Goodbye? Well, never say never, so perhaps Au Revoir ...

My dear little Bloggies - how are you all?  Yes, I know, I have been very remiss in not keeping in touch, so I felt that I really had better write this little note today.

I have been blogging for four years (it might even be a little longer) and, during that time, I have covered all the usual world anniversaries, as well as those anniversaries of my own dear family.  I have covered world tragedies, including the devastation caused by the terrible earthquake in Japan, the equal devastation in New Zealand, the bush fires in Australia, and who could forget that awful shooting of those innocent little children at their school in America.

There have been good times as well, of course, and from my own country's point of view, highlights would have to be the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympic Games which were held in London.

I have told you about my family, my garden, and my travels, and I really do feel that there is not a lot more that I can amuse you with, so, albeit reluctantly, I have decided to end my little scribblings in the Southhamsdarling blog.

I really can't leave until I have said a massive "thank you" to all my wonderful Followers, especially those who used to pop over at every post to leave a comment for me.  You always showed me so much support, encouragement, laughter, affection and, yes, even love, and I will always be grateful for that.  The good thing is that so many of you have become friends with me on my personal facebook page, and we are in touch on virtually a daily basis, which is a lovely way for us to keep our friendship going.

I hope you will notice that I have changed my header for my leaving post, and this is just how my garden looks at the moment.  I thought I would leave you with a few photos of things that have been happening here in heavenly Devon and, yes, we are getting some wonderful sunshine at the moment!

Most of you will know how much I love quotations, so this is how I will end today ...  my wish for all of you is that you keep healthy and keep smiling.  It is, after all, a beautiful world, and we are truly blessed.

With much love, from thisisme x

Ooops!

Me again! See, you don't see me for ages, and now I appear twice!

I forgot the photo of Eleanor, so here she is ....

I Am Here....

Little bloggies! How are you all? I know, I have been missing for so long. I'm

afraid that my get up and go just got up and went!

Not in real life, I'm delighted to say, but purely in blogging terms. The problem is, these days, that all my life appears on Facebook, and I just feel that I can't repeat it all again over here!

My daughter did point out that there are probably a lot of my Followers who are not actually friends with me on Facebook. I think we were both thinking of dear Shady here!

Anyway, in utter desperation, I've just been out to take some photos of the garden as it is at the moment.

I know that several of you do seem to enjoy photos of the garden. You will notice all the wood we have around, from trees that we keep cutting down - I think we have enough wood for the woodburner to last us for quite a while!

I always love to see the apple blossom appear in the Orchard, so I have included a couple of those photos also. 

You might also see that I have sneaked in one of little Ruby, which I thought was rather lovely. I know , I know , I'm a proud grandma!

There is also a recent one of Eleanor. You can't see her very well, but I love it, because it is quite atmospheric and could almost have been taken in the 50's or 60's. 

I suppose I should see if I can find one of my little man, although you might have seen this one before. 

I hope you are all keeping well, and I hope you haven't deleted me from your Blog Roll just yet! Sending hugs your way. 

WordlessWednesday - Birthday Photo and Devon Sunshine Today

The Easter Bunny ...

 

A man is driving along a highway and sees a rabbit jump out across the middle of the road. He swerves to avoid hitting it, but unfortunately the rabbit jumps right in front of the car.   The driver, a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulls over and gets out to see what has become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, the rabbit is the  Easter Bunny , and he is DEAD  . The driver feels so awful   that he  begins to cry.    A beautiful blonde woman driving down the highway sees a man crying on the side of the road and pulls over.  She steps out of the car and asks the man what's wrong.   "I feel terrible," ! he explains, "I accidentally hit the Easter Bunny with my car  and KILLED HIM."   The blonde says,"Don't worry." She runs to her car and pulls out a spray can. She walks over to the limp, dead Easter Bunny, bends down, and sprays the contents onto him.  The Easter Bunny jumps up, waves its paw at the two of them and hops off down the road.  Ten feet away he stops, turns around and waves again, he hops down the road another 10 feet, turns and waves, hops another ten feet,  turns and waves, and repeats this again and again and again and again, until he hops out of sight. The man is astonished. He runs over to the woman and demands, "What is in that can? What did you spray on the Easter Bunny ?"   The woman turns the can around so that the man can read the label. It says..  (Are you ready for this?)    (You know you're gonna be sorry) (Last chance) (OK, here it is) It says, "Hair Spray   Restores life to dead hair, and adds permanent wave. !

