Happy birthday to FAD

I’m going to be late for my own funeral at this rate but better late than never, I suppose.

FAD is now a whole ten years (and three days) old**. I never thought it would reach the anniversary which is only due to the participation of the literally hundreds who have helped and contributed material along the way. I have met and corresponded with many interesting and knowledgeable people  over the years which has enriched my life immeasurably.

The only slight tinge of disappointment is that so few of the hundreds of thousands of visitors have seen enough value in the site to make a financial contribution towards the costs of hosting it. When I left South Africa for Australia I left a bit of money behind and this is now paying the monthly hosting charge. One day that is going to dry up or I might decide to use it for holiday spending money and then I’ll have to make a hard decision.

That’ll be way in the future but, for the medium-term, FAD will continue to forge ahead as the web’s leading memory-provoker for Durbanites and ex-Durbanites. I would frankly hate to be without it so I am going to try and develop a few products that I can sell to raise funds.  One idea is to publish collections of material that never made it into FAD the book including, perhaps, memories contributed by others. It may be that anthologies with contributors’ name listed prominently will raise some interest.

It traditional, after birthday speechifying, to sing, so here goes: “Happy birthday dear FAD, happy birthday to you…. tra..lala…lala…”

Blows out 10 candles and eats slice of Aussie mud (chocolate) cake.  Phew, thank heavens, that’s the festivities over for a while.

Thanks once again for visiting and please consider -ing. Also, why not leave a comment below if you think FAD is great?

** See the first diary entry here.