Saturday 7 November 2009

I want to live in Fentonton!

The first blog post, so much pressure … come on man, think …


The Oxford English Dictionary defines blog as …


Gah!


Do-over:


Welcome to Fentonton. I know what you’re thinking, and no, I did not set up this blog while drunk and misspell my own name. “Fenton.blogspot” was taken. I admit I was listening to Ben Folds while I was trying to think of a name, which must have had an influence. If you’re familiar with “Effington”, just swap the words around, hum a few bars, and before you know it it’ll be stuck in your head like a catchy Justin Timberlake track, or tinnitus, whichever you prefer.


Fentonton

Can be a wonderful Fenton place

I can see it from the highway

And I’m wondering

Is there Fenton in their yards

Fenton in their cars

Fenton in the trailers and the back roads and the parking lots

Of Fentonton …


And so on.


So why do I have a blog? Well for one thing, it’s considerably cheaper than setting up a proper website. Also, I can get by without having to learn much HTML, which is fine with me because I’m sure it would be superseded by some new vastly superior programming language about a month after I mastered it.


What makes me think anyone is interested in what I have to say? You’re here, aren’t you? Unless you were trying to get to Fenton.blogspot and you’ve had a few too many ciders. What this blog is not going to be is a brain dump of every random thought which wanders into my head. No, it’s going to be a tightly focused brain dump.


First things first:


I was prompted to set up a blog after joining a book review group called “Booksquawk”. They said, give us a photo and a link to your blog. After two hours of teaching my four-year-old daughter (heretofore referred to as “Kid A”) the principles of SLR photography, lighting, aperture settings, and where the take-the-damn-photo button was, I had my picture. And here’s the blog. It’ll look much better once Kid A finishes that HTML course.


Booksquawk is a book review site whose contributors are all writers. Some of us have even had our books published! Not me. No, I write for the (ahem) love of it. If someone would pay me to do it, however, I would love it so much more. I would love it and care for it and feed it every day, honest. If you’d like to pop over and check the site out, that would be just super. If my HTML tags above failed to work, it’s at "www.booksquawk.blogspot.com"


That’s enough from me, at least until I have something interesting to post. Interesting to me, anyway.


I want to live

In Fentonton!

I want to die

There too!


Folds, if you read this, feel free to put Fentonton on your next album. Or at least play it next time you’re in London.