Good Grammar? No Thing Cost!

I went to an English grammar school, but I don’t remember learning any English grammar while I was there.

Similarly, I have GCSEs in English Language and English Literature, but I don’t recall ever being really explicitly taught anything about the former. Just a lot of the latter.

I also did GCSE Latin, which is pretty much the only reason I know anything about grammar today. In retrospect, the modern languages we did at school covered a lot of grammar, but at the time I don’t think anyone really appreciated that that's what it was.

Now, before anyone loses their shit at me for despoiling their childhood, I’m not saying this is good or bad or even that this is what actually happened. This is just how I remember it 20+ years on.

What I am saying is that, on the internet these days, there seems to be a thing called being a “grammar snob” or even a “grammar Nazi” – which consists of sneering at other people’s ungainly efforts to express themselves, presumably from a position of knowing the “right” way to do it.  Or complaining about people who do that. Whatevs.

And I find this strange, because I find myself having – at best – an instinctive sense of what English grammar is and not an explicit understanding. I’m fairly well educated and I’ve made a living out of online content (not THIS! My real job!) for some years now. So I ought to know more than most, right?

I have found that it is only my vestigial knowledge of Latin (why does the stuff you learn at school stick around? “Then, first, before the rest and with a great accompanying crowd, Laocoon came blazing down from the citadel...”) and my subsequent attempts to learn German that have taught me what auxiliary verbs are and what “subjunctive” means. No English teacher ever did.

How many self-proclaimed grammar snobs can tell a gerund from a gerundive? I can’t. And how many of the tiny percentage who can say yes can only do so because they learned a different language?

Now, I don’t believe for one second that I have ever been unable to communicate with a fellow English speaker because of a lack of formal grammatical training. I suspect that one of the good things about this language is its openness to innovation (errors, if you prefer, snobs) and its flexibility.

Grammar snobs can piss off, telling people they are using language wrong. No - if you think language is a delicate flower that needs to be protected from use then you're wrong. The nail got knocked in whether you did it with a wrench or a hammer. When it comes to our own language (not your own), communication is what matters. 

But might our national problem with learning other languages not be ameliorated a little if all that conjugation and declension bollocks we got forcefed was treated as something we are already coping with just fine every time we speak or write? Something that is not completely new and alien, but just another way of doing something we’re doing all the time?

I certainly don’t want to be called a grammar snob, but a little grammar would surely help a lot.

Comments welcome below. First person who works in education to make a snidely predictable remark about Michael Gove wins a commemorative tea towel. 

Failing to Achieve Mindfulness

This weekend, I undertook an experiment: I wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t muck about with my smartphone for two whole days.

The motivation came about on Friday evening, when I received a bunch of depressing work emails which I didn’t want to read. I knew, however, that I would not be able to resist doing so unless I took some dramatic action. So I declared to Elvira that I was going to “go without” until Monday.

By “go without” I naturally included a number of exceptions:

• Use as a music player was ok.
• People ringing me was ok.
• Amusing the children by showing them my photos was also ok.

Essentially, it was a matter of not using the internet.

What were the results of my experiment?

Well, I managed not to look at it all weekend.

I thought about looking at it a lot.

It’s the sort of thing one does at any empty moment. When you’re waiting for someone or something. When you’re bored and hoping something interesting might be there. When you’re in the middle of a conversation... and so on.

Did I learn anything from this experience?

No.

I’m afraid my life was not especially enriched. I didn’t discover new or wonderful vistas of anything that I was missing out on by not checking Facebook in every spare 30 seconds. The world didn’t end because I didn’t read the news. No new cat video went unshared. Nobody was deprived of important developments in my life. 

Maybe you have to do it for longer to achieve “mindfulness”. All I achieved was an inbox full of even more crap than it was on Friday evening. 

Sic Semper Tyrannis

I am genuinely surprised to see the outpouring of grief for HMV and Blockbuster over the last few days.

Both are object lessons in corporate hubris and deserve no pity for their fall.

Both these shops priced their products as high as they thought they could sell them at (£4 for a 24-hour DVD rental? £17 for an “import” CD?) and only discounted what they couldn’t shift.

I don’t really have an axe to grind against HMV, but I have always hated Blockbuster.

