Hello Again

I just wanted to reassure you that I hadn’t fallen down a big hole. I wish I could tell you that I had been away doing something really exciting like trekking across the Andes or idling away my time under a Caribbean sunset. Sadly the truth is that work has been extraordinarily busy and I have had to do a lot of work at home. I am also going on holiday in a couple of weeks to La Gomera and have had to start now to plan for all the things that will need to be reallocated while I am away. It has all been a lot of fun but hard work.

As for the classic reads, I am still attempting to read Lolita, which is, I am sure a very good book, but at the end of a tiring day I tend to fall asleep while reading it so I haven’t got very far. Having said that, I am feeling good as I, like a machete wielding explorer, successfully clear my way through the undergrowth of my to do list. Sadly, I must go again as reports are calling and the vegetation is rising. I shall be back soon.

A Blogging Story

Kelly has memed me to find out why I blog.

It started with a book. “Where Did It All Go Right by Andrew Collins. It’s a very funny, warm account of growing up in the 70’s however there was something else about that book which was to lead me to the world of blogging. On the front inside page was a website address (www.wherediditallgoright.com) and I was intrigued. Following the link (as I believe is the correct terminology) I found a whole website devoted to the book and further investigation uncovered the blog.

Discussions ranged (and in many occasions raged) from birdwatching to homeopathic remedies to 9/11 conspiracy theories all in the space of a couple of weeks. I was fascinated and began to experience the first flutterings of envy. In the best tradition of a small school child I wanted one of these toys too. Of course, not being technologically minded I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to get one. And to be perfectly honest I’m still not too sure how I got one. One day I clicked on a button which brought me to a menu. I followed the instructions and “hey presto” I had a blog of my own. Now, due consideration had to be taken with what to fill it with.

My first post was about Breadmaking. Not perhaps the most exciting subject but perhaps I hadn’t yet grasped blogging conventions. It would appear that most blogs are either controversial or funny. Sadly I fear I don’t really know enough to be controversial (I could quite easily confuse Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama and then there would be trouble) so I thought I would go down the humour route. Humour never hurt anyone apart from the man squashed by a sixteen stone comedian.

It may have been around this time that I started considering my fellow bloggers. If you post a blog and no one reads it, did it really exist in the first place? In the course of my travels in blogland I found a number of other blogs which I found to be funny, warm, amusing and lots of other lovely words. It’s wonderful to be able to visit all those other bloggers and read snippets of their lives – all in so many ways so different from my own. I visited and these kind people visited my blogs back. Now my blog posts really existed and it was, and still is a lovely feeling.

I blogged regularly (at least twice a week) until this summer when I lost one job but gained roughly three others in its place (including the one I lost but that’s a whole books worth of a story). As a result I haven’t been able to blog as much as I would like. I now have a routine of one blog post and visits to other blogs a week and if things change I might be able to come on more frequently again. I do miss it when I’m away and love the feeling now of sitting typing a load of daft words onto a page and knowing that someone out there will read them and hopefully put a comment into my comment box. And that my friends is why I still keep coming back for more.

Fresh Faces and Sticky Paws

Sometimes I just love the synchronicity. I’m working at the moment with two quite different groups of girls within our Youth Group, I’m doing Cookery and, oh joy, they both want to do something involving chicken. This makes my job very much easier when negotiating the aisles at Asda. If these girls had any inkling whatsoever that they had caused my life to be made easier they would at once have changed their minds so I won’t be letting on any time soon.

I have been working in and around Youth Groups since I officially ended my tenure as a youth myself. In my local community there has always been a strong emphasis on promoting activities for teenagers so the natural progression for me was to work as a youth group leader as soon as I was old enough. I have put on plays with youth drama groups, made the most delicious messes in numerous kitchens, eaten myself silly at sleepovers and taken trips to places like Alton Towers. How else could an adult do these things without fear of ridicule.

Of course this is not the only reason that I do it. There are of course some people who would beg to differ but I feel that it is vitally important to support and help the youth of any community. Kids these days (as at any time) face enormous challenges, whether it be something such as their best friend falling out with them or problems with parents. To have someone other than a parent or a teacher who they feel that they can talk to or who simply takes an interest in them can make all the difference.

