Tag Archives: A Balanced Diet

by

Like Topsy, my blog just growed

A few days ago I came across this post by Donna Halper (media historian, author, professor, public speaker, former rock & roll deejay best known for having discovered the rock band Rush) in which she described how and why she began blogging ten years ago. Just click on the red box (and others) below.

It was a credit option for a course she was taking at New York University at the time, and she hasn’t stopped since.

That got me thinking about why I started this blog, A Balanced Diet, way back in February 2012, with a short story of just 131 words about a visit my wife Steph and I made to a canal pumping station in Wiltshire.

If you’d asked me then if I would still be writing 13 years later, I probably would have dismissed such an idea as preposterous. I write for myself, but it’s always a pleasure if others appreciate what I publish.

I have kept the overall format of the blog the same, although I have tweaked some aspects, like how I include links and other media items, for example.

Having retired in April 2010 (after a successful career in international agricultural research in South and Central America and the Philippines as well as a decade in academia in the UK), I wanted to record my memories of growing up, studying at university and, of course, those interesting and challenging years working overseas. And what we’ve been up to in the years since.

It was my daughters Hannah and Philippa who suggested I start a blog. So with their encouragement I began putting ‘pen to paper’, so to speak, with that first short attempt.

And here I am, still writing on a regular basis, although I have slowed down somewhat from my early blog years. I write about whatever takes my fancy. That’s one of the joys for me of this blog.

This post is number 755. I can’t quite believe it. That’s an average of just under five posts per month, a total of around 859,000 words, and an average of 1100 words per post! There are more than 18,000 media items (photos, videos, and maps). Most of the photos are mine.

So where is my blog being read? Almost everywhere, it seems. However, I wonder how to attract attention from Greenland without mentioning Donald Trump.

My blog covers a wide range of themes (it is, after all, a balanced diet of ideas), but these are the three main ones:

  • I studied environmental botany and geography as an undergraduate, and was fortunate to make a career from my plant sciences background in the field of conservation and use of plant genetic resources. These posts describe my work on potatoes and rice, collecting potatoes in the Andes of Peru, and running one of the world’s largest and most important genebanks in the Philippines, among others.

  • Through my work I have been lucky to visit almost 70 countries. My elder daughter studied and has settled in the USA (in glorious Minnesota), and apart from the recent Covid years, we have visited the USA each years and have made some epic road trips.

  • All our National Trust and English Heritage and other heritage site visits are described here.

But I have also written about music, books, history, and politics as well. There are also links to these in the column to the right. I really must update those pages.

Regarding politics, I’ve written more posts than I had realised. But it was two events in particular that were the impetus to comment: the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK and Donald Trump’s election (twice!) in the USA.

These are the seven posts that have received more than 3000 views, with the first two (at 7553 and 6890, respectively) almost twice as many as the next highest:

  • I love Test cricket, and enjoyed listening to commentary on the radio as I was growing up. In this post, I describe some of the most amusing commentaries I’ve heard.

  • For many years I was a fan of Garrison Keillor and his program on Minnesota Public Radio, A Prairie Home Companion, sadly no longer broadcast. In 2015, we had the opportunity of attending a live broadcast in St Paul.

  • In 1968, at the end of my first or freshman year at the University of Southampton, the botany students attended a two-week field course in the west of Ireland in Co. Clare. This post describes the beauty of the limestone landscape that’s The Burren.

  • I worked on potatoes for 20 years, spending 1973-1975 at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, exploring the Andes for native varieties.

  • In 2020, we moved 230 miles north to Newcastle upon Tyne, leaving our home of 40 years in Worcestershire. The Romans left an impressive and extensive legacy here in the northeast.

  • In 2017, I decided to read all the novels of English author Charles Dickens. At high school we had to read his novels as part of the English Literature curriculum. And I wasn’t impressed. However, many decades later I came to realise just what a impressive writer Dickens had been.

  • And for a bit of humour, I wrote about two comedy programs that was broadcast on the BBC 60 years ago. The anniversary of the first broadcast was celebrated just a few days ago. Round the Horne and Beyond Our Ken were way ahead of their time – which you will appreciate if you take a read.

