I’VE BEEN CULLING MY BLOG

I’m sure you’ll all be delighted to know that I’ve spent the past few months slowly culling my blog because I had over 3,500 posts, most of which were rubbish and contained links to other blogs and videos that now no longer exist.

I’d decided that it might be time to delete the whole thing, but I can’t quite bring myself to do that.  There’s too much history and quite a lot of cultural references that date all the way back to Easter 2007.   Quite a few of the old stuff I’ve enjoyed re-reading and if nothing else its a reminder of some sort of progress, I guess and one day I hope it will be of interest to my children as a record of their early days – their tattoos, piercings, car crashes (literal and metaphorical ones), their funny lines, arguments, birthdays and other matters – it’s all there and it’s quite funny at times.

It’s very clear that the blog did well in the early days (in terms of readership)

a) Because there weren’t very many parent bloggers around

b) Because my life was a shit show

I was writing about all manner of drama, mostly involving the breakdown of my marriage and subsequent repercussions and therefore interest was maintained because like any reality drama you have to have things HAPPEN and stuff has to ESCALATE in order to remain interesting and the problem is that escalating happiness isn’t of much interest.  Much more interesting when you have BADDIES and TRAUMA and day to day F*CK UPS on a regular basis. So essentially you need to continue to have an interestingly bad life and that got extremely tiring, so I extracted myself from the drama and tried to move on in different ways.  Starting a new job and hanging out with different people. Things naturally settled down (for a while) and then kicked off again with yet more drama, but now that I’m older (but seemingly not in the least bit wiser) I realise that whilst unabashed authenticity should always remain the goal, sometimes theres’s too high a cost involved in spilling the beans.  Not only can it make you vulnerable, but it can really piss people off.

In the meantime, lest I occasionally forget, I shall now quote from Shakespeare and refer back to it from time to time:-

“This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

So how do I try and find a balance between truth and sensitivity?  How does any blog remain interesting when there are no juicy stories to tell?  Whilst I’d like to continue to be authentic and honest, some things just have to be left unsaid.  So apologies if it’s boring, but at least what remains for me is an online diary of my life with my kids and how we’ve muddled along over the last 15 years.  It’s most certainly been a rollercoaster ride, with very few flat (ish) roundabout moments – even in my single days.

I started the blog in my 40’s and I’m now in my late 50’s (WTF??).  Where has the time gone?  What has changed?  My kids are now all adults, but I’ve still got one living at home and one that is of late spending quite a lot of time here, so there are still concerns, worries, washing, cooking and all the SHIT to do and I’ve realised that although reading my CAPITAL LETTERS that go back a long way in my attempt to SHOUT things out is really annoying – I still quite like doing it.

So, I’m going to carry on writing about my life, but for now painting over a few of the more recent cracks.  Maybe I’ll find a way to be more honest again down the line.  There are still lots of things I can write about as a mother of three adults.  FAMILY remains my number one priority, as does travel, relationships, the menopause, health, exercise, WINE, food, our woeful economy, the state of the NHS and London life in general (and of course my tomatoes that are still BLOODY GREEN – I should have planted them WAY earlier – I don’t even know if Green Tomato Chutney is made from only ripe green tomatoes or whether you can use under-ripe green tomatoes?  Will have to Google it and get back to you – as no point in asking the question because I’m aware that only three people are still reading the blog and no one ever comments anymore – so you see how much you’ve got to look forward to?).

My green tomatoes

So lets see how that all goes then.