It was quite by chance - if such a thing exists - that it occurred to me that I started blogging 'about' ten years ago. Out of curiosity I checked right back to March 2005's archive posts - and found, to my surprise, that it was exactly ten years ago today when I began this blog.
Skimming through those posts, I began to wonder just what had really changed. Oh, we've moved house, and our sons have grown up and left home. One is married with an almost-nine-month-old baby. Three of our original cats are no longer with us. We've made new friends and learned new board games. A couple of years ago my mother died, and our younger son, who spent five years living in the UK, moved back to Cyprus.
I have more lines on my face and considerably more grey hairs, but the essential 'me' is no different as far as I can tell. Comparing a very recent photo of me with my grandson, and one from ten years ago, with Tessie, I see - suddenly - why people thought I looked younger than I was, when I was in my mid-forties:
Since those first blogging days, I have learned how to add more than one photo to a post, which has been a useful skill. I'm intrigued to read a very long-winded set of posts at the end of March 2005 about a 'typical day' in my life; in that, too, it seems, not a whole lot has changed. There are only two of us here most of the time, and - thankfully - no garden. I wondered if I might miss it, but I haven't yet. But while the fine details of day-to-day housework, shopping and cleaning have inevitably altered over the years, in a broader 'big picture' sense, they're little different.
We use euros rather than Cyprus pounds now, and the cost of living has, inevitably, risen. But I still squeeze orange juice each morning. We still rely primarily on solar heating for hot water, but have to boost it sometimes with the electric immersion heater. However, mains water is always available these days so I no longer have to do all my laundry on just one day when the mains was on, for fear of running out of water. We take it for granted now; I try to be careful but it's easy to let the tap run a bit too long, or to take an extra-long shower when there is water always on tap.
I still make yogurt, though I use long-life milk now. I still have a four-weekly menu on the fridge, much adjusted over the years, but I only stick to it loosely. A slow-cooker has made some meals much easier and allows me to freeze portions for easy re-heating. A breadmaker means that I rarely go out to buy bread from the bakery. Best of all, from the kitchen perspective, is having a dishwasher, something which changed when we bought our own house in 2006.
I still keep my book reviews blog (and several others); I still seem to spend longer than I should on emails, although there are few if any forum mails these days. Instead, I skim Facebook: sometimes rapidly, sometimes not. Time still has a tendency to run away from me even though I'm no longer trying to juggle meals, laundry and general schedules for our busy sons. It seems, looking back, that my 'typical day' was really quite full: these days, I still sometimes wonder what I did, yet I always seem to be doing something, usually reasonably constructive.
We've been away in the UK for the past couple of weeks, spending time with a large number of family members and driving from the Southernmost part of England to - almost - the border with Scotland. It was wonderful, and refreshing, and tiring too, enlivened (or, rather, the reverse) by the norovirus bug.
I'm wondering, now, what the next ten years will bring.
Having started this post with not just one but two pictures of me - unusual, as I'm normally the one behind the camera - I'll end it with one of the photos that makes me smile the most from the past couple of weeks.
Four generations of my family; four out of five of my favourite guys in all the world:
Skimming through those posts, I began to wonder just what had really changed. Oh, we've moved house, and our sons have grown up and left home. One is married with an almost-nine-month-old baby. Three of our original cats are no longer with us. We've made new friends and learned new board games. A couple of years ago my mother died, and our younger son, who spent five years living in the UK, moved back to Cyprus.
I have more lines on my face and considerably more grey hairs, but the essential 'me' is no different as far as I can tell. Comparing a very recent photo of me with my grandson, and one from ten years ago, with Tessie, I see - suddenly - why people thought I looked younger than I was, when I was in my mid-forties:
Since those first blogging days, I have learned how to add more than one photo to a post, which has been a useful skill. I'm intrigued to read a very long-winded set of posts at the end of March 2005 about a 'typical day' in my life; in that, too, it seems, not a whole lot has changed. There are only two of us here most of the time, and - thankfully - no garden. I wondered if I might miss it, but I haven't yet. But while the fine details of day-to-day housework, shopping and cleaning have inevitably altered over the years, in a broader 'big picture' sense, they're little different.
We use euros rather than Cyprus pounds now, and the cost of living has, inevitably, risen. But I still squeeze orange juice each morning. We still rely primarily on solar heating for hot water, but have to boost it sometimes with the electric immersion heater. However, mains water is always available these days so I no longer have to do all my laundry on just one day when the mains was on, for fear of running out of water. We take it for granted now; I try to be careful but it's easy to let the tap run a bit too long, or to take an extra-long shower when there is water always on tap.
I still make yogurt, though I use long-life milk now. I still have a four-weekly menu on the fridge, much adjusted over the years, but I only stick to it loosely. A slow-cooker has made some meals much easier and allows me to freeze portions for easy re-heating. A breadmaker means that I rarely go out to buy bread from the bakery. Best of all, from the kitchen perspective, is having a dishwasher, something which changed when we bought our own house in 2006.
I still keep my book reviews blog (and several others); I still seem to spend longer than I should on emails, although there are few if any forum mails these days. Instead, I skim Facebook: sometimes rapidly, sometimes not. Time still has a tendency to run away from me even though I'm no longer trying to juggle meals, laundry and general schedules for our busy sons. It seems, looking back, that my 'typical day' was really quite full: these days, I still sometimes wonder what I did, yet I always seem to be doing something, usually reasonably constructive.
We've been away in the UK for the past couple of weeks, spending time with a large number of family members and driving from the Southernmost part of England to - almost - the border with Scotland. It was wonderful, and refreshing, and tiring too, enlivened (or, rather, the reverse) by the norovirus bug.
I'm wondering, now, what the next ten years will bring.
Having started this post with not just one but two pictures of me - unusual, as I'm normally the one behind the camera - I'll end it with one of the photos that makes me smile the most from the past couple of weeks.
Four generations of my family; four out of five of my favourite guys in all the world:
1 comment:
You mean: "can it get worse here?"
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