Happy Blogging!!

This Wonderful Blog World

           

Vanessa, Yvonne, Janine and Nicolette.
The women in my life who have given me a reason to survive.

             It is so amazing what you can do on your own Blog.   My daughter, Janine, created a Blog for me and gave me this wonderful Idea of keeping myself busy by writing about what I had experienced during my early life.   I have been recording everything that I can remember about the things that happened on that Free State farm up to the age of eleven and memories and thoughts have been pouring out like a river flowing.   With some of the stories I have added on a little for your enjoyment, like what happened to our dog Chips when he disappeared for a few months, but basically all the stories are true. (He couldn’t tell us where he had been so I had to think for him!)  That story is still coming.

            Some time ago my sister, Daphne, told me about the idea of us recording our early memories and she did actually start, but when it felt to her that no one in her family was interested, she gave it up.

            She and I have discussed most of the stories that I have written about and with some she did not fully agree, but nevertheless told me to continue as her memory may be a bit rusty.   She reminded me about certain incidents such as the big spiders which I could only vaguely remember.   (She says that she would never have run away from me when the spiders crept out of their holes).   Bertha prodded my mind about the knots in the long grass; I think that may have been her idea as she was a real ‘voorbok’.   She was also very protective over her younger siblings and took the blame for a lot of our misdeeds.   Our brains are like computers with tons of incidents stored away and my greatest fear was the fact that when our brains crash one day, there can be no recovery procedure.

            I love all the family blogs that I am following and they are all so totally different.    Janine told me about her Blog and I wanted one too and after only two weeks I feel pretty confident.   Yvonne was reluctant to start one and now she has two!   Vanessa is an old hand at this type of game, but has now spruced up hers and it is so readable and full of her wonderful paintings.   Charmaine joined us this afternoon and hers is filled with love - the wonderful love of a mother for her child!

            Who will be the next, I can’t wait to see.   You do not have to post anything if you don’t want to but I guarantee that you will be up and about early every day just to read what your family have had to say.    I love it.

            P S   We moved to a farm in the Eastern Cape when I was eleven and a year later my mother had her last baby.   My dad was forty eight and Mommy was forty five.   Johnny was loved by us all but he maintains that he did not have brothers or sisters but many parents instead.

            I will continue my childhood stories tomorrow, but you will have to wait for quite a while before you know what happened to Chips and Polly the Bulldog.