So after a period of thought and preparation I set about writing the memoir of my life, not a great life but one with some interest even to the casual reader, let alone my children for whom the tome was originally prescribed.  I started it in the winter of 2006 and quickly found out that I could write more easily at night time when it was quiet and there was no distraction.  So with a little planning and preparation I set to.  I was amazed; the words tumbled out of my mind onto the page almost quicker than I could write.  In those days and even today with some scripts, I had to put pen to paper first before transferring them onto the typed page.

So as England was trounced by Australia in five Ashes test matches over that deep dark winter, I crafted 130,000 words of my own to describe myself and my forebears.  I wrote it in about four weeks and then asked Helen, my devoted wife of 39 years, to type it out, because her earlier training, before she started on me, was in that direction.  She knocked out about 60 pages in quick time before she tired of the task, or possibly of me, who stood at her shoulder and glowed as she committed my words to the screen and she told me that I would have to finish the job myself.

For me the size of the imposition was gargantuan, never having used a keyboard previously but in true surveyor’s style, I split the work into sections and vowed to complete 20 pages per day, in double line spacing, about 6000 words per session.  I had it done in a little over three weeks and I was a proud man until I started reading and editing which then took me the best part of the next three years before I was happy enough to let others read it.  It was received well by some and not by others.  I could not help being critical of some stages and some characters in my life.  I was brutal but probably factual in parts but I knew I was not quite there yet.

Sometime between 2009 and 2011 my painfully typed memoir disappeared off my computer screen, why or how, I do not know but into the ether it went.  I had made a typed copy but for tinkering purposes I missed it.  I was always adding words or subtracting sentences and it was lovely to play with it.  I am no expert in computers and it probably is in there somewhere that the intrepid expert will  easily extricate.  One day I might give the task to some familial great in the field to find but I have kind of resigned myself to retyping and not without a little pleasure at the thought, because in retrospect some sections need revisiting and rewriting from a different angle.  However that is a promised duty for when I run out of steam and not now when I am so busy with other ideas.

So come the winter of 2009 I was in a writing desert, wanting to write but trying to find a medium, finding a way for others to read my thoughts.  The urge to write is an amazing need in one so struck.  You are impelled by some intangible force to get words on paper, not particularly to earn money, though that would be nice, but that others could benefit from or be critical of your fine turn of phrase and laugh or at least smirk at the humour of your thoughts.

It was then I was struck by an idea mooted by my son-in-law, although he was referring to it in a business sense.  Blogging and how it could help people in business.  I signed myself up as a non-paying customer of a symposium he was about to give on the subject and after 10 hours of education, I realised this idea was for me.  It also taught me a few insider tricks in how to make the blog more available to others.

Within a couple of days my daughter and husband had set me up with a vehicle to put my words on and after a very shy and tentative start I was into my stride very quickly, helped by the antics of the Catholic Church and the publication of the Ryan Report into clerical abuse in Dublin, which gave me an ocean to trawl through for ideas from the very start.

I realised  quickly the subjects to steer clear of.  My scrapbook was full of poison pen letters and anonymous phone calls and threats of all descriptions, including three from the local rag here in Boyle, who were considering suing me for defamation.  Funnily enough I also received a threat from a bumbling priest in Manchester who was going to sue me for “deformation”.  My mind has boggled ever since.  Certainly the parish pump is a no go area if you want a quiet life, especially in small town Ireland.  There are still people seething from stuff I wrote regarding the local scene two years ago, it does not matter that it was the truth but for them to be confronted with it, was not quite on.

So my mind and blogging moved to the international arena and away from the small minds stadium.  I wrote about anything and everything, little ideas wormed their way into my head as I lay, a supine insomniac, in my bed at night and the next day these thoughts displayed themselves onto my screen as I nodded off for want of sleep.

