Fifteen Years of my Blog

 

Five years ago, this is what I had to say on the tenth anniversary of my retirement and starting my blog:

It was ten years ago today I published my first post on this blog. Apparently, I still had six days left at work before I retired and wanted to get the blog up and running.

So, ten years and 980 posts later (now 1534 posts), I continue to write about books, cinema, theatre, tv and anything that interests me. Apart from enjoying the whole process, I always wanted to keep my brain active once I retired, and the discipline of writing helps to do just that. I guess I always wanted to write. My place at Hull University to read Economics was, I thought, an entry to journalism. Thankfully my "A" Level grades were never good enough as I now know my actual career in construction provided a better outlet for my limited creativity.

So thank you to Alan Yentob who, in his programme "Imagine" in 2006, described all the new things on the internet like YouTube, Facebook and blogs. And to Google for the free platform. Here's to the next ten years.

Well, I haven't yet made it another ten, but on the fifteenth anniversary, I'm still here. So fifteen years since I retired. According to one of my first posts, my last day at work was actually a Tuesday, the 19th December 2006. Amazing where the time goes. I was reading one of those first posts about my last week at work. Still quite young at 62, but in a week I shall be 77.  It sounds a little frightening but I have no particular ailment at the moment (touching my wooden desk), except my hearing isn't what it used to be.  The old back still plays up occasionally, but so did my father's. Having had my booster vaccine a few weeks ago I feel fairly well protected from covid. But I am trying to be sensible, cinema during the day is fine with few people at a screening. Parkrun is outdoors (the milestone t-shirt above is my green 250) and we gave up a planned shopping trip to Milton Keynes next week. 

Another year, another adjustment to my running age grade. I never know how long I can keep up my running. I'm not sure if cutting down to three days a week was a good idea. Missing out the recovery run the day after my only tempo run of the week is maybe the wrong decision. (See my post in November). This week, for example, My longer run two days after the tempo was a struggle. Then yesterday I was back to something much better. Probably not the time of year to be too prescriptive about which days to run. The last couple of weeks has been quite mild but freezing temperatures are forecast in a few days. 

As for this blog, I see that there have been over 380,00 hits. But I have to go back to March 2019 for over 1,000 for a single post. "Poetry from Where the Crawdads Sing" has attracted 1414 hits so far. Although my posts on the music from "Call the Midwife" still are by far the greatest numbers.