All about Olive

I love the way that blogging throws new people into your path!

I was just checking out Stan Lee's excellent blog, Brand DNA, when I saw this link. The site is called All About Olive and the site is made up of the life stories of 107 year old Olive Riley. While Olive now lives in Sydney, she was born in 1899 and lived in Broken Hill -- far to the west of Sydney in what has been predominantly a mining town. It is the birthplace of one of the world's largest companies, BHP Billiton (the letters BHP standing for "Broken Hill Proprietary").

Olive dictates her posts to a friend, Mike who also asks her questions during each post. And in a short time, Olive has become an Internet success with her witty commentary and suffer no fools (or photographers) approach -- I particularly like this line (visit Olive's blog for the photo!):

Are you going to have something or not? You're annoying me.

So far, Olive has four posts, with each of them generating a mass of comments. There is something about Olive that really draws the reader in ... a nice slice of life and the feeling that she could just, maybe, be your nanna too.

Comments

[Maryam in Marrakech]

That's the sweetest thing I have heard all day. I am going to take a look.

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Oh, how sweet. I love it! I see 137 comments for one of her posts! Sheesh, she's skyrocketing to blogosphere fame. Thanks for sharing the link...bookmarking her now...

[Michèle Wathelet]

Hello, Olive! I hope you'r doing well! i would like to tell you how i discovered your wonderful blog and how happy i'm to know you... My name is Michèle but my second name is Oliva (also my grandmother's name), i'm belgian and i'm an illustrator, i mean a drawer. Usually, i work for the press but those days, for the first time, i'm trying to write and draw a children's book. I hope it's gonna work... It's very exciting but sometimes, i have to put what i did all day to the garbage because it's not good enough or even quite awful. Now, that puts me in a very sad mood and although it's not the end of the world, on that moment, i'm always sure it is. So a few weeks ago, i had one of those days and, as i'm working alone at home with Lucie, my dear old cat sleeping on my knees and i'm listening to the radio all day long, always to the same channel which is France Inter, a french radio...suddenly, i hear talking about you and your blog. The journalist was so enthusiast that i decided to visit it immediately but on that moment someone rang at my door so i forgot about you.(sorry!) But i remembered you today and I finally visited your blog this afternoon and my God, you're so fabulous that you really are a remedy against depression. So i have to thank you because since now, everytimes i'll be in a bad or sad mood, i'll go to your blog... I'm taking a break having a coffee and i'm thinking about you, wondering what you're doing at the same time on the other side of the world and that's so great! So thank you to have so much pep. It gives me energy when i'm getting lazy. I send you a kiss from Brussels- Belgium! I wish you a nice summer. It's a shiny month here in Brussels and i can see through the window my tiny little garden nearly blossoming. With all my Love. Michèle.