Four Years A Blogging

Here is a picture WordPress sent me to mark my fourth anniversary on their site.

As you can see, no expense has been spared in WordPress’s celebration of my entrance to the vintage Bloggers club. To be honest, I wouldn’t have remembered that it was any kind of anniversary at all if this smart illustration had not popped up.

Over the four years lots of things have changed, not least is that a number of valued and treasured followers, and then my publishers have prompted me to write a book and then another book, and until I began this blog, writing a book had never occurred to me.

I have a Blogroll, because one did or must, but most of the people on it seldom if ever visit apart from a few and treasured individuals. It is also true that I have made many other contacts, some of whom are both talented and wonderful and who visit regularly and who are not on my Blogroll because I don’t seem to get round to updating it, and wince at the thought of removing a name from it , even thought they wouldn’t know and never visit now anyway. How stupid is that.

More than anything I realise now how ephemeral blogging is. It is a bit like a cocktail party held at a railway station where people keep a constant eye on the time because they are soon required somewhere else and have so much else to do, but apart from the obviously facile dimension to it, it remains a forum where disparate people of every age and culture join to share and discuss the powerfully intimate and yet general experience of being alive. There is a kind of beauty and music to blogging which transcends the idle chatter and makes me want to reach out to you all and say, “We all share this age together, albeit in different circumstances and cultures and touching your lives, as you have touched mine, has made my existence infinitely richer and I thank you all for it.”