Bloody hell. This is new and interesting and strange, isn’t it?

As an English student, it’s always been at the back of my mind, usually when bored, to do some bloody writing in my spare time. And when I started University, I really thought I was going to embrace the written word and knock out thousands of words a week. But it turns out it’s just like school, and when a teacher (or in this case lecturer) tells you to do something for a deadline, it sucks approximately 99.999% of the potential enjoyment out of it. You don’t want to do it, you have to do it. Zzzz. But that’s okay, I thought, I’ll still be hanging around with like-minded folk, all writing for the love of it. Then came the dreaded words:

“you should all have been writing in your spare time as well.”

Bugger, I thought, by telling me what I ought to be doing, he’s taken that simple pleasure away from me! What a nightmare. Is everybody else like this? Or is it some sort of rare disease I’ve been afflicted with? Honestly, if a figure of authority put a crate of Stella Artois, a 50-inch telly with a Doctor Who boxset and an expertly-prepared steak dinner in front of me before introducing me to his exquisite-looking, virginal daughters Sandy, Susie and Jane and told me I had to finish the beer, watch the boxset, and deflower his offspring by 9 o’clock on Friday morning, I’d bitch, cry and complain about it for three days before swallowing the last cold, soggy chip and finishing a round of my own brand of highly disappointing sex at approximately 8:58. I’d get a D overall for the assignment, but I wouldn’t care: the nightmare would be over.

Something else stopping me from doing any writing like this has been the bloody bastard word it’s always associated with: blogging. Can’t stand that word. For a long time I thought it was a slang term for some sort of dirty bowel movement – simultaneous diarrhea and vomiting for example. Go on, say it out loud: “Steve’s just in the bathroom, blogging. It stinks.” Works, doesn’t it? But my real dislike of blogging stems from what may simply be my own personal insecurity. Why, I thought to myself, would anybody give a hoot about my opinions on the trivial matters of the day? Especially given that the readership would likely be limited to my own friends, who’d a) have already heard my opinions on the trivial matters of the day, and b) would take great pleasure in taking the piss out of my opinions on the trivial matters of the day. It hasn’t been helped that 90% of the blogs I’ve skimmed have, at some point, featured the phrase “I’m a Marmite person, you either love me or hate me.” Well, I hate Marmite, so my own personal policy with these people is just to simply assume I’ll hate them as well and save everybody’s time. And I’ll tell you what, it hasn’t failed me yet.