Footprints in the Sands of the Blogosphere

I do read other people’s blogs and occasionally, I even remember to comment (although I have been known to click the submit key and then close the computer down without ever realising).

Very occasionally, I get carried away when I comment. There are a number of people who know this, most of them vowing never to have anything to do with me ever again.

This morning, not only did I get carried away, I also felt the result was worthy of saving in my own blog.

I happened to visit the Richard Madeley Appreciation Society and read his account of his adventures while filming his wildlife documentary series you will be able to see on BBC Prime Time in the autumn.

He inspired me. For my comment, read on……

I'm incredibly jealous - of the project not of your encounter with the hotel keeper (see Note 1).

Some years ago I decided to take time out to travel the world and decided to hitch hike to Margate. I got picked up by a very friendly Hungarian lorry driver (see Note 3). He told me fantastic tales of the great ferret polo matches of his youth when whole villages used hoes to try and propel a pumpkin into the opposing teams well while mounted on a ferret.

I immediately vowed that I would try my luck as a semi-professional ferret polo player. Sadly, the money ran out just outside Lille (see Note 4) and I was forced to abandon my dream and ended up running guided tours in an abattoir until I could earn my fare home.

Note 1: Footnotes in comments on other people's blogs? Oh my god, perhaps Patrick is right and I am catching a dose of the Danielewskis. (see Note 2)

Note 2: Which should have been Note 1. I suspect there is more to this encounter than you are letting on such is the penchant for bathroom couplings in Eastern Europe and the communist legacy of the lack of shower facilities.

Note 3 : Who had a terrible sense of direction and we ended up sharing the last bed in a very peculiar hotel just outside Bucharest.

Note 4: As I said, the lorry driver, who by now had appointed himself as my trainer had a very poor sense of direction. (see Note 5)

Note 5: He was also very fickle. He abandoned me in Lille to take up with a young French boy who he said he would make star, however with a name like Eric Cantona, I doubt he had a hope.

Group Therapy

It was sometime in the mi-90s that I first started to write for pleasure. There I was, happily sliding towards my 40s when I met Mike. I’m not quite clear on how it happened, but somehow, under the editorial leadership of Mike, a magazine came into being that satirised the official company magazine.

Calling our offering a magazine was probably stretching the point. While the company magazine was glossy and slick, ours consisted of a few sheets of A4 paper stapled together. While the company had access to an editor, ours went out typos and all. The company used professional photographers. We cut cartoons from back copies of ‘Punch’ magazine and changed the text underneath. The company undoubtedly had access to tools that ensured it was laid out impeccably. We would sit with bits of paper and glue, stick the contributions to the A4 sheet and photocopy them.

Despite this, our offering was surprisingly popular. For ‘Children in Need’ we produced special editions, charged the princely sum of 50p and sold out before lunch. (see Note 1) Above all, I found the act of writing bits of it highly therapeutic.

Mike moved on and by popular demand I carried on with the magazine. Then came the unfortunate incident of the new kitten. One of the (female) managers came into possession of a kitten. She may have let slip that she hadn’t thought of a good name, so naturally, I sought to help. In one edition we ran a competition, ‘Guess the name of X’s pussy!’ It didn’t go down well and management introduced censorship and the edginess and feeling of fun was lost. The magazine faded away.

Back then my writing wasn’t up to much. My effulgent yeomen may be thinking that nothing much changes, but hard as it is to believe, my writing has improved since then.

At the time, I was already using the Internet. I started off with a CompuServe account using the mosaic browser and a 19.6K modem. With my creative outlet gone, I started to explore the internet for other outlets. I started off going to newsgroups, eventually graduating to messageboards before discovering a few sites on the web that catered for writers.

Eventually, I grew bored with the writing sites and decided to write a blog instead. Now, virtually all my writing is either in a blog or is reworked from one of my ramblings that started as a blog. I find that this gives me the therapy I crave without having to commit to heavily.

