Six Thousand

We wrote our first blog post on the 20th August 2006. That first post was about the house for which we had just signed the compromis de vente (understanding to buy).

We first started customising the blog in January 2007.

Originally the blog was my idea, as an open letter to our families. Although we have good communication with them we would occasionally get "you didn't tell us that" in course of a conversation, so we put it all in writing as it happened (or soon after) so that they all got the same important news. Back then the blog was all about our trips to France, and the process of buying the house.

Gradually the scope widened. Susan's first post was about Demoiselles, which I had mentioned we had been watching by the Claise on the day we signed the compromis. It wasn't until the 22 February 2007 that the world outside the Touraine got a proper mention when we crossed the water between England and France by ferry for the first time.

In March 2008 the blog became daily, and the subject matters widened considerably. Cooking (my attempt at petit salé) was first mentioned that month, and Australia got its first "more than a passing mention" when we wrote about Anzac Day in April. Paris first appeared in May, and our lives outside France in October.

It wasn't until January 2009 that a photo of Australia appeared - a couple of shots of the house I had just sold, enabling us (finally) to plan our move from London. Interestingly, our first proper blog post about the world outside France was in April: Susan writing about a stopover in Korea, then a fully Australian blog post later the same month.

Since then we have written 6000 posts covering 14 countries, and every (more or less) subject that we have found interesting. It's no longer a post every day because, as anyone who has a blog will tell you, writing every day takes over your life until you have no time to do interesting stuff. For a while Susan did all the blogging because I had massive issues with the platform when blogger changed the way it worked. At that stage she took over our joint ID so all my original posts appear to have been written by her. I returned when Susan became busier than me and I had calmed down a bit.

Writing the blog has been good for us: as an aide mémoire, an introduction to people, an inspiration to research something we've seen, but lately, mainly as a reminder of how far we have come.

6000 posts. 18 years. 4,408,662 visits (as of 5 minutes ago). Blimey. Thank you for putting up with us.