The Last Post on Travels With A Nine Year Old

I started this blog back in January 2010.

Zac was nine. We were going travelling for a year.

And this is what he looked like then:

And, well, this is what he looks like now:

So…

Thank you, to all of you, who’ve been following us for the last two-plus years.

For almost a thousand days of travel (974, in fact).

But this is goodbye.

Nah, not really.

Less a goodbye than sayonara.

We’re moving on.

Of course, we’re always moving on. We’re nomads, goddamn it!

But this relocation is digital.

You see, some people might have thought that the web address travelswithanineyearold.com would have reached the end of its useful lifespan around the time Zac turned ten (November 2010).

And, it did cross my mind.

And again when he turned eleven. (November last year.)

But now he’s rising twelve, even I have to pull my finger out.

So we’re moving! Lock, stock and barrel.

After 974 (count’em!) days of travel, for well over 600 of which Zac has been well past nine, we’re relocating to a brand new url, which I hope is a bit more futureproof than the last. (It couldn’t be much less, right?!)

And a website designed by a real, live designer, rather than one downloaded for nowt.

The new site will be EscapeArtistes, the name those of you who follow my drivel on Twitter will note I’ve been using for a while.

And I’m really excited about it.

All the good old stories are moving over, so you won’t be missing out on anything.

And I’ll still carrying on writing about our journey, geographical, physical and emotional, my infinitely sardonic and incredibly tolerant son, and the fabulous and less fabulous places we go to along the way.

To be honest, I should have realised the old name wasn’t quite right on oh-so-many-levels when a fellow blogger refused to share a post on the grounds that it contained profanity, and they had a policy of only including family-friendly content.

You see, here’s the thing.

It’s all very well being the most sweary, least family-friendly family travel blog (and, yes, that’s a thing! Alright?! It’s TOTALLY a thing!) out there, but it does kinda limit you.

Hell, even my son’s blog isn’t family-friendly.

*cough*

Time for another pretty picture!

So… What to expect apart from more of the same?

Well, I’ll feel a lot better writing about 10p whiskies, that moment in Beirut when sex met Facebook and it all went horribly wrong, or prostitute-y personal ads, on a domain that doesn’t say “it’s all about the kids”, and where I don’t feel I have to preface said post with a warning to my audience of pre-tweens…

And, also, I’ll feel more free to write about stuff that I feel like writing about. Be that movies, books, politics, parenting, or observational stuff on sex tourism and similar.

I’ve been doing some of this already. And I’m looking forward to doing more.

But still what you’ll find at the heart of this blog is what it’s always been about.

It’s the story of an incompetently unconventional life, of adventures, mishaps, wonderful and, actually, kinda crappy places, and, what I hope shines through most of the time, of the journey through mother-love and motherhood, and a rather fantastic kid.

This is a great life, if a crazy life, and I’m very glad to live it.

I think (and Zac thinks) it’s also a fantastic childhood for Zac to have. Though I guess his therapist will have the last word on that.

*cough*

So… I’d like to say thank you, to everyone who’s read and enjoyed my stuff and encouraged me to keep going on this creative path I love so much.

To every single one of the 18 people who tuned in during my first month (I have a large family…), and have, I hope, stayed along for the ride, and to the (gulp!) twenty thousand or so of you who tune in every month now.

Also to everyone, and I do mean everyone, who’s ever left me a comment, and all you silent lurkers out there who keep coming back.

In fact, I’ll be giving one of you a holiday to say thank you!

I’m hoping this is going to be an absolutely smooth and seamless transition, because, you know, the interwebz are TOTALLY like that, and I always have such great luck when it comes to organising complicated things like transferring a gigantic, badly-organised website over to a whole new platform while staying somewhere with no internet.

Yeah, it’s going to work great!

Still, insha’allah, those of you who subscribe will carry on getting emails (if you don’t hear from me by Thursday, something’s gone horribly wrong), and we’ll still be there on Facebook, just with a new name, but everything will be:

BETTER, SHINIER, PRETTIER, LOVELIER and (not least) EASIER TO READ.

Honest!

So, thank you! Here’s the biggest virtual hug, ever. And I’ll see you in a day or so on EscapeArtistes.com.