Sunday 30 May 2010

The first reluctant post

Gordon Brown told Nick Clegg to ‘get real’ about nuclear arms in the second televised debate of the election campaign. He repeated it twice for effect. And although I can’t now find an example, David Cameron’s campaign speeches were punctuated by frequent exhortations to ‘Get over it!’ “Get over it” is also the phrase that springs to mind when considering my attitude to blogs, a form of which I appear to have just begun. Have I finally got over my antipathy towards what I formerly regarded as an acutely self-regarding practice, or have I at last become immune to whatever it was that so irritated me about other people’s blogs? And why is it, incidentally, that the dictionary on my new laptop doesn’t even recognize the word ‘blog’? ‘Oh come on, get over it, Jon,’ I should say to myself. Get real, Jon. Get on with it. Ah yes, but on with what? What is this blog about, let alone for? It’s self-advertisement, for a start. I want to let everyone know what I’m doing, have done or am about to do - hence the information displayed on the right, listing performances of The Poof Downstairs.

Having said all that I don't now know where to go. This is, then, a blog in development, a blog (a word I like less and less, I note, as I repeat it) that is finding out about itself. I could, it's just occurred to me, write about The Poof Downstairs, but I've always sided with Alan Bennett when it comes to talking about one's work. I may have got this wrong. It might not be Bennett at all who said something like "If there was any way of explaining what I meant other than by doing the work itself, then there would be no need to do the work itself."

Too many words already. Let’s liven it up a bit with a picture.

Preview

This is nothing at all to do with The Poof Downstairs and more to do with being in the middle of the Red Shirt protests in Bangkok. I was in the shower in the gym when the staff shouted at me to get out. Without drying myself I had to proceed hastily through the fire exit, as there was a grenade attack in the street. A man in a wheelchair was selling lottery tickets by the razor wire, a short walk from the afore-mentioned gym. Life, as they say, goes on.

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