Old Bloggers Award

So, as I said in my previous post (notice how I didn't say "my last post" there), I was reading Expat Mum's post about old bloggers, and she gave me an award. Just like the old days. The award is the Dragon Award for Loyalty, and it's only for people who've been blogging since 2010. I don't really get it. Are dragons known for their loyalty? Or just for being old? Anyway, here it is, and thank you very much.

I then have to tell you seven things about myself that you may not know. Here goes:

I like listening to The Archers, but I'm not obsessive. If I miss it, I miss it.

Husband has the masculine version of my name (think Paul and Pauline, Richard and Ricarda, Justin and Justine - that kind of thing). I like it, not least because it often provides a really easy conversation opener at a social occasion.

I always hated being tall, and seldom wore heels in my teens and twenties. Husband is my height, so when we first got together, and for many years, that "seldom" went down to "never". Then I bought a pair of heels for a fancy-dress do, and really liked them. The next time I was thinking of wearing them, my daughter (aged about 9 at the time) was watching me dress. I made some comment about not wearing the shoes because they made me taller than Daddy, and she said she didn't think that mattered and I should wear them anyway. That comment completely changed my attitude. I now wear heels if I want to, and I enjoy them. It's not just that I want to model to my daughter a more confident attitude than I have had (it looks like she is going to be tall too) - though that is true. Something in me just shifted, the moment she said what she said.

I don't have lots of favourite films that I can watch over and over. I'd always rather watch something new, because there is so much good stuff out there. However, I do have a very few favourites... Hang on a minute, I think I've shared this in a blog post before... that's the trouble with being an old blogger... you're bound to repeat yourself... but in case you missed it last time, my old favourite dvds are Billy Elliot, The Blind Side, The Full Monty, and Elf (but only the first half where it's just ridiculous and politically incorrect, not the schmultzy second half, and I know you'll disagree with me, Potty Mummy, because you enjoy Zooey Deschanel singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town).

I am a big advocate of the split infinitive, because it's only pedantry that has made it unacceptable over all these years.

I have a colleague at work who shares my taste in names, and we have lots of conversations slagging off other people's choices. We always pre-fix what we say with "of course taste is very personal, but...". I realise this is going to end horribly badly, because one day we're going to be in full raucous humour about a name, and someone is going to come into the room and be offended.

That's six, not seven, but quite enough.

Now I have to name some old bloggers to pass the award on to. Very hard, given that Expat Mum has picked lots of the ones I would pick. But here goes. It's awarded to you, Paradise Lost in Translation, Reluctant Memsahib, Happy Homemaker UK, Motherhood the Final Frontier, Rosie Scribble, Is There a Plan B?, Kelloggsville, Sticky Fingers and Pig in the Kitchen. Blimey, I didn't realise I knew so many old bloggers. Maybe some of you could emerge from blogging mothballs and manage a post.
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It was a moment

I had a moment the other day.

I've stayed on a couple of email lists, and yes, I know, I know, we left America 11 months ago, so it probably is time to drop off them. But they don't generate much traffic, so they don't clog up my inbox, and it's kind of fun to keep an eye on them. One is the book club I belonged to, and I like to see what they are reading. The other is the study group I belonged to at church. Now, that was a special group in my life. You may remember reading about those people in this post.

I had a phone conversation with the friend who convenes that group out of the blue recently. It was fun to catch up - both the big things, and the little stuff. And then, just after, there was another email in my inbox. I hardly read them, these days, but the second paragraph caught my eye. 

"Also, on another note, for those of you who knew Husband and Iota, I got a call from her the other day and they are all doing well in Scotland. Husband likes his new job, the kids are doing well, and their house in America finally sold (Iota says thank you for the prayers and hello to all!)."

"For those of you who knew Husband and Iota..."  That was the moment. What? There are people in that group who don't know me? Seriously? You mean, it's not all just exactly as I left it? How can that be? People definitely aren't allowed to do that. My life there is in a box, and that box is absolutely not permitted to be shaken up.

It was a moment. 

I'm going to remove myself from those email lists. I'm in another church group over here now, and a couple of weeks ago, a friend and I decided to start a book club. We're reading The Great Gatsby... Life moves on.

It was just a moment. Those moments feel rather more like this, though.

