Why Don't You Write Me

www.paulcoia.com


What’s a blog for? I used to think it was supposed to be entertaining or informative, but a friend recently keeps telling me that she enjoys reading my “weekly rant”. I wasn’t aware I was doing this as, to me, ranting is what lonely, old, penniless men and women in scruffy clothes do as they sift through dustbins, shouting at a world that doesn’t listen and which goes out of its way to avoid them. A bit like a Daily Express journalist must feel.

So is a blog simply an opportunity to give vent to prejudices? Is it to laugh at the oddities in society, the men who wear hairpieces, women who wear big knickers and friends who wear badly, or is it to look for sympathy? Should it give an insight in to the writer’s life and, if so, am I an arrogant git for thinking people want to read about me? That’s rhetorical by the way.

After ten months of writing I find I have absolutely no idea what the answer is, which is a bit troubling for someone who writes a weekly blog. My life’s no more interesting than yours and my opinions no more valid. I’ve seen the same number of hairpieces and big girls’ knickers as you have though, working around showbusiness, I’ve seen them on the same person and I’m not sharing a dressing room with him again.

Until this week I had never read a blog for fear it might influence my weekly drivelings but I thought I ought to check out what’s out there. I have now seen the most unbelievable writing, some boring and some even less entertaining than that, and I’ve endured the most dreary stuff ever committed to memory chip. As a blogger I feel like I’ve joined a club of social outcasts who stand in the corner at their own parties wondering why no one came. Bloggers are simply weirdos aren’t we?

Talking of slimy repulsive things, I’ve just come across a new blog from a man who is going to inform us each day how many slugs and snails he catches in his garden as he believes this will be a useful guide to climate change. You really have got to feel sympathy for any animal living in the garden of someone who thinks writing about them each day is interesting, and I suspect that after snaring them he’ll buy them a doll’s house and keep the creatures as friends, inviting them to his birthday parties. Of course they’ll set off too late and he’ll still be left in the corner on his own till they arrive four days later.

If a blog really is to commit to record the trivia of our everyday lives, then I’ve failed. I noticed back in December at Schipol airport in Amsterdam that the urinals had little flies painted on them and I thought of reporting the fact here but I dismissed it as trivia. Well, blow me, I now read that these flies have led to a decrease in splashing on the floor by eighty per cent as guys try to hit the flies square in the eye. Top marks to the designer who realised we men just never grow up and no marks to me, unless you count those on the floor.

So, I missed a great story there and now I’m wondering whether I am supposed to write about the tannoy bongs at Geneva airport being the first few notes of How Much Is That Doggy In The Window (which they are) in the hope that a story is soon released saying that the song has been proven to calm terrorists and persuade baggage handlers that stealing from luggage is really not nice. Or do I write about the train between terminals at Zurich airport where, honestly, the noise of yodelling and cowbells is pumped in whilst a busty Heidi lookalike in pigtails blows kisses on screens as we move past? Perhaps cowbells subtly shepherd us to the gates, yodelling eases tension, and Heidi’s huge bust makes us all buy baps in the restaurants.

I think that if you decide to share the trivia of your life then you run the danger of becoming like the Reverend Robert Shields. The American, who has just died, lived in Washington State and left behind ninety one boxes of diary containing thirty seven and a half million words on the trivia of his life over the last thirty five years. He even taped nasal hair to the pages so scientists can analyse his DNA, and only slept for two hours at a time so that he could write down his dreams.

He is fixated on his toilet habits. On Sunday August 13th 1995 he wrote “07.25 – 07.30. I sprayed, and puddle and piddled and widdled”, then at 07.35 “I peed again and took a tablet”. I don’t think he would have been welcomed at Schipol airport.

The Reverend’s attention to detail includes what he wears every day, his grocery lists, what his cat ate, how he shaved, what he read, thought and said, the junk mail he received, his blood pressure and this great bit of social history “09.35 – 09.40. I cleaned the cerumen from both my ears and from both hearing aids.”

And, admirable as it is, I think the diary exposes the weakness of writing about a life. If, like millions out there on blogs, you just share the trivia of your life then it is, how shall I put this, boring as hell! I could tell you, truthfully, that I got back from a three day trip to Austria today and there was nothing unusual about the airport toilets and I landed on time. If I did, I’m sure you’d rather be out in the garden catching slugs.

There’s one plus to blogs though. You’ll never get my nasal hair stuck on your screen.