This Week in Wijnjewoude 2026

  In January 2025, I realised I had been writing this blog for ten years. It started as something for my kids and grandkids in Australia — inspired by letters my great-grandmother Lizzie Peelman wrote to her husband from Linton, near Ballarat, in 1895. She wrote about the chooks and the kids and the neighbours. I thought I could do the same. I wasn't sure anyone would care. Ten years and 526 Sunday mornings later, here are ten things I seem to have learned along the way. One Walking fixes almost everything I started tracking 10,000 steps a day back in 2016 and I never really stopped. First with Zoey at 0700hrs, then with Boeke — through the heath, around the pingo pools, into the forest behind our place. I once walked 6km in a single day just getting around our own building site. Years ago I saw a Heart Foundation billboard in South Melbourne that said:  "Old Age Catching Up? Walk Faster."  I've never forgotten it. Walking is how I think, how I process the week, how I...

The above audio file took a bit of working out... I told Claude that "it works for me" and this was the reply...(so please let me know if it doesn't work) The "for me, at least" caveat is worth noting — Google Drive previews can sometimes behave differently depending on whether the listener is logged into a Google account or not. Worth asking one of the grandkids or family members in Australia to test it from their end, just to confirm it plays for everyone before you commit to using this approach across all your posts. The audio is an artificial voice reading part of what is offered below - my next step wil be to record my own voice and let AI do the same thing using my samples as the model. I suspect I won't like this... Paul suggested that the grandkids are more likely to listen to audio than to do any reading - but Claude pushed back to say that as they get older, reading may become a more  valuable experience for them - let's hope so. (Claud...