What cheered me and what drove me on was the choice of subjects, especially the Catholic church and its works and pomps for which I had a particular dislike, but the real driver was the feedback.  Over the last 27 months I have met thousands of people through this medium with readers from all over the world e-mailing me and posting comments on the site.  So far people from over 150 countries have contacted me to give me their point of view on a particular subject.  That is the real power of the blog, the fact that there are no boundaries, the whole world is your stage.  Once you have written your piece it is there forever, like an over-abundant fruit tree with a never ending crop waiting to be picked off 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by anybody who chances along.  In that time of 27 months, I have written 177 blog postings containing about 300,000 words with hundreds of thousands of people reading what I have to say.  A tool called Google Analytics tells you exactly how many people read my printed words and how much of it they actually read.  Really useful when you are looking for popular topics to write about, not that that bothers me because I write about things that jar my mind and if others agree or even disagree that is where my pleasure lies.

In all that time two people stand out as really influencing my thought process and making me think seriously about my topics but at the same time distracting me in the nicest possible way from my task of delivering words, having to construct and answer a daily crop of e-mails to them.  However their thoughts, ideas, cajolements and humour have turned me into a far better person.

One of this duo contacted me first out of a need to share his experiences with me after a piece I had written.  This single contact turned into an avalanche of daily e-mails, full of wit, innuendo and downright truth about the revelations coming out of the Catholic Church which certainly attracted the main butt of our humour at that time.  His constant hammering on my computer screen made our main construct into a viable cause and hopefully we will be friends for ever, even after this rash of clerical crap is over.

The main problem with my writing is my lack of subtlety.  My scripts are a blunt force, which makes the point to easily.  I needed  assuagement, like a car engine needs lubricating oil.  My problem was that I did not understand the power of the blog.  I did not realise that you could not just tell it as it was but as the blog became popular I knew that this bluntness could not last because I might be over-stepping that thin, hazy, grey line they call legality.

I was eager to learn because my wealth, however small it might be, was destined for Arthur Guinness’ pockets and not some sidewinding litigant hoping to line his breeches with my hard earned.  A person made herself available, a person with more than a little knowledge of the legal code, a person, who at first, had me cowed with the fineness of her mind, she volunteered to turn my rough Longsight ideas and words into things of beauty and awe.  Her deftness of phrasing was a pleasure to read, her subject easily wrought but it was her humour I craved.  In the midst of all this horror and talk of what legal bods could do to you if you only slightly overstepped this indeterminable line, there was a humour so unlike anything from her ilk, that I had to listen to and take in everything she said.

Eventually her tuition turned me into a far better man and a far more circumspect writer and hopefully I taught her a little of the northern spirit she claimed she had in her genes ( her family having moved from a semi-detached mud hut in Jarrow to a twee bijou residence close to Buck House in the 14th century).  So,  having been edited and tutored to distraction, I write now with ease, splaying silken sentences onto a sensuous screen.  I am no longer the man I was but I thank both my amanuenses for turning me from the guttersnipe I obviously was to a person you could take anywhere.

I left the gathering after a couple of hours and went back to my daughter’s house in a very contemplative mood.  For reasons I will not bother you with, I had not seen the lady, my first cousin, for a number of years.  As you all grow up and move around and settle into a path of life, touch can easily be lost and this is what made this death all the harder for me.  At one time I was so close to her and her family and now I would not have recognized her in the street.  She died before I knew her and yet at one time I knew her well.  Somehow I had missed out on a good life and that is a big miss.

Away I came and the following morning was more than pleasantly surprised from a comment I received on a blog I wrote  on 12 January 2010 called The Importance of Blogs. I had just heard that Catherine, who has just died, was terminally ill and I dedicated this blog to her and her family.  It traced her mother’s  family tree back to the Famine in Ireland, it was a piece of their history they were unsure of because of their mother’s premature death, nearly 50 years ago.

This comment was from a lady who had just read this blog and realized that she was a second cousin of mine and Catherine’s, her grandfather and my grandmother were siblings.  She was from a branch of the family that had gone their separate ways in the 1930s and for whatever reason  touch had been lost.

