IS ANYONE READING THIS?

I started this blog as an experiment but also as an alternative to the Facebook page which I tried out for a month but found impossible for anything other than cryptic messages.  I signed up to Facebook on impulse on Christmas Day when I discovered it’s the social networking site of choice for nearly all my godchildren.  There are about a dozen of them, as I also count the siblings of my “real” godchildren, and I have recently become the adopted godfather of three more: an unusual arrangement with which I am absolutely delighted.   

Anyway, Facebook and then this blog were my idea for networking with my godchildren, who were the only people who I told about its existence.  I was therefore amazed – and, frankly, rather pleased — when I got a comment posted on my very first blog from a complete stranger who had come across the blog while surfing the internet for information on New Internationalist magazine, where I last worked more than 20 years ago and which I had mentioned in my first blog.   

The excitement of discovering the stunnning impact of my personal debut in the blogosphere has led to a deep fascination with the statistics that WordPress offers.  I am happy to share with you the fact that my “Best Day Ever” was Wednesday, January 16, 2008 when my blog had 24 views.  I have no idea who these people are – unless my godchildren have become fascinated with my life. And what WordPress doesn’t tell me is whether it was just one person visiting 24 times.  Anyway, yesterday there were 10 visits and the day before that two.  So far today there has been one. Such are the precarious fortunes of a novice blogger.

New Year, New York, New Blog

My job — or at least one of them — is as a film producer.  But I used to be a journalist, many years ago, on a magazine called The New Internationalist. And these days one of my regular New Year’s resolutions is to do more writing: I use the internet a lot in my work and so I have decided to start blogging.  I am well aware that cyberspace is already weighed down by a multitude of unread blogs. But nonetheless I am going to do it and see what happens.  I also plan to take photographs for my blog.  

Tomorrow I fly from London to New York to begin preparations on a new film with writer/director Sally Potter for whom I have been producing since 1990.