The Gallery — Spectacular

That’s an odd picture for The Gallery theme this week, I grant you.  Not particularly spectacular.  Though rather lovely, I agree.   You will have to forgive me for being a bit self indulgent because it’s been a funny year for me as a blogger, and an odd week.

I think this year as I get some time off over Christmas and New Year I will be in quite a reflective mood and when I look back through all the photos on my phone wonder if this year really did happen.   Some of the things we have done thanks to this blog have indeed been spectacular.   Like going to Tanzania with Comic Relief, the Team Honk relay (remember that?!!) and raising over £30,000, holding the FA Cup in our own living room, meeting some amazing people.   The list could go on and on.

This week I have also met a bank manager.  Like a grown up person might do.    I can’t tell you when I last met a bank manager, in fact the bank I have been with for ten years doesn’t even have branches so there are no managers.   But yesterday a bank manager from Santander came to the house to talk me through opening a business bank account because Mummy Barrow is now Mummy Barrow Ltd.   Yes.  I am a company.  And a Director.  And therefore I guess, a grown up.

Shame then that when the bank manager was here I didn’t realise my top was on inside out, first impressions and all that?  Trying to be the professional, you know?

I also realised last week that this blog had passed quite a significant milestone.   And the real subject of the photo for the theme this week, though it is not so much a photo as a screen shot.

Yep, it shows that last month I passed the millionth page view mark.   Sorry, I told you I was going to be self indulgent.   In just under three years (I bought mummybarrow.com and moved the old blog over to it in Feb 2012) I have gone from zero page views to over a million.    That blows me away.

So the Champagne in the top pic is for you.   Because without you it wouldn’t have happened.  I wouldn’t now be a company director, I wouldn’t have had the opportunities that I have had, or been able to share with my family and friends, if I didn’t have an audience.

And I wouldn’t have made the local bank manager a coffee whilst wearing my top inside out.

So thanks for that.

And for being there.   I appreciate and love you more than you can ever imagine.