22 March 2021

A year ago, I started a little project. At the time, we had a little thing starting to become a big thing in our lives. It had become an issue in the lives of everyone in the world, in fact.

I didn’t know at the time whether I would be spending long days, weeks and months confined to my house. I could hear and feel the tension around me as others pondered how much this virus was going to impact their lives, and the lives of their loved ones.

So I started writing. I set the tone from the very beginning by calling it literary diarrhoea. It was never intended as an insightful, intelligent or even accurate blog detailing how our lives are being impacted. It was only ever going to be literary fluff. One that is projected with speed and frequency, hence the diarrhoea terminology.

In the last year, there have been a lot of things happen. We’ve had a death in our family, we have had illnesses and injuries, we have had excitement, we have had boredom, we have had celebrations. There have been lockdowns, there has been intense fixation on masks and toilet paper. It’s all been spewed out in these daily blogs without a lot of thought involved.

If I have written something in a way you aren’t happy about, I do apologise. Obviously, though, it’s all your fault anyway, because you know me well enough to know that this was likely to happen, and should have taken the opportunity to murder me years ago. You missed your window and only have yourselves to blame.

I would take this opportunity to acknowledge my two main sources of inspiration for these things – my husband and my dog. My husband has mentioned on quite a number of occasions about how he feels he has been over represented. Not misrepresented. He knows me well enough to know that he shouldn’t open that can of worms.

The dog has never complained about being the topic of a lot of my musings. She knows that I am one of the most important people in her life, ranking higher than pretty much everyone apart from the people at the coffee shop who give her treats.

I decided, once the writing had gone on for over a hundred episodes, that I’d attempt to make it last for a year. This has been problematic for my mother and mother-in-law, who receive printed copies. They have both been swamped by paperwork over the last year, and I suspect they’d be happy to call it quits so they can complete their life size papier-mâché replicas of the Taj Mahal.

I am personally taking credit for the newspaper article attached to this – apparently, with all the ‘stuff’ that’s been happening in the world, we have all been far more focussed with the correct spelling of the word ‘diarrhoea’. Whether this is because of my writings (as I will claim until my dying day), or merely people trying to find a purpose for their hundreds of saved toilet rolls, we will never know.

I have, as some of you will have noticed from the different format, decided to take the blog out of the social media site that it grew from. Doing it via a website opens it up to a broader range of readers, and keeps my social media outings a little bit more private.

If this is the last you will read of my literary diarrhoea, it’s been a joy to have you along the journey with me. Thank you.

If you’d care to keep reading, I will attempt to post a link on my social media accounts whenever an episode appears on the web page. Otherwise you could save the website and sit down and have a read when you have a few months spare. New episodes may not appear daily, but I suspect it is a habit I will not find it easy to break.

What I have very much enjoyed from the social media hosting of HLD have been the comments – when people have become involved in the discussion of the day. I’m hoping that this will continue on the web page because your interactions have literally made my day.

Obviously the accountants and scrutineers will tell you 364 blogs don’t add up to a year. It was because I was busy with my side gig of being Santa, and had to take Christmas Day off. I swear that’s as true as most of the stuff I’ve written here.