That is why the blog is such an amazing and powerful tool if used properly.  You often think that once a piece has been posted, that is it, gone and forgotten, but the internet and blog field leaves it there like a bright shiny cherry on a tree waiting to be picked and eaten by passing strangers.  It is there for evermore, hopefully to be appreciated by everyone and that is what happened.  So now as one cousin goes another comes to light and hopefully will not disappear as quickly.

As I was writing these words this morning, there came news that  will only double my efforts in this field.  My daughter, Katy, has entered the final stages of pregnancy with the anticipation of twins.  She is slightly premature but the experts say that this is normal with multiple births and that mother and foeutuses are fine, with estimated weights of 5lb with still four weeks of cooking  to go.  However she will now have to go into hospital for their delivery,  a thing she dreads.  She was looking forward to a home birth and had an army of midwives lined up to take care of any eventuality.  She will have to be forthright and clear minded and not let these tinkerers of mortality, the doctors, try to bully her into treatment she does not want, just to suit the timetable of the maternity suite.

My wife has flown the coop and is now in Dublin boarding the Holyhead boat with a rolling pin in hand.  God help the doctors at Stepping Hill Hospital.   I am left with the young fellah, a mop and bucket and various dusters and told to make sure the house is perfect on her return.  That might not be until these twins are weaned so I have plenty of time.  The male’s station in life as with all things historic is a lonely one, but I suppose I have the pub and my blog and all the interesting things that both these channels deliver, but I must get on, the mop is doing a lonely dance in the bucket of hot water I prepared earlier.

This idea came to me at 6.00am this morning as I sat reading an article by Ali Bracken, the Sunday Tribune’s crime correspondent, about sexual abuse by five staff members of young boys in St. John’s National School in Sligo over a 30 year period.  Three were Marist brothers and two were lay teachers.  The Garda say there was no evidence of a paedophile ring but it is a remarkable coincidence that most of these men taught at the school at the same time.  To make matters worse after a very thorough 11 year garda investigation, one of the Marist brothers, eventually convicted of 35 counts of sexual abuse against four boys  between 1968 to 1977 wriggled that much it took four trials to eventually nail him.

What was surprising was the leniency of the sentencing in the five separate trials.  The victims felt themselves let down by the courts.

Peter White (Brother Agnellus) In 2005 he received three years on eight sample charges of indecent assault  for “unfathomable torture” on two boys after pleading guilty

Patrick Curran In 2005 he was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years reduced to nine years on appeal for assaulting nine boys between 1966 and 1984.  He originally denied 237 counts of indecent assault on ten boys in the same periopd.  He was still teaching at the school when these allegations came to light.

Michael Cunnane In 1999 he received a three year suspended sentence for 11 counts of indecent assault on three boys after pleading guilty

Martin Meaney (Brother Gregory) In 2008 he received a two year sentence for five sample counts of indecent assault against one seven year old boy after pleading guilty.

Christopher Cosgrave (BrotherChristopher) Convicted after four trials of 35 charges against four boys over a nine year period.  He walked free from court this month because of time already served.  He has never admitted his guilt.

Now I would suggest these specimen charges must have just been the tip of the iceberg in this Sligo school.  God knows how many occasions have gone unpunished, but even so the punishment is, just on these specimen charges, lenient.

Whilst Cosgrave was wriggling, I have been conducting my own inquiry into a priest who has remained unpunished.  Perhaps his premature death at 62 years old in 1968 saved him from his punishment on earth, but let us hope he has received it in the place he espoused.

Most of you supporters of my blog will already know of my search for truth in relation to Monsignor Thomas Duggan, late Rector of St. Bede’s College, Manchester and I will not bore you with a repeat of his sins.  Suffice it to say that I am gathering a portfolio of testimonies on the sexual conduct of this priest and things are moving apace, as the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese now want to interview me and discuss the evidence collected.

