My personal blog's 10th anniversary.

 My personal blog's 10th anniversary.

We love personal milestones, notable landmarks, anniversaries that you can't help but celebrate with a modesty and fulsome gratitude. Sometimes you reach a point in whatever project you happen to be undertaking and wonder whether it's worth going on. But not this time or any time in the future. You just keep going on and on, relentlessly clocking up the miles, doing the hard yards at times and just writing because this is what you've always done so there's no reason to stop now but just look to the future. 

Here and now Ladies and Gentlemen, this is my personal appreciation to you whoever you are and wherever you may live. Today marks the 10th anniversary of my personal blog. May I thank you so much for supporting, reading, passing on valuable feedback and comments and just being there for me. This blog, my blog, my perspective on everyday life and the rich tapestry of life, has been a pleasure to write wherever you are in the world. I feel enormously privileged and honoured to have written for so long on a blog that has been the most rewarding, and most joyous experience any writer can have. 

Of course from all small acorns grew big oaks and my regular commentaries and instinctive reactions to the news and all manner of topical issues, have just filled me with enormous delight. Writing, I think, was carved indelibly into my veins and arteries, my DNA from an early age. Of course there are millions and millions of bloggers and writers who are far more accomplished, far more interesting and enlightening than I'll ever be. They are masters of their craft and they know far more about, let's say, science fiction, mechanical engineering, politics, art and music than I'll ever know. I'm but a humble little contributor to the worldwide agenda and simply hope that you enjoy my personal interpretation of global developments. 

For instance there is the wonderfully absorbing bluemoment.com blog as written by the legendary music writer Richard Williams. His encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz, all genres of music, all art forms and, more recently sports writer, for both the Independent and, at the moment, the Guardian, is quite astonishing and has to be vastly respected. His descriptions of jazz musicians, concerts, exotic musical instruments and the untouchably peerless Miles Davis were quite breath taking. So thankyou so much Richard. 

I briefly sat next to him at the Independent sports desk and felt very much like the rookie student sitting next to the maestro. The bluemoment.com is brilliantly enjoyable and Richard Williams is so enormously knowledgeable that I was quite overcome, dumbfounded and with little to say to him. But thankyou for being there, Richard. I think you were researching a piece on Nicholas Anelka at Arsenal at the time. 

For me personally, journalism, although a lifetime ambition at school, was not quite the career path I thought it would be and the trajectory took me in other directions. Having left school with no qualifications, I resolved immediately to knuckle down to the business of reading the classics in my local library. So Dickens, my all time literary hero Thomas Hardy was followed by Henry James, Joseph Conrad, DH Lawrence, HG Wells, Proust, Tolstoy, Trollope, Kipling, Michener, Hemingway, Orwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Faulkner have been my constant reading companions for many a year now.  

Here were the eminent classical authors who, unkonwingly changed my life completely. As a kid I'd always been a reluctant reader because that's what kids do because they'd rather have been out there playing with their friends on their bikes or playing football in the park. Reading was boring and something adults did when there was nothing worth watching on the TV or listening to Radio 4.

But the writing bug gripped me from early on. Inexplicably I was drawn to writing badly written football match reports as a young teenager. On an early family holiday, I sat down next to a pool in Majorca and the year was 1975. I can remember this vividly because it was the year England thrashed Scotland at Wembley in a Home International, 5-1. There was a ferocious thunderbolt from England skipper and midfield architect Gerry Francis and goals from Kevin Beattie, Colin Bell and David Johnson if memory serves me correctly. 

At the time, I didn't really think a great deal more of this simple piece of creative fun. Then in an old First Division match between Arsenal and Newcastle during the mid 1970s, Malcolm Mcdonald, a prolific goal scorer in those days, clinched a hat-trick at Highbury, Arsenal won 5-3 that day, and were the pioneers of undersoil heating. This had been the first season that this wondrous innovation had been tried in English football.  By November, normally the time when football pitches begin to resemble allottment sites, the pitch was in impeccable, billiard table green condition. 

Once again I wrote a very primitive report of the game and felt rightly proud of my achievement. I sent it to the local London newspaper Evening Standard for their opinion. Now as a callow 13 year old at the time you never quite knew what kind of an impact your literary endeavour would have. But the sports editor Michael Herd was suitably impressed and told me to persevere with my school studies. But sadly the five O' Levels never materialised. And writing went on the back burner for years and years. 

I left school deeply embarrassed at my lack of any scholastic qualifications and the unreasonable amounts of time that I thought had been wasted in meaningless subjects as technical drawing, woodwork and metalwork. There remains a deep rooted annoyance with the whole educational system. Of course the children of today should have an aptitude for any number of subjects but personally the aforesaid subjects were a complete waste of time and more of a hindrance. 

But for the last 10 years blogging has excited me, galvanised me, driven me forward, opened up my mind with perfect clarity. With every blog has come a new angle, a new variation on a theme, something I hadn't really thought at the time but had now thought utterly appropriate. It is rather like giving an artist a blank canvas and telling them to paint the most memorable landscape or portrait. Once you've picked up the brush, there can be no stopping you. Writing has given me space, time, moments to pause and deliberate over before stitching together very descriptive words, carving out delicate patterns in every sentence. 

Now let me make it perfectly clear I'm a very ordinary writer and have yet to write the definitive novel, short story or thrilling crime best seller that sells in millions. I have no illusions about my writing simply the hope that I might put a smile on your face at times or just give a revealing insight into the world or the people who make the news. I have no desire to emulate the literary brilliance of Lee Child, James Patterson, JK Rowling or indeed Richard Osman. The likes of Stephen King and the late Terry Pratchett hold little no fascination for me but their style of writing has captured the attention and imagination of the whole world for years. But I write about what I know and that's the most fundamental quality for any writer, I think. 

So thankyou once again everybody, whoever you are, for reading, dipping into perhaps or just showing an interest in little old me. Rather like my wonderfully loving and supportive wife and family, you, too are my extended family. Blogging is the best fun any writer can possibly have apart from the five self published books I've already written. Your dedicated following has meant the world to me and this blogger would like to say thankyou very much.