A blog overhaul

I have not been very active on my Grains of Sand blog in recent months. Even my Finding Frohsinn photo-a-day blog has had an extended nap. Only Flat Kathy is still sharing her fantastical adventures around the world.

I have decided to give my blog a theme overhaul, by trying out the Expound theme. I like the option of creating a Front Page, where I can highlight certain categories or my favourite posts. And I really like the Featured Posts functionality.

But during the transition period, things are unfortunately a little messy.

An inspiring morning tea with Premier Helen Zille and the Children’s Hospital Trust

On 22 October 2013, I had a thoroughly inspiring tea with the Premier of the Western Cape Province, Helen Zille, at the elegant Southern Sun Cullinan Hotel on the Foreshore. Well, sort of. The tea with the Premier bit, I mean.

The function, which was organised by the Children’s Hospital Trust, was a delightful Morning Tea at which Premier Helen Zille was the keynote speaker. The topic of her talk was the valuable contribution of the ‘elders’ to the community.

It’s been very busy on Flat Kathy’s blog

While my blog has been rather quiet for the last few months, Flat Kathy’s blog has seen a flurry of posts and updates. If you haven’t yet popped on over there to read about her latest exploits and adventures, please do. She’s a friendly, sunshiny kind of gal.

Things have been a little quiet at home since she flew to England with our friendly neighbours a couple of weeks ago. In fact, we’re missing her so much that we’re going to go and visit her there.

Walking around with Flat Kathy: An introduction to a magical world?

It is not easy to walk around with Flat Kathy.

For all strangers, or rather, people whom Flat Kathy hasn’t yet demanded I introduce her to, she is simply a sheet of sunshine yellow paper on a stick. With a couple of buttons and some woolly hair sewn on. She is, I freely admit it, “a bit odd”.

Flat Kathy’s new blog is flourishing

It was only a couple of days ago, that I told you about our visitor from overseas – Flat Kathy. She arrived here from Nova Scotia, Canada, last Friday.

She immediately asked me to help her create a blog for her: http://flatkathy.wordpress.com/. And much to my amazement, she has been a prolific writer, having just published her 21st post. At first, she was keeping me very busy with all her dictation, but now I just switch on the laptop for her, and let her tappity-tappity away as much as she likes.

Looking back on an exciting year of being published!

Last year, I wrote and submitted a number of articles to the Pinelands Muse community magazine and the Reserve Force Volunteer magazine, as well as the Equestrian Express and the Sawubona in-flight magazine of South African Airways, our national carrier. In order to update my CV at the start of January, I compiled a list, which I thought I’d share with you, in case you are curious.

The Pinelands Muse leaps into its third year of publication

Since October 2010, a glossy community magazine has popped into our postbox towards the end of each month (I wrote about their first anniversary here). Known as the Pinelands Muse, or just affectionately as ‘The Muse’, it focuses on the comings and goings in the neighbourhoods of Pinelands and Thornton, and it is a wonderful treasure chest of information about the fascinating people who live here and their unusual or exciting occupations, hobbies and travels to near and far.

“Another day at the office”: The CHPA mobile clinic at Boland scrap yard – and tracking down a fleeing horse in Khayelitsha

Three mornings a week, the Cart Horse Protection Association of Cape Town opens the doors of their Epping premises to offer veterinary and farrier services to the cart horse community of the Cape Flats (see previous post). As this is not sufficient to deal with all the horses who have to be shod, dewormed, tetanus-injected,…

A little glitch: Fixing some broken links

When I published the last couple of posts, WordPress decided to change the date-and-time settings on them, which confused the sequencing, so I had to re-post them to correct it. As a result, it is possible that the links may have become broken. Here are the correct links: Learning how to write a feature article:…