Photo credits: IKEA, and Wikipedia

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Bloggers of yesteryear

I was e-chatting to a blogger the other day, as you do, and the subject of the North East of England came up. “Wife in the North country,” I said. “Wife in the North?” came the reply. “I don’t know that one. Have to look it up.”

I have known for a long time that I am an Old Blogger, but it was with that comment that I realized that a whole generation, maybe two or three, of bloggers have emerged since mine.

I started blogging in May 2007, and it was very different then. That was in the days before the explosion. There were no groups to join, and you found new blogs to read via the blogrolls of your favourite blogs, or by following up comments. So it was important to be on blogrolls, and to keep your own one up to date. You had to make your comments sympathetic, witty, insightful, perky, intriguing, inviting (no pressure, then) as they were your opening gambit in the conversation, and there really wasn’t any other route.

No-one in the UK was making any money from their mummy blog, and there was much more talk of blogging as a guilty pleasure. People would regularly say "I should be doing the ironing/playing with my children/walking the dog/working on my new world peace project, but here I am blogging again." It was a little like being in a club, and confessing to a naughty secret.

Twitter didn't exist (yes, really). You didn't know who your followers were, and feed-readers were for the advanced. Anyone who had a Sitemeter button on their blog was pretty sophisticated. Uploading a picture was a skill that new bloggers sought help for, and were congratulated on when they’d mastered it. If we’d known vlogging was only a couple of years away, we could have called putting a picture up, “plogging”.

Now I don’t want to be accused of being cliquey, or competitive, so I don’t want anyone to feel excluded here. But I got a little nostalgic, and I started thinking back to the old days. Any other Old Bloggers out there, I thought I'd invite you to accompany me down Blogging Memory Lane. (And I'm not really worried about being cliquey here, because I don't think most people would feel hard done by, for not being part of a group of shamelessly backward-looking old fogeys, in today's forward-looking, punchy, dynamic, multi-media blogging world.) Trouble is, as I wrote this, it stopped being a trip down Memory Lane, and became a visit to Bloggers' Graveyard. That's the thing with blogging. Most of us are doing it for a reason, and that often also means we are doing it for a season. A lot of people whom I was reading two years ago are no longer blogging. Some people announce they're leaving (and some then in fact come back), but most just post less and less frequently, until the last post is up there for months on end.

Wife in the North was, of course, the big name at that time, but do you also remember Strife in the North? That was a spoof blog written by Rilly Super. On occasion, Wife in the North would write a post, and within a day, Rilly Super would have written on the same subject. One or two people suspected Wifey of also being Rilly, but I didn't buy that theory. One blog is time-consuming enough...

There were other Northumbrian bloggers who I enjoyed: Mutterings and Meanderings, and then a couple who have disappeared completely from the blogosphere: Mutterings from the Mill, and Over 60 Now, whose blogs don't even turn up on google now.

Then there was Stay at Home Dad. In those days, a daddy blogger was a very rare creature, almost mythical in status, and because he wrote so movingly and sensitively about his daughter, lots of us had a virtual crush on him. Oh go on. Admit it.

I miss Rotten Correspondent, with her tales of life as a nurse in a busy ER. I was actually in her town a while back, and we could have met up, but I didn’t discover till after the event that that was where she lived. What a waste. And what about Blooming Marvelous? Remember her? It was through her blog that I learned that marvellous is spelt differently in American and British English. Who knew? I thought she’d disappeared for good, but she left a comment recently, so she must still be reading occasionally.

Ha, and what about Omega Mum? I used to laugh out loud at her descriptions of school assemblies. Never understood her blog title though: 3 kids no job, since she did have a job. Maybe the blog came first, and the job came later. Then there was Beta Mum, who went all off-shore on us and moved to Jersey.

It’s a pity I didn’t keep a copy of my blogrolls (is there some way of accessing old versions?) It would have been interesting, and I know I’ve missed a stack of excellent Old Bloggers. I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip with me, though, and please feel free to add any other lost old favourites in the comments. There ought to be some way we could have a get together. Class of 2007. Perhaps there's a niche for a website here: Bloggers Reunited, which would put our anonymous virtual identities virtually back in touch with other anonymous virtual identities.