Celebration

At the end of September 2010, I uttered a couple of words partially in jest, partially serious to Uncle Nick, and before I really knew what had hit me, I was the proud and very uncertain owner of a spanking blog. Please note, I have learned my lesson well, I now think carefully before I speak, for it is inevitable that I will have to act upon what was said. Uncle Nick lives by two simple creeds; practise what you preach and/or implement what you agreed upon; failure in these two regards might have some dire consequences to a certain part of my human anatomy.

My IT experience at that stage was limited to pushing an "On” button, putting in a password, waiting for everything to appear, and then happily clicking away getting my work done. If anything did go wrong, it was not a problem at all, the IT department was only a phone call away to sort things out for me. However, all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by conversations in a language I did not understand. HTML, URL, banners, leader boards, links, buttons, SEO, page ranking and keywords were total foreign concepts. I have a good idea what the people busy building the Tower of Babel felt like when suddenly, in a blink of an eye, his neighbour was sprouting some gibberish...

I could romanticize about us, when we were setting up the blog, complete with butterflies, doves, and cotton candy clouds floating in a blue sky next to the rainbow, but that would be a blatant lie. There were a lot of “Can you repeat that in English?” or “Are you speaking English?” but most often it was “What the *&^% are you saying?” The replies were not much better, “What is so difficult to understand?” and “For an intelligent woman, you can act silly” and then the dreaded “F*&^% hell, honestly!!”

At the same time, even though clearly not always impressed with my lack of understanding, he would explain it all over again, until finally Raven Red’s blog made an appearance in early October 2010 for the first time. Uncle Nick’s comments regarding my grammar or my "awful colonial dialect"...well, those ones are not to be repeated in public domain, but every step of the way since the first posting appeared, he still gives me advice on my blog. He continues to compliment me on the number of visits and when finding a photo that he knows I will like, forwards it to me.

I have realised today that I have already posted a hundred times on the blog, and my, how time flies when you are having fun!  And thanks to Uncle Nick interpreting my “maybe I should think about a blog” as “I want to start a blog within the next five minutes”, I have met the most wonderful people along the way, which has made this particular journey worthwhile.

Bonnie  (My Bottom Smarts) that announced the arrival of Raven Red on the blogging scene, Pink  (The Pink Report) that encourages me every day and even proofread a couple of postings for me, and Ronnie (Heart and Soul) with her quiet, wicked sense of humour that came visiting every so often. Then there is Hermione (Hermione’s Heart) that has the most amazing ability to find the oddest, weirdest and funniest photographs on the internet.

As time went past, more and more people came visiting, stayed for a while, and forged very special friendships, Poppy, Devlin, Michael and Season, Erica, Emanuele, Zelle, Arianna, Dioneo and Libby. I eventually plucked up the courage to start commenting on a blog that I regarded as one of thé spanking blogs, and in the process met a wonderful man, erm...lets rather stick with nice man. Okay, fine...I am to report to his study for some obscure misdemeanour, not that I can think whatever I have done wrong that I should be summonsed to appear in front of MarQe.

Then there are the regular commentators whose input I so much appreciates, B’Man that is sadly no longer blogging, Brett B, dd, and Joey. Four months ago, none of these people was in my life, but now, everyone with their little quirks, great sense of humour, wonderful insets and outlooks on life, are there every morning when I wake up, brightening up my world. A hundred posts may not be the biggest achievement, but the rewards so far, are worth every post that I have written.