The Reason

What reason you ask? The reason I never keep a blog for very long, that's the reason. And it is because I'm really not all that interesting. I mean, I sit at a desk most days or in a cafe drinking over-priced lattes and trying to make stuff up rather than going out and experiencing stuff. That doesn't make for very stimulating chat. I mean, who wants to hear 'oh guess what I made up today?'

I know we're supposed to reveal more of ourselves in this modern age, right? We're supposed to let people in on the quiet machinations of our minds, what makes us tick, what makes us go hmmmm, but the fact is I genuinely find that a bit uncomfortable. I'm a fairly quiet guy (right, everyone who knows me just burst out laughing at that point but it's true), so how do I entertain and amuse here? Every day?

I could tell you it's raining outside. I love the rain. I noticed once that in everything I wrote for years there was a reference to it, something like 'it really ought to have been raining' or 'he loved the sound of the rain' but then that suited the mood of a lot of the stuff I was writing back then. There was a movement in Britain that called itself the Miserablists. This was the early to mid-90s. That was when Laughing Boy's Shadow was written, and it is at its core a prime example of miserablism. No happy endings. The lead character dies on page 60.

And I'm not sure about giving 'writing advice' because frankly even though I've been doing this for most of my adult life I'm not sure I'm close to doing it right or being in a position to say 'hey, listen up, this is stuff you need to know'. I've been lucky, I've been unlucky, most of all I've been stubborn. I've made good choices, I've made bad choices, but every day I've made choices. That's pretty much been my writing life. So I don't think that makes for an interesting blog either.

I could offer snippets of other people's inspiration, poetry and postcards, but other people do that far better, so I don't think that'd be worth seeing either, at least not more than once.

Or I could tell you what I'm reading - but that's what the reviews feature's for, right?

So...

One of my friends insists I should write about football, because I'm so passionate about the subject and relatively well educated about it, but that'd alienate most of you, I mean it's not like you're all die-hard Spurs fans like wot I is...

So again...

It could be a commentary on the news - after all there's horror happening every day. Today's a big day for a friend of ours, Greta. Her brother is coming home. Why's that news? Her brother is Martin Schibbye. Martin was sentenced to 11 years in Ethiopian prison for terrorist crimes. Martin's a respected Swedish journalist who has spent the last 14 months along with Johan Persson. I can't begin to imagine how Greta's feeling today, or what Martin and Johan have been through. These are guys who have written as foreign correspondents for The Times and Bild and other papers. They kept detailed diaries of every day of their captivity and treatment which were confiscated by the Ethiopians. The truth of it all will come out now that they are no longer on Ethiopian soil. They don't have to live in absolute fear of saying the wrong thing.

Or it could be something else completely different. Maybe I could mention my new book just came out in the US this week right here. But that's a bit tacky. We're just beginning to make friends, right?

So... what I'll say is this... I have no idea what'll appear here over the next few months, but I'll try to make it interesting, or at least personal. That much I can do.

Maybe I'll prattle on about being an exile. Or tell you about the time a taxi driver offered to hook me up with a Latvian hitman for 4,000 euro to take out anyone I wanted.