ha.
i find the outrage around the PoW's egg habits quite fun. and see that the PR machine is in full denial mode this morning. if you missed this rare, undercooked treat, you can find it again at the BBC.
true or not, does it matter? the point is that eggs is just the least of it.
time for them to go.
Having had a bad blogging experience last week, which really upset me, it made me think about why I blog, why I expose myself to potential harm, and what I get out of it.
You're reading this, so I guess I don't need to tell you that blogging is curiously addictive. But in the few months that I've done this, pretty much on a daily basis, I've seen bloggers come and go, but many more stay and flourish. And it has been really rewarding to grow a small, friendly network of fellow bloggers around my blog, and, just as rewarding to follow their blogs, which kinda leads on to making friends with their friends too.
But, then suddenly a blog disappears. And it reminds me what a fragile, strange space this is. Blogging is liberating, but also full of all the crap and jostling for position that is everywhere else in life. It is at once inclusive, exclusive, fun, bitchy, bullying, supportive; it is creative, tedious, subversive and democratic too. All is not as it seems: we are not ourselves here, not entirely, and we refract our identities through the prism of our blog posts. Which can make for fragile friendships where meaning can very easily be misconstrued and feelings trampled.
So, for what it is worth, here is my personal blog manifesto:
1. I blog because blogging has become an integral part of me
2. I blog because I feel I have something to say, and in saying it (from the mundane to the slightly less mundane) I hope to explore who I am
3. Blogging is not a one-way act or process: I blog to share and to make connections, however tenuous, and feel there is worth in that
4. I blog because I find real delight here
5. Blogging helps me to locate myself, to sort ideas, to think things through
6. Blogging is a creative rather than a political act, although perhaps there's politics in that after all
7. Blogging is about establishing a conversation rather than making a statement: I don't expect response to my blogs, but admit that responses are an important part of why I blog
8. I am a banterer: blogging is fun
9. I do not blog to make myself 'fair game'. Am I naive to expect some level of respect from those who respond to my blog? Perhaps I am. But, I'm real, not virtual: crappy comments hurt.
And that is why I blog, albeit a tad more cautiously this week than last.
thanks for your thoughts and comments - really. i'll be back soon. until then, here's a short intermission:
i've been trampled upon
for fun.
and there's no fun in that.
enough.
driving home this afternoon from a meeting on what is to become of me and this comes on the radio. and i'm on the A14, window wound right down, and the dry, warm September air rushing through the car
i turn the volume up and put my foot down like i'm cruising somewhere other than the long, lazy road that curves around Ipswich as if this road leads me someplace other than the sleepy, Suffolk village where i'm headed.
as if
i saw a kingfisher this morning in a tree by the pond. i've not seen one for years, and wondered what the odd, orange bird was until it flew off in a dazzle of bright blue.
and then a kestrel swooping low.
if i were a wee fish in there i'd be hiding in the shadows, i would.
housework can wait....
:-)
[now then, where did i put my wig?]
trolly x
i was lucky enough to catch this live a couple of years ago. and if you don't know it, search it out: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, by John Cameron Mitchell...
and singing the same song, live:
getting quite pissed late one summer evening, outside, round the table with very large, extended family
and we're
singing this out to the night sky
and
mr trolly on guitar
giving it
what for.
i despair at the state of the Labour Party New Labour.
i do.
it's like: what a ruddy waste.
when i was about 18, it was the time of the miners' strike, soaring unemployment, riots and the relentless obliteration of manufacturing industry and anything blue-collar. it was the worst of times: nothing endears me to that time at all. i remember wagons hurtling through Lancaster in the dead of night, overladen with imported coal from a scab port down the road; coal scattering everywhere and heaping up along the roadside in small, black drifts. where i'd pick it up along with several others in pools of dull, orange streetlight, none of us looking at each other for fear of recognising in ourselves what we knew: that we were utterly skint: Thatcher's despised underclass.
and i remember loud, rowdy May Day demos; and solidarity meetings in the local Trades Hall (the lovely, Georgian building now chic, private housing); even CND, once. and the guys selling socialist papers whatever the weather and small, tin red fist badges; and the shouting, the slogans, the banter.
and, now, the loudest shouting is that between Blair and Brown.
really.
what a dreadful
waste.
i have just come back from a reflexology session
which lasted for an hour.
my feet feel fantastic.
i feel fantastic
and i am
the most
relaxed
i
have
ever
ever
been.
[sighs]
very badly stressed today.
i guess it was going to be assessed at the counselling centre.
and as i'm driving in, i'm saying, mustn't cry, mustn't cry.
two seconds through the door, hi...etc... and am a
gibbering
wreck.
i am stressed to my very core:
i feel stress grasping my face.
i feel it tight across my brow
and stretched along my cheek bones.
it scratches, pulls, runs inside my blood.
it hogs my thoughts, and fucks about with
who i am.
it's a possession.
but today was me
serving
an
eviction
notice.