• You always had to queue because there were never enough staff on – something I experienced in five or six different branches, and so which must be a deliberate matter of company policy.
• The fact that you had to (i) go to the shop, (ii) wait and pay and (iii) then come back to the shop was a huge pain the arse.
• They often didn’t have what you wanted, because (i) someone else had rented it or (ii) they just didn’t deal with a particular distributor.

We were early joiners or LoveFilm, which just blew Blockbuster out of the water – and like many others I am amazed it has lasted this long. Neither shop made any serious effort to adapt to the existence of a little thing that has transformed every aspect of life in this country...the internet...

E-commerce sites at least try to make you feel like a valued customer, not a nuisance who can be ignored, talked down to and kept waiting to part with his money. 

Will the high streets be poorer for the demise of these “institutions”?

Only if you think that town centres have to play the same role in the future that they have done for the last 50 years – that is, as dreary monotonous temples of retail.

I’m afraid to say that everything these shops did, internet providers do better and cheaper. If shops want to survive, they need to discover something they can do that the efficiency of the internet can’t.

And if companies expect any kind of affection from their customers, they need to not try and screw every penny out of them for as little effort as possible while the going is good – because it won’t last forever. 

100 posts...and for what?

So, this is the hundredth post I have written here on Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind.

Let’s take a look back over the highlights.

...

Errr

...

In March last year, I posted a picture of Peppa Pig, which was a HUGE HIT.

That’s it.

Did you enjoy it?

Troll Bait

Here, for your amusement, is a book Roger Jr selected from the library this week – “The Swirling Hijaab”.  

After seeing the Samantha Brick effect at work this week, I have figured out that publishing stuff which is going to wind people up into a frenzy of impotent rage is the way to the internet big time.

Because look – not only is this book about an Islamic thing, it also has a POLISH TRANSLATION! And it’s in a PUBLIC LIBRARY! For CHILDREN! In BRADFORD!

Start frothing, Mail readers!

Now, Roger Jr is in many ways representative of the bulk of the British public. That is to say, he can’t read and if he doesn’t get his own way immediately, he will throw a massive tantrum.

But you know what – when I read this to him last night, cultural difference wasn’t something he even noticed. It was just a nice story. Maybe there’s hope for the next generation after all, eh?

Your Racist Friend

In the course of my work, I have to read and pretend to enjoy lots of extremely tiresome articles about social media, how freakin wonderful it is and how it can transform your business.

Apparently, it’s not enough for businesses to just sell things any more. They have to be part of your life as well. I suppose that stems from the Great God Google itself – which like the Christian God not only demands that you obey It on pain of damnation, but that you love It as well.

Much more entertaining are the articles about social media in the mainstream press – for example, this hilariously ill-informed piece from the Daily Mail, which claims that the mass-copyright-infinging-picture-collecting-social-network-for-girls Pinterest is in fact named after Harold Pinter.

I’ve been trying to get back into Twitter (not under the @RogerofSicily name, which I’ve pretty much abandoned – in spite of all the attractive but down-on-their-luck young ladies looking for love that I’ve never met before who have kindly decided to follow me), but it seems to me either like shouting into the void, standing next to some strangers having a conversation while smiling, nodding and trying to force your way in, or just doing email in public.

I do a bit of professional social media on Linkedin, under my real name - which, if you learn it, gives you the power to summon and command me (or at least to email me). But mostly I do social media on Facebook.

Which brings me on to the needlessly provocative and They Might Be Giants-referencing headline of this post.

The social media article I am waiting for is the one that tells you the right way to deal with connections who treat their social media presence as a way to carry across what Members of Parliament would politely and pompously call “saloon bar” language and attitudes into the public sphere.

There are things we might all say in private to shock, amuse or just to be transgressive for the hell of it – which we would nevertheless not say in public or to people we were not intimately familiar with and who we trusted. I will not deny saying things that are offensive or awful to get a laugh or just to be obtuse. In fact, I did such a thing last night (while watching Crufts of all things...) and Elvira bollocked me for it, because I had indeed crossed the line where shocking-good becomes shocking-bad.

Everyone does it but at the same time, everyone has a level at which they too would say “that’s out of order”.

