The house is upside down.......

My house is in chaos. The heating has been (almost) replaced, but the holes in the wall remain, and the carpenters are hammering and plastering and rebuilding cupboards open to the attic as I speak. The large radiators will be delivered and installed (I hope) today, and the last heat testing will be done. Again, I hope. The plumber doing the bathroom is calling later to discuss details. The first windows, and doors and fascia boards are done, and the front of the house will be sorted tomorrow, as in bay windows, door etc. 

And access to this computer has been impossible. There will be photos too, people. I like to share the chaos. The hair remains on end, the house needs to be ENTIRELY redecorated, and my daughter has been dangling from the rafters all weekend, painting the kitchen. Brilliantly.  

We will get there. 

Breathe, Linds.

I am the eternal optimist.

However, the body is creaking mightily. I cannot stand the nest begin disturbed. So I have totally overdone everything. And then today marks the 8th anniversary of the death in this family which changed absolutely everything. Eight years, my friends. Eight. 

And that means that it is over 8 years since I started blogging. 

I have been reading a couple of things recently, referring to those days and how much they are missed by some of us. Yes. Me too. They were good times. In a sense, it is like looking back at the 50s, in terms of the Internet. The innocent times, where we only wanted to connect, communicate, be among people we could learn from, exchange ideas, help, get involved with on our blogs.  Before the days of monetisation, stats and book deals. 

And youth. 

The young ones once grinned benignly at the thought of blogging, especially Mums blogging. And then those young ones suddenly woke up and the rest is history. They took over the internet. Youth generally does this, as it is the way the world works. Old out, new in. Just look at the ages of politicians. After the last European thingy, I googled them all. 30 something. Mainly 47. Hmmm.

Anyway. 

The young ones arrived and suddenly it all changed. It was impossible to actually communicate with them, because their focus was on different things, in a sense. Comments were never acknowledged. There was no way to communicate privately and all of a sudden, it was like fan mail. I remember writing to pop stars in my youth. They never answered themselves either, but got secretaries to do it all. 

To be honest, when you have comments in the thousands, there is no way on God's green earth that you can answer them all, now can you??

But what I am trying to say is that the ESSENCE of blogging - that personal connection disappeared. 

And we are responsible for that, you know. 

We took our eyes off the people we had become close to, and eyed the new ones with a little awe and a whole lot of suspicion, and then we rolled over and died. Those of us who were here 8 years ago know what I am talking about. The saddest thing is that some of those lovely women blogging back then just sort of faded away from the blogging world. And this is what I actually wanted to say at the start before I got side-tracked, as I always do........ There is and always has been room for everyone. I think the worst possible development was when those who had been around a while started comparing themselves and their blogs to the new ones, and we ALL KNOW that comparisons are odious, now don't we??? We do indeed. 

There was no need. 

Everyone has a voice. And everyone has the space to use it here on this great big wonderful on-line world. And after a year or so of fumbling blindly along the path of life, I am reclaiming my spot. I am going nowhere. This is my corner, and I just want to be among friends - if I could ever work out why the Blogger reading list is refusing to list recent posts that would help. Or maybe I need to export my list to somewhere more helpful. Girls? Help? 

I may talk about things more later. 

Progress, people. I don't always love it. And the carpenters need tea and coffee. 

PS: I think about some of the absent bloggers a great deal, you know. I wonder if they are okay, how their children are doing, where they are. I care about them. Facebook is not the answer to everything. You can't tell stories on Facebook, can you......