With some travel planned for May (to the USA) and September (in the southwest of England in Somerset), there will be plenty to write about. But I am having to restrain myself from commenting further about Trump and Musk. I get too wound up.

 

by

It’s the blogging life for me . . . 700 posts and counting

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined, way back in February 2012 when I posted the first story on this personal blog of mine, A Balanced Diet, that I’d still be at it eleven years later. I guess it’s almost become an obsession.

Although I created my WordPress account in September 2011, I spent the next few months just learning what this blogging business was all about. But never publishing anything until that first post the following February.

At just 131 words long, it described a visit Steph and I made in the summer of 2008 to a first decade 19th century pumping station along the Kennet and Avon Canal (below) in Wiltshire.

How things have moved on since. Now my posts are, on average, about nine times longer.

And this is my 700th post! That’s an average of over 58 posts a year. And a total of almost 778,000 words.

There have been 162,800 visitors (and 312,500 views) from almost every country, with most from the UK, the USA, and the Philippines, with Canada, Australia, Germany, India, France, Peru, and Ireland making up the top ten.

The style of my blog has changed subtly over the past decade. I quickly settled on a blog scheme, colors and fonts. For several years now I have highlighted any web links in bold (with a different color). I use images and videos quite liberally when available or appropriate. There are currently more than 17,000 items (mostly mine) in my WordPress media library that I’ve used since 2012.

And because my blog doesn’t have a main theme, I write about what comes to mind or what has caught my attention.

Obviously I’ve written a great deal about the travels Steph and I have made, in particular the many visits to National Trust and English Heritage properties since becoming members in 2011.

Then there are the blogs about my work in agricultural research and genetic resources conservation.

Also about family.

And I have been known to write several posts about politics, about the situation here in the UK as well as in the USA. But recently there is so much bad news in that respect, I’ve given up on that idea. It’s too depressing.

For many years I was a fan of the author and raconteur Garrison Keillor and his A Prairie Home Companion show on Minnesota Public Radio, no longer broadcast since 2017. During a visit to our daughter and her family in St Paul in 2015, we managed to acquire tickets to the show at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St Paul. This post described that evening, and it has received more hits than any other post I have written.

Writing a blog has allowed me to bring together two of my hobbies: writing and photography.

I find that a couple of hours first thing in the morning is the best time to get my thinking cap on and develop a new post. Once I’ve had my mid-morning coffee or been out for my daily walk (weather permitting) I’ve generally by then lost the muse, so have to come back to a story another day.

I often have several stories on the go at the same time. If an idea grabs me, I’m quick to get my ideas in print, so to speak. Sometimes a story will take several days to complete, or I’ll begin one and leave it for a week or so while I bring together the ideas in my mind.

And I don’t always go into lots of detail, often providing just a framework but with links to other information online. I don’t think it’s necessary to repeat what others have often written more eloquently and in detail that I could.

Unlike my scientific paper writing—which I always did by hand in pencil (always HB) on blank sheets of paper—I compose my blog posts directly at the keyboard, and then spend an inordinate amount of time spell-checking, formatting, and looking for links and images (most of which are my own) to illustrate my narratives. There have been 25 revisions of this post alone!

I always look for a better way to express my ideas, and on reflection will often find a better way. I just enjoy the process of committing my ideas to ‘paper’. As I’ve often mentioned, I write this blog for my own enjoyment.

But if others also enjoy what I write, that’s also a reward in itself. Do keep on returning. I haven’t run out of ideas . . . yet! How many years to 1000 posts? I’ll be in my early 80s if I keep publishing at the same rate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by

705,000 words and counting . . .

I published my first blog post exactly ten years ago today.

It was a modest piece, just 131 words (the average is now 10x longer), plus one image, a link to a Wikipedia article, one to a video I placed on YouTube, and another two on the BBC News website, about a visit Steph and I had made to an early 19th century steam-fired pumping station along the Kennet and Avon Canal in Wiltshire.

Modest beginnings, indeed. Just click on the image below to take a peek.

After I retired in April 2010 and returned to the UK, our daughters Hannah and Philippa urged me to write down my reminiscences of life at two international agricultural research institutes in Peru (the International Potato Center – CIP) and the Philippines (the International Rice Research Institute – IRRI), and as lecturer in plant biology at the University of Birmingham in the 1980s.