So my question is, how should you respond to social media acquaintances who broadcast “jokes” or comments that you find offensive? They’re not speaking directly to you – or are they? They are inviting your response.

“Unfriend them”, you will say. Done that. Is that enough though? Is it enough to just walk away without saying anything?

You may think this is unduly pious, but as well as the standards of human interaction and mutual respect which I proclaim and attempt to uphold, I’m thinking of my own arse here. The Great God Google and – indeed – the security services suck up all this data (for our own good, of course).

People have lost their jobs and even been sent to prison for things they have said on social media. How long would it be before my online presence became guilty by association for having sat by and “tolerated” this?

PS – I couldn’t think of a suitable picture to go with this post, so I followed general internet protocol and put a picture of a cute animal on instead. 

Top ten unfinished blog ideas

It is well-known that even the crappiest article with “top ten” in the headline will be ridiculously over-rated by Google, and therefore attract way more visitors than the content legitimately deserves.

To that end, here is my very own contribution to the entirely unnecessary top ten genre. Like a ruminant, I’m bringing these half-digested ideas back up from one of my many stomachs for a last chew. Too rambling for a Facebook status update, too under-developed for an entire post –here we go, my Xmas gift to you:

1. All the thrill of the escalator

Does anyone else still get a frisson of big city excitement when they go on a “down” escalator? None of the towns I lived in up until the age of 18 had any shops with a down – it was lifts or stairs only for us yokels.

Every time I ride the down escalator, part of me wants to sing “New York, New York”.

2. Now or then?

Is this London St Pancras 2011 or Berlin Templehof 1936? Fascist art is alive and well...

3, Everyone’s a critic

Has anyone here read “The Communist Manifesto”? I did recently, and I was surprised by how clear and modern Marx’s critique of capitalism is. His descriptions of the finance-driven economy are shockingly prescient of the situation we find ourselves in now.

The second half of The Communist Manifesto is also pretty funny, where Marx kick starts the favourite pastime of every leftwinger ever since and slags off every other kind of socialist who has any point of disagreement with him. Because it’s SCIENCE after all.

And does anyone here like Nietzsche? As far as I can see, his demolition of the foundations of Judaeo-Christian ethics in “Beyond Good and Evil” and “The Antichrist” is irrefutable.

The trouble is, both Marx and Nietzsche go on from their brilliantly-argued critique to erect some batshit alternative scheme on top of it – in Marx’s case, communism; in Nietzsche’s case...errr...well, I’m still not entirely sure. Something to do with “act like a Homeric Greek and don’t give a toss about what anyone else does”.

And the funny thing is, both of those two explicitly denigrate “mere critics”. Why is it so easy to knock things down and so hard to produce alternatives?

4. Don’t put your daughter on the internet Mrs Worthington

If you put a picture of your kids as your Facebook profile picture, no one is going to know if you are who they think you are.  

5. Literary heroics (a)

Thanks to Anonymous (for god’s sake people – just put in any old name when you leave a comment...) for pointing me in the direction of Xenophon. I read the whole of “Anabasis” while on jury duty.

“Anabasis” is the ancient Greek “Bravo Two Zero”. Secret mission in Iraq goes wrong, escape from behind enemy lines, fighting all the way – sound familiar? ANCIENT GREECE IS NOT BORING!

6. Literary Heroics (b)

Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooo lives in a pineapple under the sea? FRIDTJOF NANSEN!

If Xenophon is Andy McNab, Fridtjof Nansen is Bear Grylls – but without the overnight hotels. I just read “Farthest North”, relating his polar expedition of 1893 to 1896. That’s right – three years in a wooden ship on the Arctic Ocean.  

In fairness, there are times when the repetitive prose manages to not only describe the ball-aching boredom he suffered being frozen into pack ice with 13 Norwegians waiting to drift to Greenland but also to elicit it. I could only care so much about what they had for dinner EVERY DAY FOR THREE YEARS. "Took the latitude. We have drifted 12 feet north in the last week. Took a sounding. The sea is very deep. It's been night for six months. Thought I saw a polar bear, but I didn't. I am so bored."

But the unbelievable fortitude of the man – a man of action, and of science and (later) a humanitarian statesman - is just inspiring. Sure, there are plenty of British polar explorers I could have idolised. But their books were not free! Nor did any of them have quite such an impressive moustache and stare. 

