"What is she on about now?" - more words than you can shake a stick at, in a place where you can ignore them without putting your earplugs in.

A tribute - Letters for Reanna

When I'd just started putting this lot together ready to put on some kind of web-site, my terminally ill friend Reanna requested news of my life.

If the best I could do for her now was write, then I took to that with a vengeance and an urgency which was well founded.

She loved my cats, she thought I was funnier than a stand up comic (eh? must have been the one about getting bitten by a cat on the market and raising a lump on my head the same week walking into the van door). A bit of appreciation goes a long long way. And it is clear by now that encouraging me in the words department has consequences........

When she died just 3 weeks later, I'd written, but not sent, the latest letter and episode and I wondered what to do with it all now. She'd had responsibility for the title of a bit of nonsense I'd put together with a friend some years ago; I'd been telling her about the search for a title and describing it when she announced that there we were, what I'd just said should be our title. And so it was.

This gave me an idea, and so it was, this time too.


This site is dedicated to Reanna.

I’m so grateful she got to read and enjoy some of them, and she’s given me a title again :

“Letters for Reanna”.

Just another web site/blog/ whatever.....

When I was looking at blog sites, web sites, comparison sites and how to do it sites, lots of the templates carried the legend "Just another web/blog site" - and I briefly wondered if they had put that there for me. What self importance makes any of us think we are funny/clever/interesting enough for anyone other than the ones who love us best to show the slightest interest in whatever we fancy waffling on about?

So - what am I on about now?

It's that balance between your own need to express yourself and the likelihood of anyone needing to listen, and who doesn't record any kind of diary with an imaginary target audience in mind,regardless of whether they might ever actually be aware of it?

It's the desire to preserve memories. The spectre of Altzheimers stalks the corridors of middle age and maybe it's time to record what I don't want to lose. When I was a child I had a great-aunt who used to unfailingly run through the names of the entire family before alighting on whichever of us it was. I'm already having enough trouble with the cats in this respect let alone what happened when and who did it!

It's the opportunity to rant about things which ought to be ranted about in my not-so-humble opinion. The gift to me,as a student, of a Peanuts book entitled "Help Stamp Out Things Which Need Stamping Out" was clearly a prophetic one.

It's the allure of the possible role as entertainer if not enlightener. In terms of mirth surely the only thing better than having a laugh yourself is making someone else laugh. And all things considered, the written word is preferable to the banana skin for facilitating that on a personal level. 

From time to time I do digress - it's a bit of a theme used for comic effect (I wish) as well as a habit.
According to Debbie, my friend of over 40 years now, I am the only person she knows who can start talking, change the subject a dozen or more times and still come back to where I started. I'm not so sure these days.

We'll see.

Why?

I’ve always wanted to write. I’m not bad with words. I can talk for England and even then I can’t keep up with the speed of what’s going on in my head. But have I got anything interesting or entertaining to say? To entertain or not to entertain, that is the question, to read or not to read, whether tis nobler to suffer the ridicule or ignominy of spectacular failure or to write anyway BECAUSE I WANT TO.

What am I striving for? An audience certainly; anyone can do a monologue in an empty room or write a diary no-one ever sees, but the sense of purpose driving me is the need to communicate, to entertain, the potential reward of that empathy, the recognition of the “Me too!” response, the wonderful idea that I could possibly recreate in a reader the reaction I have to a book I have loved and enjoyed in ways which cause even me to be lost for words adequate to describe a feeling. My books are my friends and to share them is a privilege. If my insights and observations, rants and anecdotes could have a fraction of that value, I should think my life had not been in vain.

Read the full entry in What is she on about now?


IT'S NOT OVER YET EITHER...........

Just because this isn't a proper blog doesn't mean I've finished.
This is a WORK IN PROGRESS

and more gets added all the time. What I've got to say takes longer.


You can read more in Letters For Reanna .   Should the notion take you, you can see whether you can find anything as funny as she did.
Look for pages with Reanna read it.

By the way, if you really really want to copy any of it, it would be really nice if you asked first - there is a handy contact form for that kind of thing (rather than abuse) and I think it is only right you acknowledge your source. How else am I going to get famous??

The flamingo is A Red Flamingo In Dark Water by: Greg acquired from Flickr (Website) reproduced under licence from http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/11356