The lights are on, and somebody's home...

WELCOME to the new place! Can you smell the fresh paint? I know eggshell finish stinks for a while, but it's harder wearing than your usual emulsion, and it has a touch of classical elegance to it, don't you think? It's a memory of times past, of stately homes and school corridors, redecorated over the summer holidays, waiting to be filled with the clamour of fresh-faced pupils, scrubbed clean by their parents and sporting razor sharp creases in their regulation grey trousers.

Tomorrow is my 50th birthday. What started sometime in February 1958, possibly even with the words, 'Oh, go on then, if you're quick', has now managed a half century on the planet. So, to commemorate the occasion, I am starting this blog. It's my first venture into web publishing, so please be gentle with me.

Becoming fifty has made me aware of two things: that I'm realistic enough to know that no-one will have the slightest interest in anything I've got to say, and that I'm curmudgeonly enough to say them anyway and hang the consequences. I've also realised that 50 years is plenty of time to accumulate a vast array of things I don't understand, or don't like, or make me laugh in public at inappropriate moments. And, I suppose, that's what I feel like sharing with what will surely become, given time, a readership numbering just slightly less than one.

I'm guessing it will be a mixed bag, so if you do happen to stumble upon this by mistake, please feel free to have a look around, and check back from time to time - you may find something to amuse or annoy you!

In the meantime, though, I have a birthday celebration to go to.