7. Vests are not outerwear

It is not acceptable to wear just a vest in public in the UK if you are a man. Even if it’s hot.  Especially when it’s cold.

Also, is it wrong that when I hear the line “don we now our gay apparel” in “Deck the halls with boughs of holly” I can’t help but think of assless chaps?

8. The most revolting cocktail ever

I give you the “Scotti”.  

9. The day I quit the gym

I cancelled my gym membership – and had to work out a three month notice period @£72 a month! Outrageous. If anyone has any ideas on how I can avoid turning into Jabba the Hutt, I’d be most grateful for your input.

10. And then the abyss stared back into me

The trouble with writing a blog is that when I meet people in the real world, I don’t have anything left to say to them. In telling every interesting anecdote I have on here, and polishing and grinding down the sharp edges on the facts until it becomes a routine or a bit of schtick, I lose the will to ever mention it again. 

Rhapsodies of Bohemia - pt3

Neville Chamberlain once washed his hands of Czechoslovakia by calling it “a far-away country of which we know nothing”.

As such, I like to think that these three blog posts about my recent trip to Prague are working to prevent such appeasement of any future Hitler.

By making you not know nothing about it, and in fact know something about it.

The Czech Republic, that is.

Czech Technology

I shouldn’t really have been surprised by this (because it happened to me in France as well), but the first thing I did on getting out of the airport was to try and check my emails - and of course, I couldn’t get the internet on my phone. So I had to hold out for a WiFi network.

Naturally, I was very uneasy until I got online. God knows how anyone managed to go on holiday in the past. Or to places where they don’t have WiFi.

Anyway, pursuant to my remarks about the Czech language I was a little disconcerted when faced with the Czech keyboard. Now I know that other countries have different keyboards. But if ANYONE knows where the @ symbol is on the Czech keyboard, please let me know. In order to log in to my email, I had to Google “at symbol”.

Just another reason not to have all those silly accented letters in your alphabet taking up valuable keyboard space.

Czech culture

Ever seen this little chap? 

If - like me - you used to watch the eerie foreign cartoons on BBC2 around teatime circa 1983, you may have a vague recollection. If not, he’s called Krtek (which means “mole”) and as far as I could tell, he is the single most popular thing in the entire Czech Republic.

Perhaps one in every three shops and market stalls in Prague stock every kind of Krtek merchandise you can imagine.

On our last day there, I was starting to think this mole was a little too popular when I spotted him on the front page of a daily newspaper.

But it turned out that his creator, Zdenek Miler, had died that day. Very sad, because in just three days I had become a Krtek fan too.

Alongside Krtek, Prague is overrun with Kafka-kitsch and the occasional Svejk – but no one comes close to the mole.

In conclusion

Elvira and I had a great time in Prague. To be fair, we would probably have had a great time anywhere without the kids, but the location definitely contributed. Prague is easy to get to, (relatively) cheap, safe, simple to navigate, beautiful and fascinating. I give it two thumbs up, and despite the piss-taking in the foregoing three posts, I am now a firm fan of the Czech people and the Czech Republic. 

But after our foreign trip it was nice to come back to the kids and to Boston and see the familiar signs of home.

Discovery? It's what I do for a living really...

I am still using Spotify's free service, in spite of all their efforts to make it so unbearable that everyone who does gives up and starts paying.

Recent "innovations" of this sort that they have introduced include taking away any indication anywhere of how much listening time you've got left – meaning that it could cut out at any moment.

However, by far the most caustic of the irritants applied has been the spiralling number of adverts played. Not that I mind adverts in general – I'm quite happy to listen to them in exchange for free music.

Indeed, the number of adverts played is only mitigated by the fact that they are surely some of the WORST ADVERTS EVER, which I cannot imagine would ever persuade a listener to do anything other than boycott all the products and services of that brand in perpetuity out of sheer embarrassment.

But right now, there is one advert which is absolutely killing me with laughter every time it comes on – and lest you are not fellow Spotify Don't-Give-A-Shit-About-You-Lot-Anymore users, I have transcribed it for your enjoyment.

