20150125 – Monday – Commencing my diary

Fay Berry Dec 2010

I am feeling quite satisfied and happy today which is not how I felt last week and the week before. Building a web site from scratch was a huge learning curve for me. My 76 year old brain doesn’t find it as easy as I once might have to take in new material and learn new skills.

I found a video which led me through all the steps, one by one, from choosing a domain name,  finding a web host, dowloading WordPress and then learning how to use it.

I ended up getting some help along the way from my friend Peter Halpin who works with WordPress every day,  and now I am much more confident that I know what I am doing, or at least enough to get by. Every day I watch another training video to learn some of the stuff I may have missed. I have three ads on my web-site from adsense and so now I get paid per click from people who click on the advertisements they see there.

Last night I finished editing Chapter 4 – King of Melville Island and putting some pictures into it and then I posted it on facebook. That was new to me. I was looking at my web-site as a whole and not realising that I could post individual stories from my web site onto facebook for my friends. It is all new and changing all the time for me.

Sunday was a good day. I went to South Adelaide meeting and Mark Clothier gave the exhort and there were lots of friends to talk to afterwards.

I saw a lovely photo of my old friend Rhonda Stretton on facebook today

This morning I am sitting on the seafront at Henley Beach at a table in front of Joe’s Cafe. It is a beautiful balmy morning with a light breeze. The sea is flat calm and a pale blue and there are a number of swimmers enjoying the water. I wish I had my bathers with me!

I had a podiatrist appointment at 2.40 in the afternoon and so I drove to that. My podiatrist had booked a double appointment for me to check my feed because of my diabetes. She says that my pulse is very good so there are no problems there. I booked another appointment for 8 weeks time.

I rang Don and Una Strempel and arranged to drive up to their place for a coffee. Don and Una live in the Green Briars village at Aberfoyle Park. We sat in their comfortable lounge and drank our mugs of tea and coffee and exchanged news. Don and Una have been good friends since 1968 when Jeff and I met them at the Rathmines Bible School. We got on so well that we arranged to stay together in Sydney after the school.

The Forsdykes loaned us their house and we stayed there for almost a week and went together to see the sights of Sydney. When I says we saw the sights of Sydney, we SAW the sights of Sydney. Don always felt he was wasting his trip if he didn’t see EVERYTHING that there was to be seen. Travelling with Don and Una was always a roller-coaster ride. Jeff and Don were school teachers so we had the school holidays and so were able to go travelling together on many occasions.

These days, after having a triple bypass, Don’s days of major travelling are over. and so we sit together and travel in our minds over those wonderful days we spent together in “days gone by.”  I think travelling back in time in one’s mind is a wonderful thing. Our minds forget all the bad times and remember the good in a beautiful blue and pink haze of enhanced memory. I have such wonderful memories of the “Stremps” and all our adventures together.

Driving back home was wonderful. The weather was exceptionally beautiful. It was after 5 pm when I left Don and Una and all the traffic was coming out of the city and there was little traffic on the road going back. Driving down the Ocean Road overlooking the rolling hills and the beautiful sea was sublime. I thought of Sharon King in her caravan family holiday at Kingston Park and reminded myself that I must go and stay at Kingston Park (Brighton) caravan Park again some time. Don and Una and I had been talking about their travels and how, when they came home from places like Cambodia, they always said that ADELAIDE was one of the most beautiful places in the world to live in, and it surely is!

It has been a lovely day! If someone asked me tomorrow what I had been doing today, I would probably answer, “Nothing much,” but it wouldn’t be true. Today, as is every day in Adelaide, was  a lovely day!