Today I am not about to reveal the statements made by these ex-pupils (now professional men, some retired, in their 60s and 70s) but I have become fascinated by the language used by the middle-aged men of Sligo and the diaspora of former pupils of St. Bede’s.

Phrases like “he picked out the weak boys” and “reign of complete terror”, “physically violent beyond belief”,  “I put it out of my mind and did not think of those days” and “how could you tell your parents” repeat themselves so often in both inquiries.  Those men were all working to a pattern  as though taught it at some third level campus.  If the Garda say there is no evidence of a paedophile ring, there seems to me to be evidence of a learnt paedophile mentality as though the position and learning attracts.

These Safeguarding Commissions set up on both sides of the Irish Sea by the various dioceses are riddled with lawyers who do not know how to show empathy and understanding, but are selected to form defensive bastions willing to shrug off all allegations.  I understand the argument about wheat and chaff but I do think empathy comes first.  a psychotherapist or some such person would be a better first port of call than a hardbitten legal man,  It does show you though that the Church is thinking more of pounds, shillings and pence, rather than the healing of tortured minds and bodies.

This corruption went on years ago, it went on last year, it is still going on today, these paedophiles have just reorganized their strategies and the future is bright for them.  The Church and the Government need to understand this and get the right pegs in the correct holes and forget the retribution from sins passed.  Get positive.

One of the beautiful things about blog writing is the facility that WordPress give you to analyse where your readers are, how long they spend reading you and when.  This is  magnificent if you are blogging for business reasons, it helps you to know your customer, but when your purpose is not commercial it becomes useless, but interesting.  So today I am going to try and winkle out some of my readers from exotic corners of this planet and try to get them to tell me what turns them on.

I know who is reading the misguided waffle that pours from these keys on a good day.  I know where you are from, how long I keep you interested and how many pages you read before you get bored to tears. Therefore I am today going to analyse the less trafficked areas of the world.  I will list the locations of these readers, no names because I do not have them, but I know what you read and how many minutes of most days you waste, reading this guff that I spew onto the page.

Introduce yourself in the comments facility so I know who you are.  It might help me write something more pertaining to your situation.

Who for example is the person in San Francisco who spent ages reading me on 7th April or for that matter the person in Sacramento.  I think I might know the person in Tallahassee in Florida, who is a regular visitor and has little to do if she reads me regularly, but at least she has introduced herself and congratulated me.  I also think that I might know the person in Oxford, Mississippi who is a frequent reader and as also written nice things in the past.

I can only guess at the person in Rochester, Minnesota, who had a spate in late March but who has run aground since and I can understand why the person in Manchester, New Hampshire spent ages reading me this Monday gone, obviously wishing they were in Manchester in England enjoying the lovely Spring sunshine as opposed to the horrible rainy weather that early April always brings to New England.

The person in Etobicoke, Canada intrigues me, who spent ages reading me on 6th April.  Where is it?  We also have a regular reader in Bolton, Ontario, near Toronto.  I can have an educated guess at the person in San Miguel de Allende, in Central Mexico.  Good morning Eileen, by the way if your name is not Eileen and your a bloke, my apologies but the name definitely suits you.

Whose fancy have I tickled in I’viv, in the Ukraine, who spent three hours reading last week.  I know the people in Falkenberg in Swedan, because they rang me and said how much they have enjoyed the blog and that they had read the lot.  I have news for them, they have only read seven pages, there are 96 of these posts altogether, so keep reading.  The recent visitor from Melbourne worries me, he should be in the nets training hard for the forthcoming tour not sitting on his backside.  You do not realize how good we are.

There is too much traffic in England and Ireland to isolate individuals but the popularity of the blog lies in London, Manchester, Stockport, Huyton, Sale, Atherton, Henfield, wherever that is, Huddersfield, Basingstoke, Boothstown, Wembley, Reading and Sheffield.  As you would expect Dublin and Limerick feature highly in Ireland.