Imagine this in the voice of a condescending Radio Four grand-dame:

Discovery? It's what I do for a living really. Silicon chips, dark matter, the Higgs Boson. 

But recently, I made another discovery: punctuality, legroom, a crisp glass of Chanteloup-Touraine. 

All from £49 with Lufthansa. Now that's a wonder of the universe!

Pardon me, I have just vomited all over myself. Oh, where to begin...

Well, how about this? Whoever you are supposed to be: NO ONE has discovered the Higgs Boson.

Moreover, it's unlikely that – were evidence for its actual existence beyond inference from the Standard Model to be found – that someone working in the field of electronics (where you "discovered" the silicon chip) would be the one to find it.

Finally, it would be a tragedy akin to the neglect suffered by Tesla thanks to Edison if – after such an illustrious career – you were reduced to travelling by budget airline, whatever kind of mini-bottles of wine they serve.

I'm afraid that I will never now be able to travel on a Lufthansa flight. Because if I got sat next to someone who said "Discovery? It's what I do for a living really..." to me I'm afraid I would have to murder them. 

I can't handle the truth

So, Blogger has a new interface which includes something resembling a child's version of Google Analytics.

Oh, I know I said I was never going to talk about SEO on here, but this is too interesting – by which I mean disheartening – to ignore.

Turns out round about one third of the traffic that has EVER come here has come in from people looking for pictures of Peppa Pig.

Back in March, I wrote a post about said pig, which was well-received and even got randomly linked to from a site promoting "real breast feeding" or something.

Ever since, I have been thinking that if I really want to give up work and write this nonsense for a living, I was going to have to sit and analyse a lot more episodes of Peppa Pig and think of something amusing to say about them. I've got quite a long way with this project so far and – even in the light of this setback - may well return to it in future.

Anyway, the goddam new interface has shown me (from a list of top URLs for incoming traffic) that it's not my ingenious interpretation of the Mummy Rabbit/Miss Rabbit dichotomy that has drawn in the readers. No, it's the fact that Google Images indexed the bloody picture.

So...LOOK! IT'S GEORGE! DINE-SAW!!!!!! LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!!!!!!

ODHSNM Interactive!

Today, ODHSNM begins an experiment. I've been asked to remove the requirement for people leaving comments to be signed in to a Google account – and so desperate to please my audience am I that I will face down the risk of trolls, Russian pr0nographers and Nigerian scammers running riot, just for you.

I reserve the right to delete any comments I don't like or end this experiment at any time, without prejudice or explanation. If I can work out how.

So, as of today, anyone with a finger or a forehead to type with can leave their mark for posterity here on what will undoubtedly come to be regarded as the 21^st century's answer to the diary of Samuel Pepys. Or possibly a minor footnote in the history of bollocks.

In defence of super injunctions

Look out! Here comes totalitarianism. Gor blimey, those super injunctions are an affront to justice and democracy, innit?

How is it remotely acceptable that a judge, sitting in private with lawyers acting on behalf of one side of a dispute, can rule that it is a criminal offence not only to reveal certain information, but also to reveal the existence of the ban on doing so?

That kind of a restriction certainly seems like a sledgehammer relative to the nut of a footballer's desire to keep his "playing away from home" secret LOL titter. "Playing away from home"... aaaahhhh.

Indeed, I started off writing this post thinking just that – that super injunctions are a disgusting abuse of power and process.

But then I changed my mind.

A non-super injunction is intended to "hold the ring" – to prevent a publisher from releasing confidential information until the matter can be argued in full. It is inherently a temporary ban on publication. So they call 'em "interim injunctions".

Plus, Section 12 of the Human Rights Act means that a judge should only give an injunction on request if it is likely to be proven later that the information should not have been released.

Breaking an interim injunction is contempt of court, and is therefore a criminal offence. That's in addition to any civil grief the publisher might subsequently end up in for breach of confidence, libel etc etc.

OK, there are problems even here of Minority Report-style "preventative" judicial action and the insertion of criminal penalties into what is basically civil law (a matter of the specific relationship between two parties, not something that is generally true to everyone).

But, should the press be allowed to ransack someone's reputation or jeopardise national security or whatever just to sell papers? Is there really a right to publish and be damned, or are there legitimate prior restraints on what can be made public?

