Why blogging still counts

Just read a review of a book analysing friendship. Why, out of all the book reviews that slide into oblivion, unread, did I slow down the avalanche and start concentrating on a subject potentially woffly? The answer lies at the heart of blogging and I’ll get to that… perhaps.

More truthfully I was propelled backward in time, to my salad days when I got paid for doing journalism. More precisely still, I’d been visited by a journalist’s golden benison, a solid kick-off line; here goes:

It’s important to say what friendship isn’t. Sloppy writers may equate it with love; they shouldn’t. Lovers often spend time at each others’ throats, friends less so. Love is passion, friendship is fun, forgiveness and felicity; and, on the whole, friends aren’t linked by that other f-word. Lovers tend to operate in the present tense, friends reflect a lot. Lovers hate gaps between meetings, friends may actually profit from year-long absences. The differences between love and friendship are most notable when friendship happens between different genders. I could go on.

I don’t have too many friends: as a presence I’m inclined to get on others’ wicks. I favour unpromising subjects for conversation, ask too many probing questions, punctuate long periods of showing-off with startling – though happily brief – bouts of unexpected shyness, am bad on social etiquette, pedantic about language and am probably unjustifiably confident with regard to science.

All these failings and more are evident in what I write but then reading allows more control than being part of conversation. As a result the majority of my friends (It’s no great sum, I assure you.) are from those who have commented, and still do, on my blog. Most of whom I have never met but whose qualities I treasure.

In fact friends may often be regarded as distant to each other when observed by an impartial observer. In my case distance is reality and not mere judgement. Foreigners in fact. For me Brexit is a wound that still bleeds.