So please get in touch on the comments facility and tell me what you think, what makes you tick and why I should stop making a fool of myself.  Otherwise it is like talking to a brick wall and I was doing that all my life in Manchester.

Get in touch.

So while I stumble and fall and drag myself forward I will return to that old chestnut which I must have squeezed completely dry over the last few weeks.  The Irish bishops and their complete lack of grip on reality.  But wait I think I can see water.  Is it a mirage or is it really an oasis?  They were there on the News on Monday night prancing and posturing in front of the papal procession in their long white dresses waspishly tied at the waist with their scarlet fascias and rakishly set off with a white ferraiolo slung across their shoulders, for all the world like girls at a country dance ladies excuse me, waiting expectantly while the Pope walked amongst them preening and clucking like a little red rooster hoping for one of these white beauties to entice him.  What do they think they were doing, what message did they think they were giving out to the world.  They were there to discuss child abuse by priests and not to take part in a mannequin parade.  As a good friend of mine, Michael Cryan, said yesterday morning “Nero fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind”.  These fancy dressed clerics with their medieval affectations pawing their Teflon leader while the Church is ripping itself apart (there is teutonic rumblings of even worse abuse in the cockerel’s own farmyard)  If politicians tried to do the same and not act in a responsible manner they would be voted out of office before they returned home.

Do they not understand there is work to be done and serious work at that.  We do not want pomp, ceremony and vacuousness.  We want accountability, admittance of guilt, empathy with the abused and firm, firm plans on how to go forward.  To be leaders and shepards you have to be part of your flock, you have to belong.  These boy scouts in Rome could have come from Mars for all I can see, so remote are they from public thinking.  I just hope the seriousness of the situation somehow sinks into these jesters because the abused have now got the bone between their teeth and they will not let go and the Church will suffer unthought of harm in the years to come as the majority of practising Catholics get hauled from their comfort zones and made to confront these bishops, these men of riddles and forked tongues who do not deserve a comfortable old age.

So once one strata of power is removed let us turn our attention to the priests.  In order that we get every one of these abusers, some could still be hidden, all of them should be punished by making sure they all marry a woman of their choice and that should be sufficient punishment for most, any that survive the ordeal should be canonized.

We are nearer the water, we can smell it, but alas, it is a mirage, a sham, an illusion. What the Pope and his acolytes are giving us is not what we wanted , expected or deserved.  The verdict of this two day garden party is that child abuse is a sin and these bishops have to go back home and hope and pray it never happens again.  Anyway the Pope claimed that a weakening of the Catholic faith in Ireland has been ” a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors”.  So it is not their fault at all, it is our fault and our childrens fault.  It is we who unzipped those clerical trousers, it was our children who deftly pulled the clerical member from its cosy nest and put it carefully where the sun don’t shine.  We are to blame, what a relief it is to know the truth.

Well whether it is a sin or it is not is feck all to do with anything, because without doubt it is a crime and these abusers and the men who tried to hide this crime from the authorities and systematically covered up these heinous transgressions need punishing and I just hope the Gardai and the Government plough their own furrow and bring these people to justice.

As for Drennan and his ilk it seems to me that they have been exonerated by this Roman beanfeast and our only hope, Archbishop Martin, has been told to back off.  His position it seems is now untenable and for me he should walk away and let the scum float on the surface like they have probably always done.  Never in all my life have I heard such drivel in what is coming out of Rome.  Never in all my life have I seen evil being allowed to take sway over good to such a degree.

What about the poor abused.  What about us who have lived our whole life in the Church.  I am 64 on Friday and I think that I have wasted all those 64 years accepting what these wastrels have told me, it fills me with despair and anger.

