(Photo taken from www.allaboutolive.com.au)

The world’s oldest blogger has just passed away. Olive Riley, fondly known as Ollie, breathed her last on July 12 2008 at a ripe age of 108. Gosh, she has lived for more than a century!

I bet she grew up writing letters using feather pens with ink, like what we see in Harry Potter, sans the magic.

I didn’t know about this great lady until it was too late when I read about her death in the newspaper. Yet ironically, because she had a blog, it will never be too late will it?

Her blog All About Olive must be having a very busy day and there are lots of past entries that I can’t assess. So I went to the alternative one and I managed to catch some.

One post, or rather two, with the second one that came as a result of the first, that particularly caught my interest and which I can so relate to are the ones on washing days.

The original post, Washing Day, 1908  was written by Ollie. At this juncture I need to explain that though she was called the blogger, but strictly speaking she had the help of another guy, Mike Rubbo to do the technical part for her - typing, searching and editing of photos and posting them on the internet.

100 years ago, washing clothes was entirely a different picture altogether compared to now. Though Ollie described the process in a simple and easily understood manner, one could still feel the sweat. But the ardous task of laundering was even better highlighted when Brenda, a reader who belonged to Ollie’s generation, coined her post into a poem and sweetly brought out the bitterness of turning soiled sheets into clean sparkling ones, only to be dirtied by passing magpies again.

How lucky we are now! 

Why am I able to relate to Ollie’s washing day of yore? Let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time (actually it was less than 2 years ago), I was doing my Stuart’s laundry with the help of a machine. As the tumbling went on, I went about to do my stuff happily.

But my misery came fast enough when the tumbling stopped, very prematurely. I restarted the washing machine and the entire procedure began again. Keeping my fingers crossed, I waited impatiently to see the result. At that same particular moment, the machine jammed again. Sheesh! “Why is this happening to me?” I exclaimed in exasperation.

Well I had to salvage the damage. I couldn’t leave the clothes in the dirty water until Stuart comes home, so I hauled them out to wring them dry. Gosh! The clothes, sodden with water, were really, really heavy. I believe it would weigh at least 10kg lessser if the clothes were mine.

Taking the cumbersome load out wasn’t as waist-breaking as what I was about to do following this. Squeezing the water out piece by piece was giving me hell! For each item, I had to repeat the twirling at least 4 times and I only extracted about 80% of the water. By the time I reached the fifth piece, I was literally gasping for breath and my fingers behaved as if they were about to come off from my palm. I began to pity myself and sat there pouting.

Well, eventually I finished the ardous task and I was totally ecstatic that I didn’t die. Still, this wasn’t the deal breaker. The last straw on the camel’s back was when Stuart came home that night, and the machine decided to call off its strike and did what it was designed to do - washing, rinsing and spin-drying. Man! I had sweat for nothing!

Anyway, this was an episode that I wouldn’t have found worthy to mention if not for Ollie’s post. I salute those mothers in that century with all my heart, because what effort and strength I had expended were but 10% of what Ollie’s mom had contributed. And there I was feeling pity for myself.

I thank Ollie for giving us, the lucky generation living in this modern era where gadgets and technology provided so much for us, the rare opportunity to have a glimpse into the lives 100 years ago. And we have to thank technology for making a space in the internet achievable so that everyone in other corners of the world can be still a part of her life even after she has been long gone. 10 years down the road, we’ll still be able to get a piece of her life when we log on.

Olive Riley’s life was never under the public’s eye until she began blogging and sharing her life on cyberspace. Suddenly, she got attention and made friends with people whom she had never met before, and would never get a chance to meet in person. But that doesn’t matter, for she already has left a legacy behind when she made the decision to start a blog one year ago, when she was 107 years old.

Let’s blog and leave a legacy too. Or, in Ollie’s words, let’s blob.  

Now that she’s gone, Maria Amelia, now 95, has been reinstated to the no. 1 spot as the world’s oldest blogger, a title she was striped of when Ollie started her blog last year, but now returned.

Time flies.

Thank you Ollie, for living your life as it is and telling us your life as it was. Thank you.