Well, I've always thought that there are not. Being of a libertarian frame of mind (but not of the teabagging variety, I hasten to add), I generally believe that freedom matters more than other values.

But then you have to consider the repulsive ravenous beast that is the British press.

Imagine that we're not talking about publishing news here – something that can be ennobled with the mantle of "freedom of the press". What the press is doing in the case everyone is talking about right now is causing harm to an individual (and his family) for the amusement of others.

OK, harm to one's reputation is a fairly innocuous kind of harm. And a Premiership footballer being shown up as a serial shagger is hardly likely to lower anyone's opinion of him – because we all assume that's what they do for the rest of the week when they're not kicking a ball or doing coke.

It's all rather playground, isn't it? So let's recast this into the playground. The press is a bully who likes to pull other kids' pants down for a laugh. They do it every playtime, sometimes to the same person, sometimes to someone new – but they can relied upon to do it.

Is it ok to just let them get on with it, assuming that they will behave themselves this time, and punish them only after they've done it?

I'd say it isn't, and therefore some kind of pre-emptive warning to the effect of "if you pull little [insert name of mystery footballer here]'s pants down today, you'll be in big trouble" is legitimate.

That's what an interim injunction does. Section 12 of the HRA is there to encourage judges to bear in mind that occasionally the press is doing a genuine public service by exposing secret information (and the conduct of judges is another topic altogether) – as is the due process of law, conducted in open court, after the event, if the press decides to injunction notwithstandingpublish and be damned.

At the risk of sounding like a whingeing Goldsmith, I think there is a real difference between exposing a real scandal and revealing someone's bedroom antics – between the public interest and what some members of the public find interesting.

If we were talking about, say, the Pope having an affair, that should be published – because that would be a matter of someone not practising in private what they preach in public, and it would compromise his ability to hold that post.

But footballers are just paid to kick balls around. Like it or not, they're not there to be role models or to set a good example. They don't preach anything, so they can't be exposed as hypocrites. A public right to know everything about you is not the generic quid pro quo for being famous.

So exposing this footballer is purely being done for the sake of the public's amusement. And I'd say – reluctantly, I confess – that the distress that would be caused to him and his family is not offset by the amusement we'd all have laughing at him, being appalled by him, preening ourselves at our superiority etc.

Don't let the specifics of this case colour your view of the principles involved. Of course, the only person responsible for the footballer having something to hide – thereby putting his family at risk of this harm – is the man himself for having the affair.

Unquestionably, there is something thoroughly revolting about a rich man hiring out the criminal justice system to prevent someone from exposing his misbehaviour. His wife has a right to know, doesn't she? If she doesn't know now, well, she must be the only person in the world who doesn't.

That's the "injunction" bit. What about the "super" bit?

At first glance it seems horrendously Kafkaesque – to criminalise making a legal ruling public knowledge? How much more totalitarian can you get? See you in the Gulag comrade, I might have just condemned myself to a lifetime's hard labour without even knowing what I did wrong.

In principle, yes.

In practice, horseshit.

If an injunction is legally and ethically acceptable, en-supering it is just a logical extension – because we all know what the press would do. Indeed, even now, aren't we all having much more fun guessing around the "banned" story than to just hearing the honest, tawdry, dull truth of it?

If the press has something that is really in the public interest, they will publish it in breach of the law but probably get away with it. We're lucky to live in a country where that is the case. Just because there isn't a law banning the government from marching us all into death camps doesn't mean there is any greater likelihood of it happening than if there was.

We have to deal with realities and not hypothetical possibilities. The press can't be trusted to differentiate between what matters and what doesn't. Nor can the public. And I should know, because I am sadly part of both - I love to write and to read this kind of thing. That doesn't mean it's right and it certainly doesn't mean it's noble to expose it just because someone wants to conceal it.

The problem with super injunctions, I think, is not the principle, but – once again – the practice.

If I was up to the same thing as the unnamed footballer (which, Elvira, I am not!), I could not afford to protect myself and the Sicilys from the media mincer - something quite different to and not necessarily part and parcel of my family's right to know.

If the press decided to accuse me of robbing my employers by spending time writing blogs when I should be working...errr...I can't afford to defend myself.