The blog gives a lot of creative freedom and allows you to do all sorts of clever things with other media, but I essentially use it as a written word tool. However, there seems to be a limit to just how much I can read in a blog and how much I can interact with the writer or as a writer. In my eyes at least, it has been a shortcoming of the internet that reading off a screen is difficult. Reading from a book or a piece of paper is so much easier (see Note 2).  It is almost as if going onto the internet immediately sets your attention span to a lower setting.

For all of the advances in technology and the Internet, the position of the book has never been challenged.  For interaction and presentation, you cannot beat the Internet.

Then there is the issue of putting writers together on a site. There always seemed to be ‘issues’ amongst writers on an internet site. It was fine when all of the writers were happily praising each other like luvvies on the red carpet at the Oscars, but that never lasted. Sooner or later constructive critiques would be asked for and received signalling tears before bedtime. As I think one great wit once put it, ‘You can stroke some of the egos all of the time, all of the egos some of the time, but not all of the egos all of the time.’

There was no better example of this than the collaborative story. One writer would write a paragraph or two and hand over to another writer to add a bit, who would hand over to another. The trouble was that you would write a bit setting up a later contribution only to have your ideas stamped upon by some guy who believed that all stories needed to contain at least one herd of flying, killer gerbils.

I loved the collaborative story; it was just so rare that one ever got finished.

The other day I was doing my news junkie bit on the BBC Technology site and I came across the story covering the South by Southwest Web Awards, in Austin, Texas. (See Note 3) Seeing that the winner was British, obviously I felt I should take a look.

The ‘We Tell Stories’ site was a really pleasant surprise. For the last few days I have been poking around an enjoying the way the new modern takes on classics were presented making the most of the interactive nature of the Internet. I keep finding myself going back to have another look and a little play.

Yet, I somehow doubt that this is another Flickr, Facebook or Twitter. You see it lacks one rather important element – the ability of the masses to contribute to the story. At the moment, all it does is provide content and once that content is exhausted, people will stop coming and the site will languish on some backwater of the Interweb.

If this site is to become ‘the next big thing’, it really needs to make tools available to the masses that will allow them to provide content into the site, which in turn will ensure that there is always something there for the returning visitor.

Consider the story posted called ‘The (Former) General’. You navigate through the narrative by clicking on the arrow keys, you choose the direction you want the story to move in. Now consider if the tools were there to allow a group to collaborate on the story, to add routes, to branch off one plot and into another, to add new nodes and their own prose or poetry (or pictures or video). Suddenly you have a tool to allow people to be creative, generate content and above all a commitment to the site and returning foot fall (see Note 4). It would even give those with the desire to control armies of flying, killer gerbils the ability to create their own plot line without upsetting the egos of other writers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this site, I just would love to play with the tools and produce my own interactive stories using them.

Note 1: There is absolutely no truth in the rumour that, to ensure sales success, we had removed all of the toilet rolls from the toilets.

Note 2: I wonder if it has something to do with you look down to read a book and straight ahead to read a screen? I wonder if there is some primeval trigger in the brain that has conditioned the human race to equate looking ahead with adrenaline type activities that require physical action such as hunting or avoiding being hunted, while looking down means you feel secure, and so can relax?

Note 3: I like the idea of an ‘elevator pitch’. It obviously saves the licence payers money by doing away with the need for a studio. I wish that some of the people who give me presentations would learn the technique.

Note 4: I’m not quite sure what the Internet equivalent to ‘foot fall’ would be.

Meritorious Practitioner of Murphy's Law

Somewhere in the string of blogs that I read (and sometimes comment upon) is a discussion that a group of us should get together and write our own wikipedia entry.

As everyone knows, it is terribly bad form to write your own entry on wikipedia, but if I did, then 'Meritorious Practitioner of Murphy's Law' is probably how I would describe myself.

Yesterday, was the day of my presentation at the Oundle Festival of Literature on the art of the blog.

