Visitors

I keep saying that it's a very small world.  You know why?  Because it is.  

Last year I went to stay with a friend, Viv, at her house in France.  As coincidence would have it another friend, Sally, had phoned to say that she was travelling with her brother-in-law, George, to deliver parts urgently needed by her son's business partner for farm equipment not far from Viv and would like to visit.  And so a couple of interesting days including playing pétanque in Villeneuve was had by all.

As yet another coincidence would have it George and Clair have a daughter who came to live in New Zealand in 1983.  George and Clair come to visit every alternate year for a couple of months.  Their daughter lives about half an hour from me. 

So George and Clair came for lunch yesterday.  A wonderful afternoon.

Learning in Blogland

I am often told by acquaintances and even by friends that they do not have time to waste on Facebook and reading blogs and 'all that nonsense'.  I do what I hope passes for smiling sweetly and say nothing. 

Of course we all know that there is a lot of twaddle on Facebook, Twitter and blogs.  I have a straightforward remedy when people continually post on FB what I consider to be things that are not worth reading: I simply block their posts from my FB page.  I use Twitter to follow various news media such as the New Zealand Herald and the BBC and SeeYa (for cheap Air NZ flights) and so on.  I do have a few people I know as followers and follow them but I've never actually seen a comment or post by any of them and I don't Tweet (which is, I believe the term for posting on Twitter).

Blogs are, however, in a different league.  I've explained before why I started blogging.  I'm sure I have but I can't find a specific post - perhaps it's on Eagleton Notes, perhaps I've not written a specific post but done it in passing.  In short it was originally to keep friends and family acquainted with what I'm doing on the other side of the world (which ever they and I happen to be).  It's more than that now though.

Through my blogs I have met some lovely and interesting people both in real life and in this ethereal life of Blogland.  I have made acquaintances and I have made friends.  I have learned a lot and I have been to new places and I have widened my horizons.

I know that I am not alone in all that.

However this evening I read a post by SP on her blog, Secretly Skint, entitled Time Travel.  Somehow it has made a bigger impression on me than many posts recently because it has exposed me to something I had no idea existed in the way described.