Not Saturday Again, Surely?!

Hallo again everyone.  I don't seem to be posting very much lately, but on looking through Bloggy Land, it would seem that many of us are taking a little break for one reason or another.  I'm not officially taking a break, rather I am running out of scintillating topics to entertain you with!

Emma, Mark and Alfred are here at the moment.  They arrived at 3 a.m. on Thursday morning, and will be leaving again first thing tomorrow morning, so very much a fleeting visit.  Nevertheless, it is still lovely to have them here.  Eleanor is off on one of her United Nations Trips for the weekend.  This time to Amsterdam.  Very nice too!

Eleanor absolutely loves the dynamics of politics in all the different countries of the world, and I told her that it would be a good career choice.  Trouble is, she wants to start at the top!! :)  If she is fortunate enough to get into the University of her choice (Madrid), she will be studying International Relations amongst other things.  I would say that she has had a head start!

Emma took me out for lunch on Friday - sort of a late Mother's Day lunch and an early birthday lunch!  It's always good to spend time with her, and I am so fortunate with both my daughters, as we always talk about everything under the sun.  I am blessed indeed.

As I look out of the windows, I'm sorry to say that it's raining very hard out there again today.  So disappointing, because, particularly at this time of the year when Spring really should be with us, we look for brighter days.  At least the evenings are drawing out now, so that's good.  Onwards and upwards little peeps!

Well, I did warn you at the very beginning that I didn't really have anything exciting to write about!  I hope you are all keeping well and that Spring is appearing in your little corner of the world.

Enjoy your weekend.

Saturday Smile!

 Dear Tech Support,

 Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend to Husband and noticed a distinct 

 slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the Flower and  Jewellery

 applications, both of which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend.

 In addition, Husband uninstalled many other valuable programmes, such as 

 Romance and Personal Attention and then installed undesirable programs 

 such as Cricket, Football, Golf and Continuous TV. Conversation only runs 

 intermittently and House Cleaning simply crashes the system. I've tried 

 running Nagging to fix these problems, but to no avail.

 What can I do?

 Please advise me.

 Desperate

.........................................................................................................

 Dear Desperate,

 First, please bear in mind that Boyfriend is an Entertainment Package, 

 while Husband is an Operating System.

 You could enter the command: 'http: I Thought You Loved Me.html' and try 

 to download Tears. If this doesn't do the trick you might like to install 

 the latest Guilt update. If this works as designed, Husband should then automatically 

 run the applications Jewellery and Flowers, but remember, over-use of the 

 above application can cause Husband to default to Grumpy Silence, Garden Shed or the  Golf Club. 

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-Law (which runs a virus in the 

 background that will eventually take control of all your system 

 resources). Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend program. These are unsupported 

 applications and will crash Husband.

 In summary, Husband is a great system, but it does have limited memory and 

does not learn new applications quickly. It also tends to work better if you only

run one task at a time. You might like to consider buying additional 

software to improve its memory and performance. We recommend Compliments, 

Good Food pandering to his ego.

Good Luck,

Tech Support

The Most Precious of Things ...

Hallo  everyone. Lovely to be here with you all again. 

It's that time when someone not a million miles from here has a birthday coming up once again, which made me think about time. 

As the years go by, we surely realize just how precious that commodity is. Time to enjoy our families, our friends and loved ones.  Time to enjoy the beauty of the world all around us. Time to enjoy all those simple things that can brighten our days, and mean so much. 

I so believe this is true, about giving someone your time.  Actually taking the time to listen to what people have to say as well.

y

Talking about time made me think about clocks, which made me think of one of one of my favourite poems by W.H.Auden. I hope you will enjoy it too.

Stop All The Clocks. 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. 

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message, He Is Dead. 

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. 

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

(How special to have someone love you with a depth of feeling like that)

I first came across that poem whilst watching the film Four Weddings And A Funeral, and I have loved it ever since. 

See you again soon little Bloggies. Take care. 

All images today courtesy of Pinterest

Wordless Wednesday (Where Did The Years Go!)