The problem is not the law or the judges. It is the inequality of access to justice that put legal redress for harm or threats of harm beyond the reach of the majority.

Apologies for length...

The most self-indulgent thing I will ever write

I used to think that writing a blog was like walking into the middle of a busy shopping centre and shouting "look at me!" Now I realise it's like walking into the middle of a deserted shopping centre and shouting "look at me!"

I set this blog up 18 months before I wrote anything on it. Part of the reason for that was a perfectionism I think it's pretty obvious I have since abandoned. My "rationale" - if it deserves such a name - was that if it wasn't going to be immediately the biggest and best thing out there, I didn't want to put my name to it – even if it was a made-up name.

People who know me may recognise this "I won't play if I can't win" attitude. That, dear friends, is a recipe for doing nothing at all, and – I confess – for coming across like a bit of a wanker.

While there are things I've posted about that I am already fairly embarrassed about, there are likewise some pieces I'm quite pleased with – even if by far the most popular thing I've written was about Peppa Pig.

What, then, is this blog about? Let me begin by telling you what it's not.

I'm not trying to paint an accurate portrayal of myself and my life. I'm not trying to be thorough. I'm not trying to be fair to all sides of every argument. I write under a pseudonym because that's what I would want to produce if I was putting my name to this publicly. And I can't. Not without practice.

Most of what's on here is a first draft with minor tidy-ups carried out afterwards. Those tidy-ups probably constitute 25 per cent of the visits to the site. Another 25 per cent is me visiting to look at the stat counter.

It's about whatever comes into my head, for better or for worse. Why? Because I can. I know that in the big scheme of things this is about as worthwhile as scribbling on a pub toilet wall. But I enjoy it.

I hope that readers who know me personally will recognise me behind "Roger of Sicily", and get an extra layer out of what I post from the context.

Conversely, I hope that "Roger of Sicily" as exposed in purely what I write is funny enough, interesting enough or irritating enough to offer some kind of entertainment to strangers.

So in essence, Roger of Sicily is a wig, a fake moustache and a plastic nose I go about in on the internet.

Anyway, I do invite you all to leave comments here. All you need is a Google username (I've got some standards dammit!), and even if you say you don't like it, any attention at all strokes my colossal vanity.

And I promise not to write anything like this ever again.

Osteopaths and undertakers

I work in a real "here today, gone tomorrow" business: SEO.

You'll no doubt be glad - if you know anything about that benighted industry - that I hereby promise never to write about SEO on my blog.

Nor will I post links to other people's posts saying "this is interesting" in the mistaken belief that this makes me erudite by association.

In this field of activity, you have to constantly change what you're doing to adjust to the internet's ever-evolving standards. The wayside is strewn with the bodies of companies that didn't do that.

And if Google ever got sick of us, well, they've pretty much got the power to shut the whole sector down overnight.

In my dreams, this happens.

Last night, I went to the osteopath. Turns out I have lordosis and bad posture, which is causing me lower back pain.

A mauling later, it occurred to me that dealing with back pain has got to be right up there with undertakers and insolvency practitioners as one line of work that is never going to be short of customers.

More and more of us spend upward of 40 hours a week sitting at PCs at work, and then spend a good portion of the time we're at home sitting at PCs or other screen-based media.

We get our exercise going to gyms which encourage us to do everything wrong – by loading more and more weight onto machines without regard to technique. As such, we're probably using completely the wrong muscles to lift it by any means necessary.

I suppose there are members of staff there who are supposed to help you... well, at my gym they all just stand around talking to each other and making the customer feel bad about themselves. Maybe it's different elsewhere.

Plus, when you go to the gym, typically you'll do something completely destructive – like go in and wildly overwork some muscles you never use, then be laid up for two weeks getting over it. Alternatively, you come out and scoff double the calories you've just burned off because you think you've earned it.

And when I say "we", "us" and "you", I mean of course "me". This blog is all about me.

I've always found people with "bad backs" who have not worked in coal mining or stone quarrying or otherwise actually injured themselves a little bit contemptible. Now I'm on the brink of turning into one of them.

I hereby commit to sorting out my posture. If any of you see me slouching, prod me sharply. And if I can't manage that, I'm going to retrain and become an osteopath – an osteopath whose website is number one in Google.