Throughout my life, I have been plagued by what is called the 'live demonstration' - which is why I spent so long making sure that I would be able to access all the sites I needed, because part of the two hour slot was supposed to be a session to allow the participants to start up their own blogs. The mystical Murphy stalks me, so I know that I need to make sure I cover off all eventualities.

One of the classmates couldn't access their email, but I had prepared for that. I made sure we could get to gmail and they could set up an email account.

I had made sure we could get to all of the sites we needed to get to (well, except for one, the food pornographer site which was banned as porn - which it ain't).

This time, I thought I had Murphy licked. All the computers had been tested, all the access checked, my presentation loaded, the projector work - I had every base covered and Murphy would be frozen out of the equation and forced to go to the Literary Treasure Hunt.

WRONG!

Sadly, there was just one thing I couldn't have predicted or prepared for. Someone at Multiply decided that 8:00 am EST was a great time for site maintenance! So when we sat down at 1:00 pm GMT we were greeted with a message, albeit a polite message, that the Multiply was unavailable!

The little pixies at Multiply weren't going to hurry their maintenance either (see Note 1). So in the end we were forced to abandon the setting up of new blogs and the poor people (who had actually paid for the privilege) were forced to listen to me spout.

Thankfully, I had a lot of material and there were a lot of really good questions from the floor (some of which I could answer!) which allowed the session to last the full two hours.

I think it went well. I hope it went well. I guess the real test is to see who does their homework and what new blogs for the festival get connected to my festival Multiply blog.

Note 1 : This is because computer maintenance on overtime has to follow a set for. Management notice when you start work and hence qualify for overtime payments, when the computers go unavailable. The know when you finish the overtime, because the computers come back on.

Computer technicians aren't daft. They come in, switch the computers off, then go and fetch themselves a coffee and a doughnut while raking in payment at time and a half.

Confessions of a Really Terrible Writer

I should point out that the Really Terrible Writer of the title refers to myself, not to Alexander McCall Smith, the speaker of the first event I attended at this year's Oundle Festival of Literature.

It comes from the opening words of Alexander's talk when he described his ability to 'partly play' the Bassoon in the Really Terrible Orchestra (helping the musically disadvantaged since 1995), where, unable to play any of the high notes, he is forced to wait for the music to descend to a level where he can pick up the score.

St. Peters Church was packed for the event. This was obviously a hot ticket and by all accounts, could have been sold out many times over. As I took my seat, I must admit that I was not at all sure what to expect. He is, after all,   Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and famous author, so anything could happen.

I wasn't disappointed. He spoke with great wit, warmth and a deprecating humour about a wide range of topics including his huge portfolio of work. Among the anecdotes he treated his audience with was an explanation of his affliction of being a serial novelist (although laying the blame partly at the door of his publisher who insisted that characters should marry at the end of books, not simply become engaged). We were told that nothing much happens in his books and he just didn't do car chases and the nearest he has come is a thrilling chase involving supermarket trolleys.

I admit to a fair amount of jealousy when he told us that he writes about 1000 words an hour (he treats writing the same way as walking a tightrope 'I just look straight ahead and never look down and just keep going') and complete a book in two months.

There were numerous other topics touched on and of course anecdotes from Botswana, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and his heroine, Precious Ramotswe.

At the end, there was a touching moment when the daughter of a man behind the SOS Children's Villages in Botswana asked a question. Alexander played a handsome tribute to her father as well as admitting that he drew on his visits there for some characters and the famous fruit cake in the stories.

All in all, a good evening. When I left, the book stall was in full swing and the signing queue was still snaking around the back of the church. As I turned up my collar and stepped out into the wind and the rain, I couldn't help agreeing with Alexander McCall Smith in bemoaning the lack of authors writing for the Dry Cleaning genre and wondering if I could ever put that right - although it would never be at 1000 words per hour.

As Saturday is fast approaching (tickets still available at reasonable prices and there will even be refreshments serves!), in the course of researching this entry, I came across the blog for the Really Terrible Orchestra.

 

And in the red corner...

There are flaws in my character, my perfective yeomen.

