Wednesday 6 February 2008

Where to go next?

Bored of my own life, empty of beer and fatigued by small people who cuss at me and kick doors, I have been creeping round the blogs out there, or at least the ones that the server in the cupboard under the stairs can manage to flash out to the open window on my desk before an impatient click finger sets about zapping them off into cyberspace.

The ones where I've lingered, I've stayed to peer at them, like an old woman twitching lace curtains, wondering why. Mostly, why he's wearing a hat like that, and haven't I seen her creeping around the comments before, armed with a handbag and an innuendo? Others I've stayed to read a lot, and more, and laughed, and decided that really I should get that blogroll up at the side of the screen, and one day I'll learn, and that would be a proper way of saying thank you, I enjoyed the picture of grandma smashed on liquorice allsorts and baby Flora balancing a racoon on her head at only nine months. And a ferret at eleven.

And I can't help feeling that by comparison this blog is really very, very ordinary. Complaining daily about men who drive lorries or squirrels who kick doors is really very, very tedious. Even to me.

So I have made a list of the directions blogs must go in to hit the super big league. I would like to consider that Grit's Day itself might be a work of such evolution. I may have only about 25 years left.

1. Sex. Oh dear. I am at a disadvantage, since sex does not feature very much in the land of Grit. Hardly ever. Hmmm. OK then, I could spill the beans on quantities, say 500, both sexes and some animals. That sounds admirable. And no-one's ever going to check, so I might just get away with that. Or I could do something along the style of Emin's tent and offer up my mum the night my dad died, and the 29 members of class 3C with whom, in 1974, I went on a trip to a field in the middle of Derbyshire: we all slept in a hut and I was sick.

2. Celebrity. I have fames to narrate. I was once a model. I know it was for Outspan oranges in the middle of the 1980s when the tutting middle classes were boycotting oranges and just about everything else from South Africa, but we celebrities have to start somewhere. I was actually a model for some 12 minutes. I was photographed in silhouette alongside the junior designer pushing a twelve foot orange up Dunstable Downs. I worried about how big my bum might look throughout the experience, but decided I had not quite the clout yet in my modelling career to demand a fitness trainer specially for rears. Sadly, I suspected my modelling career was coming to nought when the junior designer was picked to be the traffic warden's legs. I suspect there was an implicit judgement made against me due to fat in the ankle department.

3. Book deals. Of all and any variety. Blogs to books; books to blogs; newspaper columns; flies on the walls; insider diaries; blockbusters; drivel. I could do well here. I once persuaded an agent to take on some gritty short stories. Within three weeks she collapsed with Crohn's disease and went to live at the door of death. I can only reflect it is in the way of the Grit curse that follows me about and stops me from winning the lottery. Or in fact, ever buying a ticket.

4. Princess Diana, or any other royalty. Sadly, I'm not going to get very far on this one either, never having met anyone remotely royal. Melvyn Bragg does not count. Dig did once pick a fight with the Duke of Edinburgh, but properly that is his story and not mine. I could try to steal it and claim it for my own. But I am not sure it will keep me in comments past the day.

5. Food. There are some excellent recipes out there for chocolate cake don't you think? And noodles, and tofu and potatoes and rice and all sorts. I could get quite hungry just thinking about it. I might make Grit's diary into a sort of food blog. After all, I am a woman who has eaten a piranha fish freshly caught on the Amazon river by dangling a bit of chicken over the side of a dug-out canoe. I know that these days Grit's blog might be in danger of being a diary of how to cook pasta in one way with tomato sauce from a packet or a tin, but it could be the start of a whole new career.

Or I could just go on, making an endless chronicle of the everyday.

9 comments:

HelenHaricot said...

i rather like the endless chronicle of the everyday.

Brad said...

Change one thing and I'll fly over and march up and down the sidewalk in front of the pile with a protest sign.

Unknown said...

Yep, what they said...

I too would like to add a list of other blogs I enjoy but -

a) I never seem to have the time
b) When I do have time, I quite honestly, can't be bothered
c) Reckon that if I do I'm likely to lose all my readership (i.e. my mum, you and...er...my mum) to more articulate, witty and entertaining writers.

Therefore I leave the idea in the pile marked 'nice to have', along with sorting the car insurance, healthy exercise and, at least these days, sex.

Elizabeth (My Reading World) said...

Your format is fantastic--that's why we all come back! Isn't it great that your writing style, though only depicting your daily 'drudgery', makes us chuckle?

Jules said...

I agree. I rarely comment (ever?), but whereas I can happily go without my daily paper - I come here every day.

Grit said...

golly, reading all these kind words put a skip in my step, i can tell you. and reflecting on them i feel a bit overwhelmed and may have a quiet blub. and now i may even post about the skating lesson. how enthused is that?

dragon boy said...

i love your blog, got it on my favourites and visit every day....wondering if that makes me abit sad, seeing as i dont officially 'know' you....? Stumbled across you one day and have been hooked ever since. thank you and please dont change a thing.

Grit said...

you are very kind, dragon boy! most of the people whose blogs i visit i don't know either!

mum said...

Enjoyed your writing Grit, got pointed to your site by Trevor...the things a Mother finds out, is he implying he is having SEX?