I heard about this seminar that Mark Attwood, my son-in-law and an internet marketing expert, was holding in Cheshire in mid November 2009.  It was called The Art Of Blogging For Business. As I did not have a clue what blogging entailed I thought that this might be a good start and went along hoping to learn something.  What I got was something else, far above my expectations.  Mark spoke for six hours only broken up by an hour from another really interesting guy and whereas a lot of it was above my head in terms of computer know-how, I grasped enough to make myself decide that this genre was for me.  I listened afterwards to the delegates talking amongst themselves and realized how much these professionals had got out of the day and I decided to take another step forward.  I approached Mark, informed him of my predicament, told him I was computer illiterate almost and surely I would need to go on a course.

“”Nonsense” was the brave words he used, “just do it” he said and he called over one of his associates, Steve Wild, explained my case and within two days I was set up with a blog vehicle on which all I had to do was press a few buttons in a predetermined sequence and hey presto!  A blog.

Initially I was rather scared as I stared at the screen wondering what to write about and 19 words dribbled out of my brain and down my arm onto the blog.  I read, re-read and edited this mighty piece, pressed a button and there it was on the printed page.  How proud was I?  The following day 545 words splattered themselves onto the page and from there it just flowed.  What was a trickle very quickly became a torrent and I saw an increase in quality but I suppose a lot of that could be down to conceit.

However as I wrote I could hear Mark’s words ringing in my ears “do not underestimate the power of the blog, it is a serious tool” but little did I realize that only two weeks into my venture and quickly getting into my stride, I wrote a piece, an innocent piece I thought, and I was inundated with e-mails and comments on my blog page.  A lot of people thought I was libellous, the editor of the local paper, who had the grace to ring me and let me know said she would sue me the next time it happened.  People I had known for years stopped talking to me all because I had written the truth.

This onslaught knocked me back considerably, I had never known anything so immediate and so powerful.  My style suffered as a result and the following days blog output was anodyne to say the least.  However buoyed up by encouragement from various quarters I continued my merry way but in a more watchful and circumspect manner and slowly cranked myself up to my present “tell it as it is” state.  I can honestly say I have never come across a more potent tool of communication than a blog.  I was not prepared for the onslaught although Mark had told me of the weirdos out there.  He had been attacked for months by certain individuals whose only motive was jealousy and whose only aim was disruption and now, don’t I know it, but let us soldier on and f… the begrudgers!

If any reader wants to follow my trail of self immolation, just refer back to my previous blogs on the subject, namely  Blogging On written on 9 December 2009, Keep Writing of the 18 December 2009 and The Importance Of Blogs of the 12 January 2010.  Happy writing, make it good, but do not be vindictive for the sake of it.

All this daydreaming came about because yesterday evening I met a friend for a pint and a gossip and immediately he started buttering me up and telling me how much he enjoyed reading my journal and how he wished he could write because his head was bursting with ideas and thoughts he needed to relay.  Thoughts  I have noticed that have raised people’s ire sometimes, ill-considered and possibly immature, the truth perhaps, but often enough the truth is too direct for some.  Writing it all down gives you a buffer zone in which to consider the ill-considered.

I told him he was the ideal candidate, start blogging, spit it out, get people on their toes, make ‘em think.  He is in an occupation where something differs every five minutes, he would never be stuck for a subject.  He said no.  The thoughts in his head easily come to his tongue but not his pen.  I told him to relax, consider and slowly write it down, re-read and edit if he needed to, as it will have more power in the end.  But he still said no, he was worried about his spelling, his punctuation, his words, his only basic education.  In truth he lacked confidence.  So I think high up on the scale of things a writer needs confidence, besides the technical skills discussed.  Confidence to sit down alone, understand what you are thinking and put it down in a way that makes sense and you just hope somebody picks it up.

So all you people out there who care and get exasperated with the happenings of the world, get writing, the skills might or might not come but at least it is ordering your mind.

By the way, why is it that when you are your own editor you can read your own stuff 100 times and see that an improving change is needed every time.  It reminds me of trying to sharpen a knife that has lost its edge, it will always be blunt.  Whereas McGahern used to re-read, edit and rewrite 50 or 60 times before he was satisfied.  The difference being that every time he re-wrote, he improved the text until he eventually turned out a jewel.

