Au Revoir, Mes Enfants

Regular readers will know that Blankpaige is often very flaky but what she loses in composure she makes up for in determination. A year ago today, I took my first tentative steps into Blogosphere. It started out as a concerted effort to prove my older, so much smarter sister wrong. She and her husband had one for their notorious dinner parties to which they’d invited their usual collection of interesting people and a boring single man. This latter pathetic appendage was recruited in the vain hope that some wonderful romance would blossom with youngest sibling and bring an end once and for all to her embarrassing state of permanent singularity.

Fortunately for me, the pressure to perform got the better of said gent. Or should I say Dominic’s bottle of 15 year old malt whisky got the better of him. Either way he had to be excused shortly after dessert was served. Being the family clown, Paige of course had to do a funny comic turn about the whole (otherwise) embarrassing situation which got the party started in earnest. We’d a wide ranging discussion on all subjects from our preferred name for Dingle (Dingle) to the most influential person we had ever met. Someone raised the question of “If one thing in your school days had turned out differently, how would it have affected your life?”.

Still flushed from my Perrier-winning comic performance, I suggested with only a hint of irony that had Ms McBride not taken my class for religion, I’d be less racked with guilty and would probably be living in a Parisian loft making a comfortable living as a social diarist with Le Monde and taking an interesting new cabinet minister as a lover every six months. I should point out at this juncture that every outlandish suggestion by the other guests was met with overwhelming approval and plausibility. My modest enough suggestion was in contrast met with disdain by all even Alan, a man I’d never met before that evening. I was disgusted, I can tell you.

But what really got up my nose was my sister’s dismissal of such a possibility on the grounds that I’d never have a discipline to write a diary for long enough to even describe one ministerial affair! I perhaps should be thankful that she didn’t call my voracious romantic appetite or attractiveness to French politicians in question. She casually mentioned the well know fact that I never finish anything that I start. I, it seems, don’t have the staying power to write for more than two days. Red rag, bull and, as I recall, many vodka & red bull’s later, I was rightly incensed. I could write if I wanted, I protested. But perhaps most annoying was that my notorious “unreliability” would prevent any editor from employing me. Such cheek! This coming from a woman who is frequently happy to entrust her new born child’s welfare in the hand for one so flaky. My sister has invited me to another dinner party next Saturday and I’m going to prove her wrong or what?

Over the past year, I’ve discovered that writing does indeed require great discipline but that I am capable of sustaining such an effort. I’ve written 285 posts in 360 days. Some of which I’ve even posted on my blog site. I’ve discovered a myriad of high fangled technology and can with some knowledge discuss statcounters, YouTube and Bebo. But more importantly, I have discovered a wonderful community of brilliant writers who encourage and support you even when you aren’t very good. Your few moments of brilliance are celebrated with Shaggy’s, Blogroll call outs and hyperlinks. It has been a privilege for me to have interacted with such fine individuals. I’d take anyone of you any day over a philandering French junior minister. Alas, I’ve also discovered that the reason I’m not ensconced in a rooftop overlooking the Seine with a naked Gaul has more to do with my lack of talent as a writer than with Ms McBride’s stern delivery of Catholic dogma.

I hope that you will excuse my discontinuing as a blogger. I genuinely don’t feel worthy of the description owing to my lack of original talent and the selfish (childish) reason that I started blogging. I will continue to check out your brilliant posts and wish you all continued success.

Paige