Happy Blogging

A friend recently sent me the blog address of a young lad who has gone to New Zealand to work - farming with cows - to have a look at with the comment "this is proper blogging", or words to that effect.  The recommended blog is www.flinnz.blogspot.co.uk - it really is good and the photos he takes are great.  Didn't realise New Zealand had such cold winters.

Since that email from my friend, everything seems to have been set-up to get me blogging again.  Homes and Antiques' (the magazine) newsletter came onto my in-box.  Headlines? 50 Best Blogs 2012.  So had a quick peek at some of them - a bit out of my league as they are a bit arty and crafty.  Am still sorting out my collection of mags, and picked up Prima with the article that set me off blogging in the first place.  Rejoined Wife in the North (her last blog was in 2011 - but she won a book deal so is probably still busy writing books) and Charlie Beth - she has since lost her weight, got married and has two children, and back on her diet!

So, I got to thinking about what of interest I could blog.  I did think that no-one would want to know the (rather boring) details of my day to day activities now that OH and I have retired from farming.  We don't have anymore funny stories of lambs running about, calves up to their hide and seek tricks (setting off their mothers come back moos), or disasters that turn into quite humerous stories once you sit down and go through them.  My gardening isn't so good that I produce prize winning produce, mowing the lawn does my head in!!

But then I got thinking about "Housewife 49".  She was Nella Last who wrote a diary for Mass Observation in the 2nd World War.  Her diaries have been published and are now available in book form - Nella Last's War and Nella Last's Peace.  Who would think that Nella would have much to write about?  Victoria Wood played a very good Nella in the tv production of "Housewife 49".

Pages and pages of blogging also leaves me cold.  Rightly or wrongly, I think blogging should be short, sweet and relatively simple.  Not many people have the time to sit and read mini-books in their coffee breaks.

But I do wish that blogging had been popular when we first moved to France.  It would have been quite nice to record my thoughts, doubts, fears and longings, and to have, hopefully, some support during my early years here.  After 16 years here you just get on with life now.

However, I did come with one husband, got divorced and married someone else.  One of the 3 children, now young adults, is married, another has returned to the UK, and we no longer work from dawn 'till dusk.
Perhaps there are some blogs there after all!

And photos?  Will leave you all with some of our extended family. Theses baby hedgehogs were on our lawn when we got back from holiday in the Spring.  Enjoy!

You know when you have made it!

There are times in you life when you reach certain goals, standards or you've just plain made it.

I suppose my first experience of having "made it" was many, many, years ago when I voted in as Social Secretary of our local Young Farmer's Club (could it have helped that my parents kept the local hostelry where we all gathered and used for our (drunken) discos?).  So, number 1 was achieving the dizzy heights of Social Secretary.

Another many, many years passed.  I went to secretarial college, mother wasn't having any of "I want to work with horses" lark, got my first few jobs, doing "temp" work and moved to Lancashire with my then partner.

I got an interview with a local carpet company, and subsequently got the job of Secretary to the Board of Directors - Managing, Export, Financial, Sales and Personnel.  I had a couple of other secretaries working for me, but I was Senior Secretary.

With that title came responsibility for the Directors' Dining Room, and their drinks fridge, and ............ the Directors' Toilet!!!!!! Don't let your mind go overboard with this one - I only held (?) the spare key!

So number 2 holding the key to the Directors' loo.

And so I came to France.  What accolade could be in store for me here?  No, getting divorced was no big deal (if I'd known how easy it was I would have done it sooner).  Getting remarried?  No. Retiring?  That was quite a milestone, especially as I get no pension yet so have to look after OH as he is the breadwinner.

None of the above came close to........................becoming Secretary of our Farm Women's Club!!!!

You may laugh, but we all have to aim high in life.  Perhaps the next pinnacle will be becoming a grandmother, oh joy!

The photo shows our outgoing Secretary and her husband at one of our FWC lunches........ gotcha!!!!!