PHAUDE.com

This glorious letter to some unknown newspaper fell from a book I recently found in Oxfam, having been lovingly clipped and kept at, I’d say, some point in the 1970s. I think it speaks for itself.

“Days of laughter

SIR- As a very old woman, I often think of friends who were always happy, stimulating, joyous, radiant and ever-welcoming. The word which exactly described their spirits was gay and we used it constantly.

Now, alas, one almost shudders to say it. Surely it is not too late for homosexuals (almost unheard of in those days) to give us back our word gay and choose another epithet. I suggest “chummy” or “matey,” and there are many others, all fairly descriptive and quite inoffensive.

If so, I shall die happy and gay.

OLIVE ADHEAD-BRECKON
London, S.W.18.”

Obviously, I think of this:

And if you think this is an interesting thing to find in a book, wait till I tell you about the Moons of Paradise…

Hullo!

To me, blogging generally seems the textural [1] equivalent of standing in a public place and staring fixedly at your reflection in a puddle as you abuse yourself. Some people may choose to watch as you grimace and twitch, most will ignore you – and rightly so – whilst you will feel an odd mixture of embarrassment and pleasure from the experience of becoming a public spectacle. (I assume so at any rate – it’s not a social experiment I’d care to conduct.) The point is, it’s self-indulgent wank of the highest order. I know that. Really I do. And it troubles me that I should be narcissistic enough to leap aboard Onan’s electric bandwagon and keep a blog of my own. Yet here I am doing exactly that. Why?

Well:

a) because I was very kindly given the domain phaude.com for Christmas 2008 with the instruction that I should start blogging, so it can hardly be my fault if I’m only following orders, can it? (Ah, the classic abnegation of personal responsibility…);

and:

b) because I can. Simple as that.

I have no agenda and no expectations. I may write often, I may not. I may be interesting, I may not. I may be funny, I may not. I will undoubtedly waste your time. But if you’ve ended up here in the first place then that’s probably what you wanted, wasn’t it?

Until!

[1] textural in this context as in Webby/Webular/whatever other ugly construct you may hear people employ (cf. Latin: textus, -us: a web, as you’ll remember). Why in the world wide web is this not in common usage?  Promulgate, do.