A GUIDE TO LESSER BLOGFORDSHIRE (PART ONE, BOOK ONE)

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE BLOG

BOOK ONE – THE BLOG SETS OUT

As we hurtle inexorably towards the 300 entries mark with these tiny contributions to what I can’t really call the ‘culture’ of the world, so I’ll just say the whole sort of general mish-mash, I thought it might be as good a time as any (in the absence of anything much else to write about today) to try and put together an easy-to-understand index of what we’ve been doing over these past months. It’s hardly “Blogfordshire for Dummies” and possibly borders slightly into the self-referential borders of “Blog will eat itself”, but, hey, as the wiseguy once said: “Watcha gonna do??”

My first tentative footsteps into the wackily weird world of Bloggeration came on a dark September evening way, way back in 2010. I had recently reacquainted myself (Online, of course. Nothing so troublesome as actual physical contact or anything like that) with some work colleagues from way back in the dawn of my own personal history, and had discovered that one of them was a serial bloggist. Now I like to think that I had been considering a move into bloggery for some time before this, but it was finding that blog and its host site (and especially the fact that it wouldn’t cost me anything other than my time) that finally convinced me that I’d like to try this, so thanks, Andi.

So I set up the account and fretted for a while, and wrote nothing. I paced about but couldn’t think of anything to say that seemed important enough to justify the vague sense that I wanted to say something. A journey of a thousand miles may well start with the first step, but at least how to take that step is a known process if you’ve walked before. Post one, blog one – shouldn’t it be somehow significant in some small way? Shouldn’t it have a raison d’etre? Shouldn’t you look at it and say to yourself, “Now I understand why I want to do this?”

In those pre-schism days, of course, there was only the one blog to rule them all here in the sunny shires of Lesser Blogfordshire, and the plan was fairly simple: just to write anything at all. Nothing, however, seemed important enough to matter. Oh, it’s easy once the train is actually in motion, once you know what it is you think that you’re trying to do (and one day I might actually work that one out…) but that first mark on the page, that opening line, that first “hello” is always a tricky one to get right.

Mine wasn’t all that impressive, to be honest, but it got the ball rolling. September 22 found me arriving home after a gathering of a few would-be-writer types who were in the process of putting together a few “entertainments” and it seemed like as good an idea as any to tentatively wonder whether a mutual blogging scenario might be a good thing for a few writers to have access to each other through. I thought I would experiment and see how easy it actually was, and, lo and behold, my first posting magically appeared, fizzing in the darkness like a damp candle and failing magnificently to set the world afire.

A week later and there had been another “gathering” and I was back, wittering on about that again. Both of these early posts finally ended up moving out of Lesser Blogfordshire to the more appropriate world of the so-called “Writers’ Group” blog where they still lurk alone and unloved.

There would be two more posts in that damp September month on the brink of winter. Breakfast TV had obviously found a way to irritate me (nothing new there) and there had been a party which I had actually attended, which is hinted at, alongside a confession about poetry (I wonder whether anyone ever did get the “Mein Kampf” joke?), in those third and fourth entries (which ultimately became the first and second after the schism) where I was just setting out to try unpeel the mysteries of Lesser Blogfordshire for an less than eager and unexpectant world.

October bought more confidence and with it a flurry of thoughts (I was going to say a positive flurry there, but… well, you know…). I set myself a fairly unreachable goal, in that I would attempt to publish something every two days. I know, sheer madness! I began with a couple of tales from my Egyptian adventures, and then moved on into the diverse kind of eclectic mix of topics that have made our adventures in Lesser Blogfordshire so unique and underwhelming. There was a little bit of astronomy when Jupiter glowed brightly in the autumn skies, more than a couple of insights into my own miserable existence, a sudden flurry of flights of fancy about an old abandoned shop (extended with a little help from my friend Rick), the first peek under the rock giving insight into my own family history and which ultimately drew my sister into our wacky webwide world, and a glittery first appearance by “Blinky the Wonder Car”. In the same month you were exposed to the first tentative glimpses of my slight obsession with a certain TV show which I’ve now bored those of you less interested in it with rather too many times now, further insights into the entertainment night and how it had a slight “real-world” link to that party I attended, and the month finished with a little Halloween tale that launched itself upon the world at such an ill-timed moment that virtually nobody ever read it. On the way to that particular success, you were also “treated” to a “typical” bleak insight into writer’s block, my all-time favourite of my own Amazon reviews, and, on the fiction front, I troubled you with a competition entry that had failed dismally, and revealed the first of three segments of a possible novella called “Caterina and the Waves” that one day I might yet actually return to.

It was becoming clear that my little fictions and writing-process related yarns didn’t really sit well alongside my other musings and so, inevitably, the schism had to happen. Strange twisted insights into the clockwork motors of my analogue mind seemed to be generally getting read more than these barely competent attempts at writing fiction and explaining how I felt about it. Eventually, I decided not to trouble my core audience as much with such nonsense, still hoping that the “Writer’s Group” might actually become an ongoing reality, and tore the Blog in twain, leaving the day-to-day nonsense here and sending all the angst, poetry, plays and unfolding novellas to languish unloved over in the exciting, new, and much ignored “Writers’ Group” blog, which still lies gasping for life (some unwary visitors recently did stumble in only the very next day after I’d last declared it dead and gone…) and is fed the occasional poor attempt at poetry to remind it that it’s still there.

As ever, this piece started out going to be one thing and has ended up being quite another. Maybe an index isn’t really required, after all, you can always click on the years and months listed in the margin if you want to delve deeper into the darker corners of historical Lesser Blogfordshire. Maybe what is required, and what this seems to have now become, is a kind of “person who write’s commentary” track on the thing itself, a “Blog Extra” if you prefer, albeit one that you can’t switch off (but can choose to escape from, obviously… you lucky devils). Here we are, only at the end of October in our tale of unfolding tales, helping any and all of our new traveling companions to catch up with us. Actually, that’s a stupid thing to have said. The “terrific ten” we have been for a long time, and the “terrific ten” we seem destined to remain. Most of us gathered in our “Fellowship” over that first couple of months and, although we have picked up and lost a few other loyal companions along the way, we seem to have become a fine company of fellow seekers in the quest for bewilderment.

To be continued, probably…