I am so sorry that I am now on the back foot again not liking something. I will move onto that in due course, but just a moment for calm and reflection.
Although my previous posting (I hate blogging) was slightly tongue in cheek, it nonetheless was a cry from the heart that finding new things to write about on a regular basis is not as easy as it seems. I remember Laing and I saying it must be quite an nice way to earn a living writing a weekly column for a newspaper expressing one’s opinions or even just stirring things up to get the juices flowing. The late Bernard Levin, an opera lover if ever there was one, started off an article in his Times column (I gave up reading it when Murdoch stepped in to, ahem, rescue it) telling us about an opera, The Marriage of Figaro if memory serves me well, and that it was full of poor quality music, written by a second rate hack of a composer and why any self respecting opera company would put it on was beyond him. By the time one had got to that point the blood was boiling throughout the nation. Then - Ping! - the bubble was burst. It wasn’t by Mozart, but by a composer most of us have never heard of before or since.
It is elegance of style like that I think we should all aspire to, even when ranting. A rant is fine, letting off steam is good, but to do it in a way that totally misleads the reader is a neat trick, but one that only has limited usage. Probably only the once, the way Levin wrote it.
Writing a blog on a daily or weekly basis is daunting, so what must it like writing a newspaper column with a predefined readership, either political, professional or intellectual, for instance where you are expected to be either toeing the line or, as in the case of Melanie Philips, playing the role of the irritating right wing Harpie in the left wing Guardian?
Having just returned from the US today, jet lagged and in need of a few hours sleep, I was thinking what could I write about on my next blog when up it popped in the form of a comment which I will delete as soon as I have finished this blog.
[To Margaret853, I am sorry for the geographical confusion, but Venice is so much part of me at present, I keep referring back to her, and I took my small (sized) drive (but with massive memory) with me to show some photos to our friend Jean, and I could select them in my idle hours rather than eat into my precious pre-holiday preparation time.]
I had one comment posted four times on my blog by a user who only joined today and who has posted on other blogs with what must be the same post judging by a quick look on one other blog. As a warning, should you come across this elsewhere, the user is ivonne and posts a “comment” advising you to go to a link where there is this amazing man who has saved her from the very edge of extinction. I quickly checked it out. It comes under the heading of the usual snake oil sales pitch. It isn’t even subtle as a comment, it is written in poor English, poor paragraphing (somebody who doesn’t know the standard Macmillan auto paragraphing). The post appears as this and I was tempted to redacte it!
Hi a few weeks ago i found much easy , much cheap and without any side effects way to overcome cancer !
2 months ago I was nearly death ,thinking about writing some “goodbye letters “
Today I feel like new born , have a lot of energy , I look beautiful , my skin is younger , I am healthy!
If you put into you tube : heal yourself 101
His name is Markus Rothkranz
He helped as well thousands of people to overcome any most difficult diseases in the world
Ivonne
To any of you reading this, pass on the message.
I hate such evil leeching on the vulnerable, and we all know three is the possibility one or two Macmillan members may be tempted by all this. There may be some useful or interesting information, but this is not the way to disseminate such information, which is why it raises alarm bells in me.
