I’ve been thinking for a while about relaunching my blog. My previous recent efforts, ManSomwhere and Showbritz, had specific themes — travel and entertainment. This time around, I wanted to give myself licence to write about anything that caught my fancy*. Practically, that means there will probably be a lot of travel (especially talk of cruise ships, which are my current obsession) and showbiz, but also a lot of other things. I’d tell you what they are, but I’m not sure yet — although there’s sure to be the occasional whinge about the way the world doesn’t work the way I want it to, and a little nostalgia, too.
The main thing is that I want to discipline myself to write frequently. I’ve been writing all my life, and I’m still not as good at it as I want to be. My understanding, or at least my hope, is that the more I write (and the more I read), the better a writer I will become.
In this endevour, I’ve taken inspiration from the late British humourist Miles Kington, who found himself without a regular writing job after many years working on the satirical magazine Punch. As The Telegraph’s obituary of Kington notes: “He wrote to Harold Evans, who had recently become editor of The Times, proposing a humorous column. When he received no response, Kington announced that he would send in a piece every day until he got an answer. After two weeks he was hired; his daily column was called Moreover, and kept up a remarkably high standard until he left the paper five years later.” In 1987, Kington joined The Independent, and filed a column every day until his death in 2008.
Now, there is no way I’m going to be as witty as Miles Kington, nor as industrious (I do, after all, have a full-time job and something of a “life” to attend to), but I do want to be diligent and I do want to engage my readers.
If you enjoy my musings, please let me know. If you don’t, let me know anyway, but please be kind.
* I will, however, studiously avoid two subjects: politics and religion.