Yes, this is difficult to believe, but sadly there are matters on which I find it difficult to motivate myself to pontificate. Such is the problem with my 'chosen' topic of the day.

As I prepare for the ever-hastening arrival

of my session at the Oundle Festival of Literature, I have found it increasingly difficult to tackle the research for today’s post - political blogging.

Anyone with the stamina to follow my blogs will know that I am not averse to tackling the odd political topic, but I am with

Winston Churchill when it comes to our democratic structures when he said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

The 'problem' as I see it being that the British democratic system is based on an adversarial system. This means that we are often treated to politicians trying to score verbal points while other members of parliament bay like rabid dogs caught in a thunderstorm.

With the parliamentarians behaving like verbal street fighters at the big set pieces like

Prime Ministers Questions, it is easy to forget that most of the real work is done using reasoned debate be it in committees or the floor of the house.

The reason for my disquiet about the research on political blogging, is that when I go and read some of the political blogs out there, they seem totally pre-occupied with the verbal point scoring and very light on the reasoned debate and the provision of alternate solutions. This causes me to quickly lose interest and go back to my quest for diplomatic blogs.

However, it is political blogging that is by far the most mature of the on-line web logs. The recent

Presidential campaign in the US was characterised by the use of the internet and blogs to mobilise support, push issues up the political agenda and of course, raise funds for the candidates. In at least one instance, the use of blogs is credited with having set the political agenda which unseated the incumbent Republican Senator.

OK, so I have to provide you with a few interesting links. First port of call would have to be

Guido Fawkes, a very irreverent political blog that concentrates on the tittle-tattle of the Westminster village. Then there is the be-spectacled dome head, Nick Robinson, who writes one of the many different blogs that now appear on the BBC website. You could do worse than visit Ian Dale’s site which seems reasonable enough, but also includes some fantastic links in his blog.

As this is a kind of a political post, I would like to finish with a political comment of my own. At the moment there is a lot of fuss going on about the pension being drawn by

Sir Fred Goodwin, the former head of the disgraced RBS banking giant. After being forced to resign as the bank imploded under the weight of losses in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, Sir Fred chose to draw his pension. Now the world and their dog are crying foul and saying the money be returned.

This would set a most dangerous precedent. A pension is a contractual right that sits alongside your salary. It is not provided based on performance, but as part of your contract of employment. It is therefore a right. If the government start withdrawing a pension for an individual, it is setting a dangerous precedent that we could come to regret in future should some big corporate decide to use this precedent to their advantage.

You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment.

My excitement is building as the big day of my talk approaches. I know I keep harping on about it, but for me it seems a really big thing. I have been plucked from obscurity in my community and asked to pontificate on a something.

My regular aculeate yeomen will be nodding sagely as they will realise that I never like to let an opportunity to pontificate pass.

To try and do justice to the occasion, I have been out and about on the web trying to find a variety of interesting places that I can share with my paying audience in the hope that they feel that they have achieved the nirvana of consumerism, that of value for money.

So it was that I have been out there, burrowing into various places discovering little gems for delectation and delight, such as this little blog from a magistrate.

Unfortunately, I have drifted from my quest. I have been sidetracked back to the search for diplomatic blogs. It is just I find the idea of a diplomat writing a blog such an interesting idea after discovering the FCO blogs.

My immediate thought on this was to try and discover if there are diplomats from other countries out their and blogging. With the aid of my investigative yeomen, I discovered the US Department of State blog and a blog from a US diplomat in South Africa.

This is beginning to become an obsession. The dried frog pills don't halt it and the tin foil hat has failed to halt the frenzy. I need something to distract me away from this and back onto my quest for material ripe for pontification. Any ideas anyone?

Stroking an old friend

When I was young, my father came home with a Hornby 'OO' train set. At the time, I was overjoyed. In those simpler times it was every boys dream to own a train set.

The reality of actually owning a train set proved to be anti-climax. Setting it up was fun enough, but I never actually got what my father enjoyed in the actually 'playing with' the thing. To me it seemed incredibly dull.

