209: painting the carpets blue

Now that I write this thing every day and it has become a sort of habit, I do it without thinking.  This has had the negative effect of meaning that when time comes to do some blogging I have absolutely no idea what to write about.  I currently spend no time trying to plan out an interesting idea.  I need to somehow forge my mind so that thinking of a daily interesting blogging theme becomes habit; so I think creatively without thinking about it.  Failing that I could just give in to the lazy temptation to just diarise, which will be both boring to write, boring to read and easy for me to give up.  I have never succeeded in keeping a diary for more than 20 seconds (on account of not being a poetry writing, horse-loving teenage girl), and I don’t want to start keeping one now.

My diary, should I be keeping one, would be a tedious affair and embarrassing to publish as blog or book.  And could there be a more presumptuous or pretentious thought than considering the possibilities of the publication of my diary.  Perhaps I am a teenage girl, and a goth one at that.  As the Arab world riots, there may be a diarist putting together an insightful and fascinating masterpiece of personal and social observation to rival Samuel Pepys’ diary (which revealed the thoughts of a Restoration era MP living through the Great Fire of London and the plague), or Anne Frank’s.  Let’s hope that a literate lady from Afghanistan has written a diary about life under the Taliban.  Perhaps there is an interesting blog or two written by an Egyptian or Syrian, but equally perhaps I might not be able to read it, what with severed servers and all that.

The conclusion I have made on behalf of the world is to keep the daily details of my life to myself as much as is possible.  I’m not one of those mentalists who think being famous is a good thing; if I walked down the street and people recognised me, whispering amongst themselves and pointing, I think I would run for cover and stay indoors painting the carpets blue and sewing my fingers together.  And if I did want people to know everything I would update my facebook status more or still be using twitter: “had a croissant, need a shit, but now I’m writing my blog, lol”.  Mocking the inanity of twitter – how original!  It’s not my fault, it’s my brain’s; it’s not pulling its weight.

I’ve never actually even read Anne Frank’s or Samuel Pepys’ diaries, so before I can honestly start describing them as ‘masterpieces’ I obviously need to give them a go.  Kenneth Williams’ diary also looks fascinating; the depressed comedian who hates himself and everyone around him.  When I was a little kid I had bizarrely the diary of Mr. Bean.  It was a jokey book full of used bus tickets and ramblings about Shirley Bassey – totally pointless, but I vaguely remember finding it hilarious.  There is a Mr. Bean episode where he struggles to put his swimming trunks on, on the beach, by putting them over his clothes then wriggling out of his trousers.  I thought this was the funniest thing ever and a legitimately clever trick worth copying and practising.  And that is why I am not an academic or a scientist now.  Anyway, time’s up; blog over.