I decided as a discipline to write about what effects me, on a daily basis.  This is difficult; journalists call it the daily grind, coughing up articles every morning.  My main interest was to try to buckle down to its discipline.  I had no real thought of  people reading them except for my family, who are the sternest critics.  Imagine my surprise when I started receiving e-mails advising and directing me as to content.  Two or three of these unwanted missives appeared before the blog was many days old, so it appears that instead of three or four family members keeping me on the straight and narrow, I now have six or seven avid fans criticising the hell out of me.  One from the address in England calling me the devil incarnate for actually writing the piece Once a Catholic.

So I say to all you good guys out there who know they can put the world to rights.  Start a blog, vent your spleen, do not come bothering me.  Put up on the screen in words of more than one syllable the things that twang on your heart strings.  It is great practise and will certainly give great discipline to your mind, which will, as time goes by, make you really understand the power of the blog.

In two weeks I have started to understand this power and although all power needs harnessing (ask the ESB in the Shannon System) you should not reign your writing back to the extent that the horse stops.  Let it have meaning and expression and especially soul, do not be afraid of telling it how it is.  Spill the beans, get it off your chest, cough it up and above all be truthful.  Do not hide behind nicety and neutrality, go as your mind directs and be man or woman enough to withstand the blows and above all believe in its power.  After all why should a man in England, judging by the tone of his e-mail. get upset about something I wrote in Roscommon and why should he bother his arse replying to somebody he considers to be a crackpot. I read pretentious unthought out drivel every day in the newspapers and in blogs but it does not drive me to respond but that might tell you more about my indolent self than it does about the quality of what I read.

So fight the good fight, publish and be damned, tell the truth as you see it, f… the begrudgers and do not expect to have a friend in this world.

After two days of practice I have now to seriously put pen to paper or should I say digit to key. I have just found out that I am on Mark Attwood‘s Blogroll, so the complexities of the system will slowly unfold while I for the moment concentrate on style and the shift key. My expertise on the keyboard is not great even though I have typed out laboriously my 400 page memoir with one finger which is slowly being pushed into my wrist.

By the way Mark Attwood is an Internet Marketeer and SEO Expert par excellence as well as being lucky enough to be my son-in-law and I am lucky enough to be joined on his Blogroll by Drayton Bird, possibly the most famous marketing expert in the world who is also lucky enough to be born in Ashton under Lyne where my father went to school, by Katy Attwood who is priviledged to be my daughter and mother of three and a half Attwood children, by Ken McCarthy, an American, and also by a chap called Vince Samios who is misplaced ambition personified, no doubt emanating from the fact that he is Australian. I thought that they were only good at cricket and serving penal servitude.

In this exalted company I am expected to shine. So here goes.

I have just finished reading the main works of Diana Athill, a woman of 92 years  who did not start to write with energy until past her 80th birthday. Her work is mainly in Memoir form and so real and honest, you imagine you are living her life for her. As a fan of the memoir genre I find my own pitiable attempts need to be drastically rewritten for them to be half as interesting as her writing is to the reader. She has reached massive new heights in the content and presentation of this style of prose.

Her only claims to fame were that she loved to read, loved to love and loved the art of procrastination. Which is probably why she has lived to her ripe old age without too much trouble. Her titles are:- “Yesterday Morning”, “Instead of a Letter”, “Stet”, “After a Funeral”, “Make Believe” and “Somewhere Towards the End” and a novel  “Dont Look at Me Like That”, which I have not yet read. All it seems can be bought on Amazon for next to nothing. However her compendium edition “Life Class” just recently published with a forward by Ian Jack costs a few pounds more. Start reading, start loving and procrastinating and live to whatever age you want.

Here’s an interview with Diana in case you’re interested:

So I sign off with the thought that it looks like the hand of God has reached out and accomplished more than King Canute ever did. The waters of Boyle seem to have stopped rising just as they started lapping at my gateway.