For those of you who are interested, the picture above is from the Nene Valley Railway site.

The reason I mention this is that I'm aware that life consists of 'Different Strokes for Different Folks' (See Note 1).

This is a little bit of a worry for me as I am well aware that my tastes may well differ from those of my audience when I come to do my talk. However difficult it is to believe, there could well be people there who would enjoy a good steam railway blog.

There are others who could be even more into their food than I am (see Note 2). One interesting blog that I have lost touch with was from the food pornographer. Imagine my delight in finding that not only the link still works, but the blog is still being updated.

Having re-discovered this site, this blog entry is now being cut short as I am salivating in my keyboard.

Bon appetite.

Note 1 : Please be careful out there. Going out and stroking complete strangers is not an advisable past-time. Sadly, like the days of young boys wishing to own train sets, the days when people appreciated a complete stranger stroking them on the omnibus are over. Today such actions are likely lead to a black eye and a restraining order.

Note 2 : This is even more improbable than finding people who would turn over their garden to a miniature steam railway as my waistline will attest.

Dancing to a Different Beat

I like to think I have a good sense of humour and that I can see the joke and laugh along with the best of them. Even after a few dried frog pills, my sense of humour remains intact and I can guffaw with the crowd. Occasionally, I find myself ploughing my own lone furrow when it comes to comedy. Sometimes I find the joke just too sad and tragic to join in.

A classic example is one of the running jokes in Dad’s Army. Whenever the platoon were called to attention, you get the crunch of the assembled Home Guard’s boots hitting the church hall floor in unison, followed, exactly half beat later, by the boots of Corporal Jack Jones. This got a laugh every time – except from me.

I always felt that the audience were laughing at the afflicted and that the humour was cruel and heartless. This isn’t because I have a particularly strong Political Correctness streak or that I never laugh at cruel and heartless jokes. It is because I felt for Corporal Jones and in a small way even envied him. Here was a guy that was always exactly half a beat late on the song score of life.

You see, my defoliated yeomen, I would kill to be exactly on a beat, be it half a beat late or not. I cannot carry a beat in a bucket, which makes me a hazard when it comes to dancing.

At junior school, when the playing fields were deemed unfit for outside games, the teachers decided that we would do Scottish Country Dancing. Out would come the school gramophone, on would go some Scottish music and the entire class would form up into sets and dance with grace, beauty and above all, timing - the entire class that is except for me. I would be blundering around to my own, totally random beat. I may not have had timing, but I tried to make up for it with enthusiasm. That, my syncopated yeomen, was a big mistake.

It didn’t take long for the sympathetic teachers to bandage up my classmates broken feet, retrieve lost teeth and stem the bleeding from numerous noses. Very sympathetically, they took me to one side and told me that I was ‘special’. That dancing was not for me. I was destined for higher things I should look after the record player, carve my name with a compass on the school piano – ANYTHING except try to dance. And so it began

In my youth, when disco was in full swing, I was banned from clubs from Minehead to Newbury. From Bournemouth to Oxford, bouncers were told on no account was I to be granted access to the dance floor.

I soon learned that if I wished to impress a young lady, I never asked them to dance. When I forgot myself and tried to strut my stuff the date usually ended up at the local casualty department with me applying a bag of frozen peas to some part of my soon to be ex-girlfriends anatomy while waiting for the X-ray machine to come free.

My wife is wise to my shortcomings in the gyratory arts. She knows not to drag me onto the dance floor until late in the night when I have consumed enough alcohol to temper my shortcomings. I must be the only person in the country whose dancing improves after copious amounts of the falling down juice. Even with alcohol dampening my natural instincts, when we take to the floor I am under strict instructions not to lift my feet more than half an inch from the floor and to keep my elbows welded to my sides at all times.

