Hastily splashed onto the screen

After a morning of reading through Ricky Gervais' brilliant blog, Char and I decided to create a blog of our own (one that was slightly less good, and featured less Emmy-winning).

There are a few reasons for writing.

Firstly, I like the idea of keeping in touch with our friends in a way that isn't just hastily dashed-off facebook posts, or hastily dashed-off text messages. Creating a hastily dashed-off blog is the way forward. Hopefully, this way friends can read it if they want to and if it's entertaining, and not just because they're obliged to reply to something. (At this point I ought to point out I'm the world's worst facebooker and constantly forget to reply to people. As if you hadn't guessed from the fact I'm writing a blog, I'm incredibly self-obsessed. Sorry.)

Secondly, I feel a certain sense of responsibility, having gone to so much effort and expense in moving to London, that I should actually 'do stuff'. The reason for coming here was to visit galleries, go to great gigs and watch the sort of films that wouldn't have been shown at the Kettering Odeon. And I hope that starting a blog will compel us to all of this stuff and occasionally type it up. Be lovely if you'd like to read it and see what we're up to.

I'm going to drop the pre-cursor at this point (thirdly) and say that I've always wanted to keep a diary. Earlier this year I managed to keep a diary every day for 3 months and it was great. Plus, it's no exaggeration to say that when I managed to write 500 words a day for my novel/PhD project, it was one of the happiest times of my life. There's something undeniably and unashamedly cathartic about writing regularly. Did I mention I was self-obsessed?

So, what's going to be on this thing? 

Who are you, and why are you asking questions?

I'm a device.

You're an idiot.

As well as a journal of what we're doing/reading/watching/listening to, it'd be great to share some songs, prose, poems, jokes if I ever get round to creating any of those things. I also hope to introduce regular characters (friends from London and from Leicestershire) so that you all get to know each other, filtered through the cruel conduit of my clumsy fingers.

One such character is our erstwhile lodger, Matt. Matt recommended this website. For that, we should all be thankful.

Gareth