I first started a blog about six years ago, but it didn't work out and I dropped it after about a month. It wasn't really sustainable at that time, and I didn't really find that I had a great deal to say (yes you did read that correctly).
It was a bit vitriolic in parts but it did contain a germ of an idea in as much as I occasionally talked about what I was doing on a particular day, but it never really got going.
As lockdown approached, someone somewhere mentioned that people who had particular skills should use them for the benefit of the community.
I didn't consider that I had any great skill in any areas and then I thought "well I can write a bit. How can I use that to help people?"
And I realised I could use any skill I have in that area to some effect (never know whether that should be effect or affect. I always get the two muddled). But what to do and how to do it?
I had my e magazine but that was a monthly publication and, by the time it came out, things could have moved on. I wanted something that could impart information in a (and here comes a big word) contemporaneous way - almost reporting on events as they happened.
The All Things Hethersett Facebook page was and is a wonderful source of information on and about the village. So I used that extensively and combined it with what I found out myself in order to keep people informed about what was going on with regards to lockdown.
To start with I put this information on my own personal Facebook page until somebody suggested I should start up a dedicated page for what became my daily blogs.
So I set up Peter Steward’s Daily Blogs and the rest as they say is history.
At the time of lockdown, I was posting up to three blogs a day, using this form of media to list what wasn't on and what was still taking place. In many ways it was an interesting and strange thing to do as information was changing literally by the hour until, as we all know, everything was shut down. But that didn’t mean that things stopped happening for me as I will explain.
One of the last things to go was our dementia cafe at the Methodist Church Hall. We kept it going as long as possible but then got the instruction to shut it down. I'm going to continue the theme of lockdown feelings tomorrow.
But back to today's blog. With lockdown fully in place there was no impetus to do anything much other than sit in the garden, watch television such as it was and go out for our one piece of daily exercise allowed in our local vicinity. That for us meant mainly walking around the fields of Hethersett and avoiding contact with anyone else as we went.
With nothing new happening, my blog needed to take on a new direction and there it was in front of me - the countryside. I had a camera, I had a laptop and I had the enthusiasm to write about nature and my thoughts as I went.
My blog turned into an environmental one and it really began to take off. I used other social media sites to promote it and I was overwhelmed by the lovely comments I received.
I feel that I've rambled on long enough for one blog and so will continue this tomorrow.