Happy New Year!

I know, I know.  I am late.  It has been the New Year now for 4 days, but unfortunately Melbourne got hit by a heatwave for 3 of those 4 days, and if you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know that our house is disgustable in the heat. As, indeed, am I.  The computer room is the worst of the worst, and only my children went in there voluntarily.  So we put 2012 on hold for a few days and spent our limbo-days in swimming pools instead.  My sister is visiting from Canberra again with her kids,  flat-sitting for our aunt, in an air-conditioned apartment with access to the body corporate private pool.  We spent two days over there, doing as little as possible. We spent one day at MSAC, which is an enormous aquatic centre with a waterslide and a wave pool, and another one at our local pool with Astrid and co.  I didn't shower for that whole time and the knots in my hair had to be seen to be believed.  But the cool change came last night, my hair is washed, our dishes are done, our life is coming back into order.  So I have now declared my official start to 2012.   I hope it brings happiness and health, kindness and sharing, and somewhere cool to go in a heatwave to everyone.

I just read this post over at Fairlie's blog.  This part is almost word-for-word of a blog post brewing in my head recently.

Part of what made blogging so special, particularly in the early years was the cut and thrust and repartee of the comments box. I think it's fair to say that comments are to bloggers as applause is to actors.

In the initial couple of years of my blogging life, there was an immediacy of the comments process but of late, that interaction has declined. Facebook seems to have taken over that role to a large extent, and I know many of us are reading and replying on Facebook via phones and/or iPads, which are not so conducive to the more traditional forms of blogging. (Geez...can you believe I used the word 'traditional' to describe blogging? Things move fast in the digital age.)

I think I'm lucky, because I've found a little niche of blog-friends, who are frequent and/or thoughtful and/or witty commenters.  Occasionally, I'll receive a lovely email or one-off comment from people who've been reading regularly, but quietly, and that is also a delight. My real-life friends quite often weigh in about a blog-post in person, or on facebook, (oh the irony!). And you know, lurking is okay of course; sometimes I lurk.  If I'm quite honest, I'm a bit of quid pro quo commenter, in that I really only comment regularly with people who I know will reciprocate.  Otherwise I'll just drop the odd comment in when I feel like it.  But if I think back to a few Decembers ago, I think there were a lot more blog-readers popping into each others' comment-boxes to wish each other Happy Christmas and New Year.  These days I'm not sure now if people are reading less, or just saying less, or indeed if my blogposts are just less comment-worthy.

But!

I do think the start of a brand new year might be one of those times when we could go the extra mile, so to speak.  Not that I want to boss you or anything.  But I think it would make a lovely start to the New Year if you were to leave a message in the comment box, witty, thoughtul or otherwise. 

Happy 2012!
Caroline x