Celebrating my birthday on the island

Island Stories #33

Dear friends, subscribers, and followers,

I enjoyed some beautiful days on the island, met friends and family, and celebrated my birthday together with them and with you.

Thank you so much to all new subscribers. Your support means a lot, it feels like receiving many birthday presents, which is very motivating.

And thank you to all those that wrote to me. I have read all your kind wishes and have tried to answer as many messages as possible; it explains why there wasn’t a newsletter for a few days. But I am back at writing this weekend, and there are still many island stories to tell before slowly moving back to the more important news stories about our planet towards the end of this month; open any newspaper these days, and you can’t miss them.

At the end of the year, perhaps starting in early December, I may do another month with light/local/history/culture themes. Let me know what you think, either in public comments or reply to this email, so it gets forwarded to my email address. Any other suggestions are always welcome too.

This is me on a terrace in Zierikzee, happy and another year older.

---

You knew you could give a subscription as a birthday present, but did you know that subscribing yourself feels like a present for me? Thanks, friends, the past days were great! For some of you, the weekend nearly starts when you read this. Enjoy it!

---

Did you get this far? The post already ended. But since you found this too, I have a question: would you be interested in an occasional bonus section at the very end? For readers like you, who check even below the sales pitch, the comments button, and the logo.

I could, for instance, add a ‘Snapshot of the day’, or ‘What you may like to read.’ That would look, for example, like this:

100 steps from home: the center of the village, the church, cafes, and a flowery bike. Taken this afternoon in Burgh-Haamstede, Zeeland, the Netherlands.