Blogging for the curious

Although I'm a new blogger, I've been reading other people's blogs for a year and a bit. I found the first one through browsing Friends Reunited. Someone I was at school with said in her FR message that she had a blog, and gave a link to it. So, being a deeply inquisitive person - or what I like to think of someone very interested in people - I naturally read it. Then I clicked on the "Next Blog" bit at the top of the page, and landed on Paulz Blog.

Paul is an 82-year-old chap living in California, and I was immediately taken with his off-beat sense of humour. I didn't know how to comment - I'm not very technological, hence the necessity for Daughter 1 to hover nearby to help me set this blog up. But he had an email address, so I wrote to him. And he replied, and I replied, and now we have a frequent correspondence which we both enjoy. We did both wonder for a while if the other were a 19-year-old after our money (not that I have any money) but have long decided that neither of us is.

And then I became quite a frequent blog-reader, but still lurking rather than commenting because I didn't know what all this URL business meant. Being a teacher, I'd naturally rather do anything than get on with my marking; messing around on the computer is much more fun.

One day I wondered if there were any bloggers of around my age and of my occupation, so idly Googled "Middle-aged English teacher". Result! I eagerly read it. It said something like, "That last sentence sounded like something a middle-aged English teacher would write. I'd rather stab myself in the foot and bleed to death than make that mistake again." Not quite what I was looking for; but I read the rest. Yelen is a 19-year-old law student in Singapore and she writes like a dream. She's funny and very frank in her online journal and again I wrote to her, being too thick to know how to comment. I thought it would amuse her to know how I found her. And it did. And we now correspond from time to time.

And it's so interesting! I would never have known Paul or Yelen - our lives would never have crossed in any way if it hadn't been for blogs. I've learned lots about America and about Singapore and what 82- and 19-year-olds in those places might think. I'll get Daughter 1 to add links to their blogs sometime soon, in case anyone ever stumbles across this.

I would like to point out that I do have some actual friends too... .

Meanwhile I must go and do some marking.