time yet as we get older it speeds by faster and faster. Congratulation on a blog well done!
ReplyDeleteHaving visitors like you helps to keep this blog rolling along Bonnie. You are like petroleum.
DeleteWhy did you set off at 7.52 every morning and not make it a round figure like 7.50?
ReplyDeleteI always wanted it to be earlier but no matter how I tried, the start time on my car clock was inevitably 7:52 day after day, year after year.
DeleteI'm not sure how I "met" you here or when I first started following you, but I'm glad that I did! August will mark 9 years of blogging for me....and I was 35 when I started. The time sure does fly.
ReplyDeleteI hate to say this Jennifer but you are now entering middle age. Please don't whack me!
DeleteI really hope blogging is still here in the future. Reading other folks' blogs and working on my own and getting to know people from around the world - it's all very enjoyable and rewarding. I guess I'm the least accomplished blogger here, having started only three years ago. Your post also reminds me that I should copy a few more months' worth of my posts to our hard drive. Just in case.
ReplyDeleteThree years? You are jut a toddler in the blogworld Jenny-O!
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