Lets start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…..at this point I should feel the kiss of rough convent clothe against my trembling thigh, taste the slight back hint of strudel in the air. However I live in the fens where a hill to go to when my heart is lonely consists of an artificially created slight incline courtesy of an old landfill site. It must be this concept of being a virgin blogger that is unconsciously allowing the Maria Von Trapp syndrome to surface.
I was told by those who like to know such things to tell others that all writers should have a blog; no matter how dubious and banal the quality of postings. No doubt Shakespeare would have posted. ‘Have bad head cold. Second best bed delivered. Thinking of writing something more cheerful as box office takings down.’
Wordsworth ‘Dorothy in bad mood following tiff about grocers bill. Coleridge outstaying welcome. Good show of daffodils this year.’
Charlotte Bronte ‘Migraine better. Emily has new shoes. Branwell brought home pissed again.’
I will attempt to post equally banal snippets of life, sure in the knowledge that nothing will remain of my work to be trawled over by future academics or read by generations of readers. No-one will write a thesis on my penchant for dipping Wispa bars in coffee or reading Marquez late at night in between googling my Chinese horoscope. I can vouchsafe that my small household disasters, minor adventures in solitary rural locations and encounters with those who have no idea that they will be spun into the stuff blogs are made of, will slowly peter out into the ether.
I am told to be very aware that people you know, people you don’t know and people you’d rather not know will read your blog. It is not a private diary warned a friend, you will be found out, you cannot for a second think you will not be held responsible for the most throw away line written in the middle of the night. I have therefore decided to employ the device of thinking that my mother or my father will assiduously read the blog. Both are dead so this device somehow seems even more powerful as beyond the grave disapproval has a certain cache with female writers and poets who systematically work through such relationships sub textually in everything they write. It will also naturally allow leeway for the shock factor. The prospect of being someone, who in middle age acts at all times in a way that would meet with the total approval of their parents, is appalling. I may behave in a manner they would approve of but of course the interior life is where the wicked mice will play whilst the parental cats are chasing catnip balls in the afterlife.
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