Of course, my wife has been known to abuse this knowledge to her own advantage. Some years ago, at some charity fundraiser, I was approached by a lady who I will call ‘A’ to avoid her any embarrassment. My wife and ‘A’ didn’t get on. Some weeks previously, ‘A’ had beaten my wife in the Mother’s Egg and Spoon race at the school sports day amid some claims cheating and the inappropriate use of Blu-Tac.

‘A’ asked me to dance. I politely declined.

“It’s OK, Simon.” My wife oozed. “Why don’t you and ‘A’ enjoy a quick Jive?”

“What?” I spluttered as visions of the headline ‘Bloodbath at charity event’ in the News of the World flashed before me eyes.

“Yes, dance with ‘A’!” My wife commanded with a set jaw and gritted teeth.

The steely determination in her eyes made me realise that I was stuck between a rock and several nights on the sofa. As I took the arm of ‘A’ and led her to the dance floor, I watched my wife leading those present who were dear to her to the safety of the bar.

It turned out that ‘A’ and her fellow dancers were lucky. Casualties were surprisingly light, probably due to the wine flowing freely during dinner and ‘A’ still being in good physical shape due to her training regime employed for the blue ribbon Egg and Spoon race.

As ‘A’ was loaded into the ambulance and the paramedics treated those who had failed to escape the floor in time, my wife looked on with a look of triumph and I vowed never to let her use me as an offensive weapon again.

At the weekend, I went to visit the location for my talk at Oundle Festival of Literature on the joy of blogs (See Note 1). During the post-reconnoitre pleasantries, Paula brought up the topic of salsa.

As Paula is a long standing resident of the town and the night of the fundraiser is still a subject of local gossip, I naturally took her to mean the spicy tomato dish and my thoughts started to wander to tortilla chips and chocolate chili.

Yet, she wasn’t. Despite everything, Paula was hoping that I would attend the Grevel Lindop event at the festival (See Note 2). Visions of my past misadventures flashed before my eyes. I imagined the headlines, remembered my restraining order and declined the invitation.

The poor woman must have thought me mad. I probably went a very strange colour and made my excuses and left. Forgive me Paula, I’m sorry that I rushed off like that. I hope that this blog entry goes a small way to make recompense for knocking the door off the hinges as I ran off.

Note 1 : For those of you who have somehow missed this earth shuddering event, it is on March 7^th in the Sir Peter Scott Building, Oundle School at 1:00pm. I promise I will not be dancing.

Note 2 : Grevel Lindop will be at the Festival on Friday 13 March, 7.30pm - 11.00pm at the 2 Acre Club in Oundle. Included in the event is a Salsa dancing lesson so bring along the partner of your choice and loosen those limbs.

Saving you from the hernia

Coming downstairs this morning, my immediate thought was, 'I wonder if I can play the organ today?' This is an oft reoccurring thought I have and occasionally get the chance to ask a sympathetic cleric. You will be amazed at the understanding and patience of these people. When I ask them if I can have the opportunity to have a blow through their pipes, they allow me into their parish church, lock the door and fire up the bellows.

I have to report that so far, on every occasion that I have had the opportunity to validate the question, the answer has been a resounding 'No'.

Still, by asking questions of myself like this and by following through on them, I hope I am showing myself as a proper role model for my children. As they approach the point where (I hope) they are about to cut loose and make their own way in the world without further financial help, I'm sure that they have picked up the little life lesson, never give up on your dreams.

I'm quite proud of my two children (See Note 1). They have taken a number of my little life lessons to heart. In particular ~

"Never run when you can jog. Never jog when you can walk. Never walk when you can stand. Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lie."

Both my children have reached Olympic standard at this and it wasn't for the fact that actually entering the Olympics require them walking to the postbox at the end of the street to post the entry form, both would be a certainty for 2012.

So it was that neither was forced into work involving hard manual labour. Work that involves hours in the elements, suffering the very worst the British weather can throw at you. Work that requires you to strap heavy loads to your back and drag them for miles through dark and foreboding streets. Work that requires you to confront viscous dogs. Work that requires you to take evasive action from rabid joggers. Yes, my perfunctified yeomen, I am talking about a paper round. (See Note 2)

On Sundays, the lot of the poor paperboy / papergirl / paperperson is all the worse as the various papers slip in additional supplements to try and lure in a few extra readers and to wring out a little extra value from the poor wretch forced to deliver them to our homes.

