When you keep a blog, an online diary if you will, you sometimes forget that other people, even people you don’t know, can and do read it. I recently discovered that people as far afield as Quebec, Canada, and Victoria, Australia, have read my blog. I also noticed that more people in the US, than in the UK, and as many people in France as the UK have read it. Which gives me pause – why are more French people reading my blog than my friends and family from home? Ah well, it’s actually quite a thrill to think that Australians are taking time out from their hectic schedule of surfing, drinking, and staging racist protests on beaches to learn of my antics. Which is nice, because sometimes I feel I’m writing to the ether, that really, it is my diary. Then I remember that people I know have mentioned stuff I wrote. People do read it, and this really came home to me with a thunk this past week in an email from an old friend whom I have not seen since the bad old days when I worked for ‘the man’:


“Well Geoffrey, you may be surprised to receive two emails from me in such quick succession but it would be remiss of me not to rebuke you for your clear betrayal of a friendship forged as it were from the despair of having a crap job and no-one better to talk to. I am, or course referring to your blog, for in your recent reply to my heartfelt congratulations you provided me with the URL to said blog. As I have recently started one myself (still very much a work in progress) I thought I would take a look at the work of a fellow (more experienced) blogger. Yours is indeed a blog of the highest quality and I congratulate you - I will now be a regular visitor. However, as I do when I visit all blogs, I decided to refer to your debut entry, to see how it all began as it were, and what should I find? Well I have taken the liberty of copying and pasting the offending passage below:

"I used to get regular updates like this (although these probably won't be regular - I can be tardy, as most of you will know) from a friend who is doing a degree in Paris, they would be so long and interminably dull that I'd rarely get through a whole one without wandering off in search of, well, anything else"

I am hurt, dear boy, and currently straining to hold back the tears. I can think of only one suitable punishment and that is that on no account shall you ever be removed from my mailing list, so be prepared to receive updates on my amazingly fascinating existence until the end of time!
On a lighter note, I notice that you are teaching English in Japan. (Previous updates form your good self have suggested this may be the case but I appear only to be on your mailing list from time to time and was therefore not entirely sure) As this is something I am considering doing as of the end of my degree I was wondering if you would recommend it? I'd imagine your blog probably will tell me all I need to know but I can't be bothered to sift through all of it."

Stinging. Witty. Pithy. Certainly pissy.

I am tempted to start a feud – a literary punch-up in the style of Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, or Tom Wolfe and, well, everybody else – but of course my Parisian friend is right. And I heartily apologise. Also, I'm no Martin Amis. 'Shame.