This is the 100th post to this blog. It is not my 100th blog / article as I was writing (or should I say ranting) about cricket and rugby on another blog and for another website. This blog had its genesis in two things: my purchase of an iPad and a trip to New Zealand. What came from a mobile travel blog has morphed into a blog about anything and everything I feel like writing about.
I have tried in writing this blog to, on the one hand, write about issues that bother me both from my life and also in sport whilst also, at times, seeking to be irreverent. I have been overjoyed by the fact that there are people out there who enjoy reading what I write and I will concede to being disheartened at times when a blog I have spent hours on researching and writing is read by one person (and that may have been me).
I get asked a lot: “why bother writing, you are busy enough as it is?”. My regular reply, and the truth, is that I love the writing. Actually that does not give justice to why I write: I love the process of getting the written word on the “page” and massaging it into a form that is readable. In a previous life I wrote legal opinions for a living and with that part of my life gone writing this blog has gone some way to fill that void. Now I get to write about what I want, when I want, in a form that means that anyone with an internet connection can read. The fact that people from 32 countries have read this blog has made me deeply proud.
The help and feedback I have received along the way from some wonderful people can not be discounted. Three people deserve special mention for helping (or trying) to polish the rough edges in my writing and giving me a forum coupled with this blog to write: Irene Watt (@pinkrugby), Jeremy Irvine (@Jeremy_Irvine) and Kate Stone (@oskythespy) you know how I feel about the help you have given me so all I will say, again, is, thank you.
Finally, before the festive season I was thinking about shutting down this blog. The daily grind of work coupled with a dwindling readership led me to thinking it had run its course. I have been reenergised over the Christmas / New Year period by the writing I have done, both here and in private, and will again be “strapping in” for another year of rants, sport and frivolity.
Thank you for reading.
Stephen