The arrival of the Internet means that this shameful situation could soon be a thing of the past. Society could well come to see us forcing children to deliver papers the same way we now view the practice of sending small children up chimneys to sweep them (see Note 3).

With the internet, you do not need to purchase those cumbersome lumps of pulped forest. Most of the newspapers are now available on-line.

So it is that I can save you, my lithe yeomen, from a hernia. I know you are all waiting for part two of the Sunday Times Top 100 Blogs, but you do not have to heave half of Norway home with you! For yah, the article can be found on-line here.

Note 1 : I would be grateful if you don't tell them this as one of my greatest fears is that it is statements like this that put off the time when, for the very first time in my life I hear the words, "No, no, Dad, put your money away, I'll get these!"

Note 2 : My daughter did once forget the life lesson once and sign up for a paper route. This lasted about half a paper route when totally unable to find the houses to which she was supposed to be delivering she returned her sack to the shop vowing never to return.

Note 3 : We did try sending my son up the chimney once. It was a complete failure, he found a ledge half way up and just curled up and went to sleep. It was three days before he ran out of snacks secreted about his person and realised that nobody was bringing him food and drink. It was only then that he wandered out - a lot cleaner and fragrant than normal.

Back to School

The date for my foray into presenting at the Oundle Festival of Literature is getting ever closer. As you know, I am doing a session on the blog on the 7th March at the St Peter Scott maths building at Oundle School.

With every passing day I am becoming more nervous, but today the nerves were that little bit worse because I had to go back to school. It is totally irrational, but whenever I walk into a school for whatever reason, I get nerves. Today was no exception.

Still, I steeled myself and approached the venue for the first time to sort out a few of the logistics.

It was probably a good idea to have had this little scouting raid as we did find a few issues with the access rights on the computers. According to the school's firewall, Multiply is a dating and relationships site and is therefore blocked. Hopefully we can get that sorted out, otherwise it will be a very short talk!

As Oundle School is not your average comprehensive, the facilities look good. There are certainly enough computers to go round and the room is light and airy. So, everything looks good - although I hope that I can rearrange the furniture a bit!

For those of you who may not know where the Sir Peter Scott building is, it is on the corner of Glapthorn Road and Milton road. I took the photograph above to help you get your bearings and because it enabled me to get a photograph from an angle I wouldn't normally get to see.

Who is that masked man?

Last night I spent most of my time fighting Microsoft's PowerPoint. It meant that I didn't get the chance to do much in the way of research.

Instead, I shall respond to the deluge of the email I received.

It is highly probable that if you follow my blog here (and here and here), that you may have come across the man of mystery.

Those of you who may not have yet adjusted to my synaptic tangents, you may feel that I am about to explain exactly who was that masked man, The Lone Ranger. As a pre-Clint hero of the Old West, he was allowed access to the chain of beauty parlours around the badlands of 19th century America that ensured that he and his trusty sidekick were always impeccably manicured. Faced with such clean shaven and well moisturised good looks, the hoards of bad-guys soon saw the error of their ways and surrendered to be rehabilitated into society. A society where all women were beautiful, young and even when besieged by renegades, could always smuggle in their make bags and find time to touch up the slap.

Our hero and his sidekick could always be relied upon to remain pleasantly aromatic and spick and span thanks to the secret material used to make their outfits that always remains clean and ironed no matter how many days are spent in the saddle. Sadly, it is a material that remains secret to this day.

But as usual, I digress. No, I am talking about that legend of blog folklore, Evar.

The historical timeline of Evar remains vague in my memory, but is rooted in the early days of my first blog on Yahoo. I started this on 30th May 2006. Rather like the Old West of the Lone Ranger, they were simpler times. I wrote my entries, posted them and experimented a little.

