The last post

Dear Farmdoc’s Blog followers and readers

The first post on this blog was way back on 21 April 2008 [1]. Three years ago tomorrow. Since then I’ve put up one new post each day. So today’s post is number 1,095. And for the time being at least, and maybe forever, the last post. There are three main reasons for this:

1. A post a day’s a big undertaking. For me anyway. I’ve enjoyed doing it. But in recent months it’s become more arduous. And less fun.

2. Last week I received some not-so-good health news. Currently I don’t know its full import. But whatever it turns out to be, I have much thinking to do. And I know I’ll think better without the pressure of a daily Farmdoc’s Blog post weighing on my mind.

3. Because of that news, Sweetheart Vivienne and I have decided to sell our Mole Creek property as soon as we reasonably can, and then move to Victoria near our darling ones. So we’re starting work on a new blog – as yet untitled – aiming to attract a purchaser. And most definitely I can’t maintain two blogs simultaneously.

In that first post I wrote that writing Farmdoc’s Blog would help me find out about myself ‘And if it also helps others, in however small a way, then that can only be a good thing’. I know I’ve achieved that first aim. The second one I don’t know about.

On 27 September 2009 I wrote a post about the Last Post. In a comment on it, darling Meg wrote ‘FD you gave me the fright of my life! I saw the words last post and I thought that you were henceforth taking leave from your blog’ [2].

Friends, the time’s come for me to take leave from this blog. I plan to put up one more Farmdoc’s Blog post in the next couple of months – when our new blog goes live. After then, who knows?

So there you have it.

Thank you for accompanying me on my journey.

Farmdoc.

P.S. I remain contactable at the email address in my Blogger profile.

farmdoc's blog post number 525

The Last Post. Wikipedia says it was originally a bugle call used in British Army camps. Its name comes from the inspection of each camp sentry post at day’s end. Playing a bugle call signalled a post had been inspected and its military day had ended. In the 19th century the Last Post was incorporated into military funerals in all Commonwealth of Nations countries where it’s played as a final farewell symbolising the duty of the dead soldier is over and he can rest in peace. Also it’s played in public ceremonials commemorating war dead, e.g. on Remembrance Day and Anzac Day. And it’s played each night at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. So every single time the Last Post publicly sounds out, is a solemn, meaningful and contemplative occasion. Yet last week the Australian War Memorial announced that, due to budget cuts, its nightly Last Post closing ceremony will henceforth be sponsored (by telecommunications company TransACT). If this isn’t a travesty, I don’t know what is. I can’t accept that public money can’t be found to pay a bugler for a few minutes each day, 365 days each year. Commercialisation of the nightly ceremony, however tasteful, is sacrilege. Blasphemy. A gratuitous trumpeting (pun intended) of the capitalism paradigm. All concerned should hang their heads in shame. But they won’t. For they have no soul.