I admit that sometimes all the good feelings can be forgotten when you have a group of 20 screaming teenagers in a room who cannot master the correct dance moves for the show taking place next week. However the mere fact that they come back week after week gives me some confidence that we must be doing something right and that one day they may look back and admit that they had fun.

And that, my friends, is a brief resume of the life of a Youth Group Worker. If you have any specific questions, please ask and I will do my best to answer them. I think as a last word I would add that, if nothing else, it keeps you young.


P.S. Apologies for the lack of regular blogging in these parts. I am now working for my current boss, my previous boss and doing quite a bit of preparation work for the youth group. It makes life interesting but time melt away. I will try and keep up the blogging but it may be a little less frequent for a while.

Catching Up

Well that’s me caught up on all the action since I’ve been away. I’m off now to write some more posts.

See you soon.

I'll Be Back

I may be away for a couple of days as my modem and my PC are no longer talking to each other. They have been sent to marriage guidance counselling (aka the local PC repair shop) to try and resolve their differences. I therefore have very limited access to IT equipment but will be back as soon as hostilities have been brought to a peaceful resolution.

He Protests Too Much, Methinks

Travelling to work on the train each morning, to beat the congestion and to try to do my bit for the environment I regularly pick up a copy of a certain newspaper. The paper in question has recently been celebrating the blog with their “2007 Brit Blog Awards”. Sadly, it would seem that not everyone shares their enthusiasm as a recent letter to the paper will attest. The pertinent points from the letter, as I can’t find a link for it, were as follows:-

1. No one reads them.

2. Those that write them are “a crowd of geeks with no friends, pouring out stuff that illustrates exactly why they have no friends……sharing their lame observations with us all day”.

3. “It disproves Borel’s theory – an infinite amount of monkeys battering away at an infinite amount of typewriters won’t eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.”

4. “It produces a lot of smug, self-satisfied dweebs endlessly filling cyberspace with their inane ramblings about Bush ‘n’ Blair and the war in Iraq.”

5. In a more enlightened age they’d be sitting alone in their damp bedsits scribbling away into a paper diary and no-one would ever have to read their nonsense.

6. Hopefully one day they’ll all discover Internet porn and find something more productive to do with their endless free time.

Is this criticism unwarranted and unfair? I would counter his argument with the following:-

1. A cursory glance through the internet would of course reveal that the meteoric rise in the number of blogs being created is mirrored by the huge growth in visitors to the sites, so in fact this would tend to indicate that many people do in fact read them.

2. Sadly my dictionary didn’t provide me with a definition of the word Geek, so, presumably in typically geekish manner, I took myself to Wikipedia where I discovered that The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word geek as

a. A carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake.

Not really the sort of thing I’m into or would advocate – but you could call Ozzy Osborne.

b. A person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked.

I may not be universally liked (well at least by certain ex boyfriends anyway) but I’m not often terrifically intellectual .

c. An enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity.

Enthusiastic / expert in a technological field? I still struggle with the basics of technology so enthusiastic expert would stretching things a bit. Amateur on a steep learning curve might be more appropriate.

Now – onto the friends bit.
I am lucky to have many friends who are quite happy to read my idle musings and know not to take them too seriously. Let’s be honest – are the observations which us bloggers share any worse than the ones which this person no doubt shares with his colleagues round the office water cooler? I think not. He does have the option not to read our observations while his colleagues do not, I would imagine, have quite the same luxury.

3. The age of the universe is dwarfed by the gulf of time it would take a monkey to type Hamlet, (or at least that's what it says on Wikipedia) so it is this and not the blogging phenomenon which in fact disproves the Infinite Monkey Theorem to which I would assume that he is referring.

4. I for one have never hit so much as a key on “Bush ‘n’ Blair and the war in Iraq”. I admit that I have, however, read blogs on the subject as, I feel, he must have too to be quite so specific with this comment.

5. I have a very nice warm and dry flat thank you very much with no damp problems and have never had the urge to scribble into a paper diary.

6. Does this person believe that Internet Porn is a productive use of time? If so, again, I would have to disagree most strongly.

Of course with this amount of vitriol boiling up inside of him the only real option for him is – and I’m sure that you are there already - to start his own blog.