Do blogs need introductory posts or do you just wade straight in and start floundering around, not like a flounder (possibly the stillest creature in the marine kingdom) at all, but like a juvenile okapi, thrashing helplessly in a particularly deep section of the Congo with your preposterously inadequate Bambi legs and a look of desperation on your face that quickly turns to a look of resignation before sinking, with the rest of your head, below the cool sheet of water which only moments ago you were lapping at contentedly?

That’s not a rhetorical question; I really really want an answer.

Speaking of a sheet of water – narcissism: that’s the only reason you’d start a blog, surely. Last week I said this to a friend who had suggested I begin putting my thoughts down for public (digital) consumption.

He said, “So – why not?”

I said: “Because it’s for narcissistic clowns.”

He said, “Then what’s stopping you?”

And he had made a good point. Nobody likes the sound of their own keystrokes more than me. Narcissus, of course, was around in a time long before it became possible for people  to self- publish earnest, illiterate and vomit-inducing poetry and make it available to every single person in the world who owns a computer and access to the internet.… Read the rest