Happy Birthday

A Limey In Bermuda is one year old today.

I first became aware of this thing called a 'blog' while I was still living in the UK. As someone who kept a daily diary religiously for most of his teenage years, I'd occasionally considered finding out more about them and perhaps setting one up. But at that stage blogs still required a lot of technical work to create and as I didn't know what I'd do with one anyway, I never took things any further.

It wasn't until after I moved to Bermuda that I came across a new hosted blogging service called Typepad while browsing the web one lunchtime. In an instant, my interest was reignited. Here was a way I could keep my friends and family back in the UK up to date with news of my new life, with Typepad relieving me of the need to deal with the low-level technicalities of running the site. Falling over myself with excitement, I lost no time signing up. At 5.48pm on August 27, 2003 the site was born.

It was baptised with the spectacularly unimaginative name of 'Latest News', a name that lives on in the site's URLs today. The curious infant found itself fascinated by the differences in the way of life here, early posts focusing on the cost of living, the standard of Bermudian driving, and what it's like to be hit by a hurricane.

It wasn't until the end of October that the site got its current name. I wanted a title that was a little more descriptive, and one that included the word 'Bermuda'. The popularity of the photographs I took during Fabian had given me the idea that others might be interested in what I was writing about; by putting 'Bermuda' in the site's name I hoped to grab the attention of visitors who might stumble across it on Google. The 'Limey' part came from my mother-in-law, who has referred to me as a "god-damn Limey" since almost the first day her daughter took me home to meet her.

Almost two weeks later I officially made the decision to move the site away from being a personal journal and make it more like a newspaper op-ed column. "My aim is to be considered the best blog about Bermuda by both Bermudians and interested non-Bermudians alike, and have a readership that reflects that," I said at the time. That remains my aim today.

Comments

[Graeme Outerbridge on 27.08.04 at 20:21]

Heah Phil happy birthday to your BLOG--Its been great having you with us out here on the Rock. You have been a great addition to the Bermudian family hope there are more like you out there who want to marry our Bermudian women! Now whats up--???Are you sick of Pasta yet ? Welcome Homme ...Who Else ^..^ O

[The Wife on 28.08.04 at 12:12]

Happy Anniversary too, to you and the blog!! It's DEFINITELY the equivelant of 'the other woman'.

:-)

For all you readers - I was really reluctant to lose 'Oatley' as my surname because people KNOW Oatley's, who on earth knows 'Wells'? Well, how proud was I when one of my swimmer Dad's said to me the other day "So are you related to the Phil Wells of Limey in Bermuda?"

Keep it up, even though I'm not too great at actually reading it!! ;-)

[Graeme Outerbridge on 28.08.04 at 16:57]

Heah wifey --well you didn't have to give up Oatley but you went along to Wells! Sounds like your always in the water..maybe your a mermaid and Phil has taught you how to come ashore. Speaking of water saw an amazing water Spout comming up the North shore...thought it was the web site until it started to rain...full Moon on the way must practise my Howl ^..^ O

[lizardfish on 29.08.04 at 21:22]

Many happy returns Phil

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Get it?

:-))))

[Kristen on 01.09.04 at 10:02]

@ Mandy: Hey- at least he didn't take us to Tuscany/England!

[Fornicator on 23.02.05 at 10:48]

Hey Phil,

Can blogs be broken up into more than one page? These x-tra long threads are a bandwidth killer.

[The Limey on 23.02.05 at 12:54]

Alas, Typepad doesn't give me any way to break long threads up, short of putting each comment on a page of its own, which I don't think would be helpful.

Commenters could help though, by only posting if they have a point to make, by making that point only once, and omitting anything not central to their argument (e.g. insults, unless especially witty). If they did that we'd probably see threads a tenth of the size they are now. ;-)

[Fornicator on 23.02.05 at 13:10]

:-)