“To blog or not to blog.” Is that as good an opening as “It was a dark and stormy night”? Probably not. More than likely a thousand others have had the same idea. Anyway, as this is my first attempt at creating a blog I had to start somewhere and, as everyone knows, when it comes to writing, starting is the hardest part, even for an ancient veteran like me. For instance I’ve just started work on a new novel. It shouldn’t be too difficult because it is based on a play I wrote oh years and years ago so the plotline and the characters are all there but in two weeks I’ve managed the magnificent total of 3000 words! If that’s not pathetic I’d like to know what is. I’m writing in my head all the time of course, just not getting around to putting it down on paper, I mean typing it into the computer. Anyway 3000 words from 250000 means there’s a long long way to go. Why 250000? Well I did think it would go to 150000 but my friend, critic, editor and literary agent, one Douglas, who I have to say is good at everything he chooses to do, decided it ought to be a blockbuster so I am going for broke with the longest work I’ve ever written. After all if Miss Mitchell could do it why can’t I? She only wrote one of course whereas by now I think I have written more words than Charles Dickens, at least that is Douglas’s opinion.

Anyway, when he suggested I write a blog, being a complete Luddite as far as modern technology, IT, and the rest of it is concerned I had to admit complete ignorance as to just what a blog might consist of. “It’s just like keeping a diary,” he said. Well I am not a latter day Sam Pepys and I have never kept a diary longer than a day. A short while ago I received an e-mail from California asking me for some information possibly. To put in a biography of Sal Mineo because in 1971 Sal was in London and contracted me to write a treatment for a film based on Robin Maugham’s book The Wrong people. The film never got made (like so many projects that fall by the wayside – cliché cliché) so I went through my day-to-day diaries of the time only to find they were sadly lacking in any worthwhile information. I was obviously never meant to keep a diary because entries consisted of things like “Perf” or “Rehearsal. 10.00” Great! What was I rehearsing? Where was I rehearsing? Obviously I knew at the time which is why I didn’t bother to elucidate, never thinking for a moment that at some future date I might like to know.