Fireworks And Champus: It’s The Blog’s First Birthday

After a procrastination phase of about three years, this blog burst into existence one year ago today. It required a severe dose of bullying midwifing by a blog addict friend (you know who you are!) brandishing an immovable deadline, which happened to be 23 September 2012.

The blog was meant to provide a ‘creative’ counterbalance to my work life. Most of you will probably know that I write food industry related articles for a living. Just a couple of weeks ago, I made editor’s pick on globalmeatnews.com. I can tell you’re all quaking in awe. Yes, ladies and gents, every wanna-be butcher on the planet has a piece of mine stuck to the inside of his locker.

A blog, I thought, would give me an outlet to write about things other than food. As it turns out, I blog a lot about food. You just can’t sideline an obsession. Some people don’t like food. I’ve encountered two such mutants in my lifetime (probably more, but I didn’t know that about them). I’m sorry, but if this applies to you, we can’t ever be friends. If you have aberrant culinary preferences that don’t coincide with mine, well, I’m willing to talk about it. Not promising anything, though.

As a virgin blogger, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. And one thing I didn’t see coming was that I’d enjoy taking photos. In the past, I’d never even been remotely interested in squinting into a gadget, but seeing that I find blogs totally devoid of pictures a bit dull, there was no way round it. At the very least, an image breaks up the text nicely, it gives the mind a brief moment of respite before tackling the next paragraph. Not wanting to filch all my images off the interwebs, I bought a cheap digital camera.

It was a reluctant purchase, but I knew all would be well as soon as the package arrived. My new toy had been sent to me, coincidentally, by a company in Bavaria, not far from my place of birth. Whoever packed it, had tossed a handful of chocolate sweeties into the box. I was delighted. These people knew my soul! At the risk of sounding sexist, I think the addition of chocolate should be standard procedure for every technical utensil dispatched to a female customer. Especially if the item is battery operated.

Anyway, photos were meant to illustrate and lighten up the text, nothing more. If you’ve been following my blog for longer than a day, you’ll have realised that the photos have totally taken over. Now it’s the words that accompany the photos, rather than the other way around.

There’s some seriously brill photo blogs out there, run by people with technique, filters, tripods and zoom lenses capable of making out mating microbes on Pluto. This isn’t one of these blogs. This is the home of fuzzy, grainy, wobbly and out-of-focus, interspersed with passable flukes.

Trolls were something I was a bit concerned about initially. So far, not a single one has reared its snaggletoothed maws. What popped up instead were a bunch of amusing, clever, interesting people. (By ‘interesting’ I mean just deranged enough to make me feel close to normal.)

So, I guess I might as well stick around for a wee while longer. Thanks for all your views, likes and commentary. Do keep it coming 🙂

I was fibbin’ about the champs & firecrackers, but I can stretch to a round of celebratory cup cakes from Toledo’s poshest patisserie