I started to explore the blogs of other people and the other features on the site - like I would encourage any 'newbie' to do. Above all, I got into a habit of setting aside some time every day to write a bit, read a bit, post a few comments and build up my network of fellow bloggers. The comments bit being the important bit as this built up relationships with people far more experienced in the art than I.

Looking through my old blog entries, I can see how my voice and style developed. As my confidence and network grew, I spent more time on the formatting (using HTML which eventually took longer than the writing!).

Evar appears to have made his first appearance in my blog on 21st June 2006, co-inciding nicely with Wimbledon and me suffering an apparent attack of bad taste.

Evar was born out of one of the features of Yahoo which was the short messaging system. People could type in short messages on the front page of your site. Along with an appropriate little smiley face, you could choose an emotion to go with your message. Lumped in with the obvious 'smiles', 'hugs' and 'waves' was one for 'Best 360 Evar!'

Somewhere, now lost in the mists of time, lay a conversation with Marcus Jordan (Yes, another Multiply refugee from the crumbling 360 megalith) over the delights (or otherwise) of these messages and somewhere in these it was decided that ‘Evar’ referred to an over competitive Eastern European winter sports specialist

Now, I am not at all sure how all of this came about and the actual conversation is now buried in the bowels of some Yahoo post that will probably never return (tags are great for finding individual posts, but sadly never updated to reflect comments).

I have another shameful admission. I can’t even be sure that I remember Evar’s full name. Somewhere along the line he acquired a girlfriend, Yvette Munsderpiedder, with whom he competed in the 2006 Wimbledon finals until a scandal forced Evar into hiding with the famous detective, Chief Inspector McCrindle Barleymow Honeydew-Fforbes of New Scotland Yard hot on his tail.

Shortly after this, Yahoo declared that I was interesting. Something that felt like a huge honour at the time, but take it from me, you don’t want to stay interesting.

Evar continued and the legend grew. Stories wove around him and characters wandered in and out of the blog. Everything based around the simple premise of my local shifted from Reality A to Reality B where it became reborn as the ‘Rat & Ferret’ all aided by Dried Frog Pills and Dr. Ethaniel Nightswerve’s Velvet Cudgel. He still gets the occasional outing of course, but I am careful that before I let him out in public, I check that nobody has sewn a new label in my underpants.

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.

The day of my event approaches.

I'm pretty sure that there was someone famous (who's name I have forgotten) who said something like "stealing from a single source is called plagerism, but stealing from multiple sources is called research."

Whoever said it was obviously some smart fella who knew his stuff.

It is all pretty appropriate at the moment as the sands slip through the glass towards my session at the Oundle Festival of Literature. If anyone is actually reading this still, this takes place at the Sir Peter Scott Building, Oundle School on 7th March 2009 at 13:00 (thats 1pm in old money.) See the web site for booking details.

With that session on blogging rapidly approaching, it was with great fortune that one of my contacts from the days when I was interesting on 360 surfaced on Multiply. It seems that Neil (aka nomadtraveller) is not only well travelled, but he gets time to read the weighty Sunday papers. I guess you have to find something to do when you spend so much time in airport departure lounges.

It seems that there is a huge aid to my research published in this week's hernia inducing edition, part one of the 100 top blogs by Bryan Appleyard.

Very useful and very interesting - probably the kind of thing that Yahoo 360 had in mind when they started their interesting list and instead they got me! Never mind, I guess that one day they will learn!

It looks like there is a useful mine of information there just waiting for a claim jumper to devour.

As my lunch hour is almost over, I hadn't got much time for additional research, but suffice to say, I had a little surf. Have a go, you'll like it, not a lot, but you'll like it. (I'm sure it used to be his catch phrase, but if it ain't he'll never find me).

Also, I learned something. I wouldn't have believed it, but Paul Daniels is 70! He doesn't look it. Hasn't he worn well? (No, wait, that catchphrase was somebody else).