This week has been Blogging Week. My 850 or so words a day weblog has been taking up a sizeable chunk of my time. But that is always the way as you start on something new. It takes time to get your writing mind in gear and delivering the goods. I have some blogging experience to draw on. In 1993 I diligently addressed my attention for a whole year to writing two episodes of The Private Papers of Crocodile Uppsala every second Sunday. The discipline instilled in me at boarding school in Horsham probably helped.

At Christ’s Hospital we had a compulsory sit-down session at five o’clock each Sunday for writing letters home. One of the jobs the monitors had was to collect the resulting missives and send them on their merry way...not for censorship but to ensure compliance. How many parents received empty envelopes is another question. But a weekly log is not a daily log...and the Crocodile Uppsala pieces were four times as long as these daily pieces. But I have experience of delivering daily entries too.

I ran the Cinque Ports Letters as a weekly newsletter for two years...over a hundred editions...during 1991 and 1992 before turning to the Crocodile Uppsala formula in 1993. I have always referred to these as my pension. They have been laid down to mature and will be taken out, dusted down and republished in a few years time when the next generation of internet technology is up and running and can do them justice.

But I was not referring to them nor to my journals...I am now on Journal XLI...where I write on average two or three single-page entries a week. In the mid-nineties while in Stockholm I set myself a very specific writing task of chronicling the things I did every day. In practice I tended to bunch the writing doing half a dozen entries at a time on occasions but by the end of the year I had learnt how to do it. The trick was to scribble a post-it note each day. Provided I did this I found that my recall was pretty reliable a few days later. If I failed to do so I would be scrambling. It only happened once and it taught me a good lesson.

My technique is pretty similar to the one P.G.Wodehouse used. Sometimes his notes for a book would be two or three times longer than the book itself. But he was able to go directly from the notes to writing a final draft...the one before you start refining, eliminating and improving the individual sentences prior to heading into the editorial process. I have yet to experience a proper editorial process but think I would enjoy it. I have seen recently how the process has improved John Papworth’s book on Village Democracy due out later this year. The articles and reviews I write for Fourth World Review and Rye’s Own go through with little alteration.

Seven years ago my closest male friends often found me bemoaning the influence over my life of the monstrous regiment of women. When urged to be specific the regiment tended to become a fighting force of three...my mother, my daughter and my partner. After my mother died in 1999 and my partner in 2002 I changed my tune somewhat. Since then the female of the species have been harnessing their forces and the regiment has doubled in strength. Today dispatches were relayed to the entire formidable force. Here they are.

text exchange with Heidi somewhere in London
1200: In London for Hope’s birthday. Theatre. And a 50th party. Like the cd I sent? x
1430: Happy birthday to Hope from her step-grandfather-to-be...I can just see her face as she tries to get her head round that one...all life is there...there is a jigsaw present for her to do on yesterdays weblog...Friday 6th January 2006...if her nice Daddy will bring it up on the screen for her...go to http://williamshepherd.blog.co.uk and click on earthworms...xxx
1700: Sitting in the car at Glandy Cross after shopping...no cd arrived yet...enjoy your weekend...wish I could be with you...pizza, red wine and Richard Gere in Shall We Dance is the best I can come up with by way of some displacement activity...xxx

e-mail to my daughter somewhere in Sweden
It is my daughter’s birthday on Sunday. As she is away in Sweden at an unknown address...she started off with her mother in Knivsta but has since moved on to friends in exotic northern regions like Arboga...I sent her a birthday card courtesy of Yahoo Greetings. Yahoo lets you schedule your cards so they get sent on the right day which is useful as it means you don't need to remember to go to the computer on a particular day. You can have a look at the card here. And here is the text that went with it. 'I feel a bit bad not waiting a few years more for my first child...'cos it means you're older than you need to be. If I had waited until I was 35 for instance you would only be 24 today...and then all those freebies that gave up on you when you breezed past 26 would still be on offer...getting kicked out of Oz...that sort of thing. So it is Kierkegaard as usual for another couple of dozen turns of the moon. Many happy returns and here's to one more delightful year grappling with living in society in time and with yourself outside of it. Hell is People as Sartre was wont to say....but a philosophy of kindness is the way to go if John Cowper Powys is to be trusted. Daddy'