Announcement: Launch of Web Site

I have just set up a web site to hold my larger literary efforts that would not fit into the bloggery. Visit the site by clicking here or on the link listed under Other Links in the side-bar. There's nothing in it yet, but you could bookmark it for future reference. New publications will be notified on this blog.

Rumbled!

My wife asked me a question last night. ‘What are you doing?’ she said as I tapped away at the keyboard on my laptop.

Having learned before now that ‘Nothing’ would at best be an inadequate answer, or at worst would invoke the Spanish Inquisition because I am clearly up to no good, I answered truthfully, ‘I’m just… messing about with a blog.’

Something in my tone must have conveyed the subliminal message, ‘Mind your own business,’ or, perhaps, ‘Don’t pursue this line of questioning because you won’t approve,’ because getting on for a whole half-hour passed before the conversation resumed.

‘What are you doing?’ this time a little tetchily, her tone conveying, ‘You’re doing something stupid and I want to know what it is.’

‘I’m investigating what blogging is about and how it works.’ I really must work on my tone and try to eliminate the little-boy-caught-with- fingers-in-the-cookie-jar edge that it has to it when under interrogation.

‘But what are you doing? What are you writing in it?’

‘You can do anything you like with blogs. You can write anything you like.’ At this point I am corkscrewing like a Lancaster Bomber caught in a searchlight, deploying all the evasive skills I can muster. Why? I don’t know. It’s a free world, and there’s nothing wrong with writing a blog but, for some reason, I feel like the child whose mother has just discovered his secret stash of Woodbines in the locked box under his bed: annoyed but deeply chagrined.

‘What are you writing in it?’

Clearly I have had to bail out and have been caught by the Gestapo.

‘Well, a poem,’ and the sheepishness in my tone betrays that my evasive skills have evaded me, leaving me with no option but to blurt out the truth.

‘You mean, you put a poem out in cyberspace and hope that someone will read it?’ she fired at me, and I felt the barb of the question tugging at and embedding itself into my metaphorical flesh, and my mind registered subliminally her use of the word ‘cyberspace’.

‘Well… Yes.’

A silence followed that was exactly the right length to render the next remark completely un-rebuttable.

‘You’re weird.’

I looked round, just in time to see the shaking of her head and the sometimes-I-despair-of-you frown on the face of my beloved.

After what I considered a sufficient passage of time enough to convey, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about and I’m doing it anyway,’ I closed down the computer – a tacit admission of defeat.

For goodness sake, she watches ‘Eastenders'!

What's it for, then?

I think the way this will go is as follows. This blog will be the top level of my bloggery. Connected to this, I will probably have a number of blogs (sub-blogs), one for each concept that I think important or of interest or both. This blog will perhaps have tasters for the main articles in the sub-blogs, and so will give you a general picture of what goes on in the 'World of Desmond Hilary'.

I fully appreciate that concepts that are important to me may be of no interest to you: but, hey, no-one has to read this. I realise that some things I think are important may turn your blood to ice or steam, depending on your temperament. Please bear in mind that I will never write anything with the intent of causing you offence. If you take offence at anything I write, I'm afraid that's your problem: this is my blog.

Should you feel the impulse to voice your opinion on anything I write, here are my ground-rules (subject to change as I think of new ones).

1. Encouragement is always welcome.
2. You may disagree but please don't rant. I have moderation turned on. Polite disagreement is much more likely to be allowed in any discussion that evolves than is 'YOU ARE AN IDIOT (or worse)'.
3. I reserve the right to stand by my opinion and will try to give a reason why you have not persuaded me.

Anyway, I hope that you find something of interest among my ramblings.