Sunday 16 October 2011

Across Borders


A few posts ago I mentioned that I’d won a copy of Can’t Sleep Without Sheep by Susanna Leonard Hill and that it hadn’t arrived yet. Well, thank you so much to Susanna because... it just arrived!! and what's more it’s travelled 3344.841 miles. Can you believe it? It’s crossed New York State, the Atlantic Ocean, Ireland and England. What a big journey for a little book [Actually, it’s quite a big book with great pictures that include huge animals… but I was using poetic licence!] 

I’ve been following Susanna’s blog for some time now and although we live 3344.841 miles away from each other, there are many similarities between us. She’s an ex-teacher who loves animals [just like me]. She’s not so keen on housework [definitely like me!] She writes children’s picture books [just like me again!] and I now have one of them. The book is hilarious. It’s one of those stories that you look at and say, “Why didn’t I think of that!” Well done, Susanna.

There may be similarities amongst us bloggers but there are differences too. This week’s posts hit a bit of a language problem and thanks to a number of my blog friends I now know that:
  • In the US a cooker is called an oven 
  • US bakers do not use castor sugar [which is finely milled sugar and has nothing to do with castor oil].
  • J. L. Campbell explained that in Jamaica electricity is so expensive that they prefer to cook on gas.
  • And during a Twitter chat with Misha I discovered that ‘holding thumbs’ in South Africa is the same as ‘crossing fingers’ in the UK.

I love it when there are similarities and I’m fascinated by the differences but more importantly, I love the way that we can all blog and chat and get on with each other across all the borders of the world. In fact, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could nurture world understanding and peace just by blogging together? Maybe I should suggest it to the United Nations.