A Natural Lift for the Spirit

March has rather snuck up on me.Still, it's good that it has arrived and today has given me a glimpse of spring.

I'm an early starter, so for the last four months, I have been leaving for work in the dark. Yet today there was the slightest hint of blue in the sky and our blackbird was going at it as if his poor lungs were about to burst.

OK, so I had to scrape frost of the windows of the car, but it meant that the sun lifted itself into a clear blue sky and managed to summon up enough energy to make it feel really pleasant if you kept out of the shade.

All of which means that we will probably have more snow before the week is out.

I'm not going to knock it though. Today the little blackbird and his big song (see Note 1) really lifted my spirits and made the world seem a much better place.

It is a long shot, but you never know, the lighter mornings, the countryside starting to take on a tinge of green, the warmth of the sun on our backs and mother nature's morning concerts might start to lift the gloom that fills our newspapers and start to get the sap of confidence pumping again.

Note 1 : Yes, I was talking about the blackbird singing. What on earth did you think our little blackbird would be up to on a spring-like morning?

Size doesn't matter

Let's face it, that is one of the phrases that a man never wishes to confront. It is right up there with 'I see you as a brother I never had' and 'OK, just as long as you don't wake me and pull my nightie down afterwards.'

However, we are talking blogging here, so I should gently divert you back onto matters more cerebral.

The date for my big event at the Oundle Festival of Literature is fast approaching. Somehow I have to find a way of filling two hours without my audience realising that actually I am just an ordinary, boring, old sod. It could be that the secret is already out there as Alexander Mccall Smith has sold out, but so far I have only managed to rattle off a grand total of three ticket sales.

Look my castellated yeomen, it is no good waiting to see if the tickets get cheaper - there are no discounts! Get your bookings in now - the booking office telephone number is on the web site.

Despite the apparent lack of audience numbers, I have been continuing my preparations and the research and the pretty slides are coming along nicely.

Last night, my daughter persuaded me that I should give Twitter a try.

Before you click on that link, it needs a health warning. This Twitter thing is terribly addictive and has the ability to sidetrack you totally from real life.

To oversimplify matters, the principle is that you 'follow' people on the site and you see what they are up to in their daily life in the form of short, 140 character messages and you then have conversations start up rather like sending text messages on a mobile phone.

In my first foray into the world of Twitter was a strange and surreal experience.

I soon started to follow Richard Madeley, who's blog I highlighted in these very pages after I discovered it in the Times Top 100 blogs. Then, much to my amazement, he started to follow me! Just what a megastar of daytime TV is doing following me is a bit of a mystery, but there you go.

Taking the opportunity, I decided to ask the question that has been on my mind ever since I first read his blog 'Do you write your own blog?' to which he replied 'Yes'. So loads of congrats and kudos to the guy. It certainly adds another dimension to the character you see on the boob tube while devouring your afternoon buns.

Anyway, back to the topic in hand. One of the strange phenomenon of the world of Twitter is the number of famous people you can follow on the site. In the real world it would be called stalking, but on this site it seems you can do it all totally legally.

Imagine the response you would get if you sidled up to a celebrity in a restaurant and asked if they wrote their own blog? The restraining order would be the least of your worries.

This Twitter thing is amazing. Next time you find yourself at a loose end and don't know if you want to knit some breasts or try something new on the computer, give it a go.