I began toying with the idea of a personal blog around September 2011. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but the thought of staring at a blank piece of paper and beginning at Day 1, so to speak, was rather daunting. I think it was Hannah who suggested I should think about writing a blog. So I did. And it would allow me to combine writing with my other interest: photography.

I did some background research on possible blog platforms and did a few test runs on one or two before settling on WordPress. It appeared to offer the sort of flexibility (and ease of editing) that I was looking for, being able to combine text and images, and hyperlinks to other sites and the like. So for a couple or months I dabbled with different ‘themes’ and color schemes, before settling on the Dusk to Dawn theme. It was originally a design in various shades of blue until I settled on the scheme I’m using today. But that can always change.

And, of course, I had to give my blog a name. That wasn’t so easy. You see, I’d decided that I wasn’t going to limit my blog to just a single theme. I wanted to write about anything that took my fancy: my work experiences, genetic resources, science, music, travel, politics. Hardly any sport, though. I’m not really a sporty type. Anyway, you name it, I think by now I’ve written about it.

I’m not quite sure how I came up with A Balanced Diet, and I’m sure I must have disappointed even a few foodies who landed on my blog seeking words of nutritional or culinary wisdom.

Anyway, since that first blog, things have moved on rather a lot:

  • I have published (including this one), 635 posts, more than one a week.
  • I’ve written more than 705,000 words.
  • I’ve uploaded almost 15,000 images most of which are my own, 83 videos (although I’ve linked to many more on YouTube), 213 documents, and 64 audio files.
  • There have been 138,761 visitors from 207 ‘countries’, but for 56 of these there were 10 or fewer visitors. Since there are only 193 member states of the UN, WordPress also lists separately places like Jersey and Guernsey in the UK, the EU (Brussels presumably) and some others that are not independent (like some of the French overseas territories). Even so, quite impressive.

I link to Wikipedia for a lot of background information (and yes, I do make an annual subscription to Wikipedia) or original websites. This permits me to give just a broad outline on many topics without having to go into great detail that can be found elsewhere.

Now I mentioned that I’m not a sporty type, yet the most visited post is one ostensibly about cricket. This is Jackson’s Top 10:

  1. ‘The bowler is Holding, the batsman’s Willey’ (2013-08, on cricket commentators)
  2. Walking in Hadrian’s footsteps . . . (2021-08, Roman history, especially in the northeast of England)
  3. Potatoes – the real treasure of the Incas . . . (2012-02, the South American Andes, home of the potato)
  4. “I’m all for censorship. If ever I see a double entendre, I whip it out.” Kenneth Horne (2013-03, comedy from one of my favorites from the 1960s)
  5. Leek – Queen of the Moorlands (updated 2018-11, my home town in North Staffordshire)
  6. Cockwomble-in-Chief (2020-06, all about Donald Trump)
  7. A knotty dilemma . . . what to wear to an investiture at Buckingham Palace (2012-03, my OBE investiture)
  8. Please sir, I want some more (2017-10, my Charles Dickens marathon)
  9. They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace . . . (2012-03, my OBE investiture)
  10. “There isn’t a tree to hang a man, water to drown a man nor soil to bury a man”. (2015-02, a 1968 botany field course in the west of Ireland)

My story about 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Dr Norman Borlaug, is number 11.

Some of the posts I’ve enjoyed writing most have been about potatoes and rice, or genebanks. And travel, especially our road trips across the USA. Then there are the visits we have made to National Trust and English Heritage properties here in the UK since 2011 and which must account, I guess, for a significant amount of the UK traffic. Just check out the archive or page links on the right hand panel.

At the back end of 2021, I guess from about October onwards, I suffered my first serious writer’s block, and had little enthusiasm for sitting down at my laptop. I’ve only written 10 posts since then.

But now, at last, I feel the muse beginning to grab my attention once again, and hopefully my output will increase.

I started this blog for my own amusement. Others have found some of the stories interesting. I hope you will continue to return to A Balanced Diet. Here’s to the next 705,000 words!