To tweet, or not to tweet?

I have just signed up to a Twitter account. Many people (including some commenters) had urged me in this direction. But, in the end, the reason I took the plunge was very simple. Fiona Maddocks had given me a bit of much needed support on Twitter in the face of AA Gill and his "how could someone from Newnham understand a willy?" line. (Let him come to Newnham, I say...There's an invitation, Mr Gill!). I couldn't find her email address to say thanks, so I signed up to Twitter to do it that way.

Soon enough I found had some good friends "following" me.

So what now?

I haven't quite manged to tweet ever since. That's partly because I haven't worked out how to do it from my phone.

But it's partly because I haven't worked out what to say. The world might be interested in whether S. Fry is at that minute intending to drop by Starbucks, but sure as anything they are not remotely interested in M Beard's coffee drinking habits.

I have speculated on a more academic approach... "just read a great article on the Quindecimviri Sacris Faciundis in Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik", but wasn't sure how that would go down. I am tempted by the "message from the front line of the lecture" -- which Charlotte Higgins has done very nicely... "here I am sitting in Nottingham and Prof X has just said that the Romans didnt cut their toe-nails". But I havent been to any lectures lately.

So what? I am shortly to decamp from Cairo (posting on this soon) to some Roman sites in Egypt (still on the hunt for images of Roman emperor). If you would like to give me some suggestions, on what to tweet and how to do it, I will try my best.