From The Journal, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Published March28 2008

BLOGS are like landmines: once launched into cyberspace they can crashland and blow your legs off long after you have forgotten their existence.
Unlike a sturdy, old-fashioned newspaper column, which silently yellows to dust in the attic or wraps potato peelings and disintegrates at the bottom of a compost heap, blogs never go away.
Once launched, a blog eternally orbits its inventor, awaiting an opportunity to inflict vengeful embarrassment or injury. Like children, they remain for ever the creator’s responsibility, coming home to roost at the least opportune moment.
That has, dear reader, been my unfortunate experience in recent days. A producer from BBC World Service was the first person to alert me.
“By the way,” she said sniffily after phoning to trap me into a radio debate on obesity (why me?). “I had a squint at your blog site and there are some out-of-date messages you might want to acknowledge.”
Typically, I had forgotten the years-old blog I set up to carry my thoughts to the four corners of an eagerly waiting world, only to be abandoned as fast as a New Year’s resolution.
Indeed, I would have ignored the BBC Lady’s sniffy reminder had not Young Neil called to tell me that Jock the Cock, our rooster rampant, had attacked Wee Emily the Egg Collector and that we owed her a new pair of leggings.
“Oh aye,” he scoffed, “and Emily’s granny has been Googling you on the internet and she says there’s an angry reply on your blog from an upset reader!”
So I checked my blog. What I found was the blogger’s equivalent of the message in a bottle: scraps of thoughts that had been bobbing about the airwaves, forever unseen by their intended recipient.
The first, marked “Urgent!” was more than a year old: “Hello there David,” it began, “I’m trying to get hold of you urgently to see if you would talk on GMTV tomorrow morning (Jan 8, 2007) about the press interest surrounding Kate Middleton. Please give me a call asap . . .”
The second was posted last December by a London neighbour to whom I haven’t spoken in thirty years: “Just heard you again on Radio 4’s The Message. Always want to make contact, but usually hesitate. Would love to swap news about Gemma, your children and ours – Eslyn”
Finally I arrived at the “angry reader” who had contributed what turned out to be a remarkably civil rebuttal of something I had written some weeks ago in a Journal column celebrating the life of the north Northumberland estate owner Jane Lyell.
Mr Wyndham Rogers-Coltman of Ancroft had Googled up my blog site and left a message which I believe, in fairness, deserves a wider audience:
“Jane Lyell” he wrote, “was, as you say, a remarkable lady and I am sorry you never met her. I first met her in 1950 when she was a ravishing beauty and set my 18-year-old knees a-wobbling.
“But there is one area of her life which you got unfortunately wrong. Her marriage to Toby Lyell was not an unhappy one. Their twelve-year marriage before a tragic riding accident left her under 24-hour care for over 28 years was very happy. [For the next] 23 years . . . Toby lived with and cared for her throughout this terrible time. If he strayed from the straight and narrow path of fidelity, as he did, it is surely not for us to sit in judgement. Jane never did.”
Two lessons we should learn from these delayed exchanges. First, there are at least two sides to every story; everyone’s ‘truth’ comes from a different perspective.
Second, and perhaps more important, never put your faith in www.banksysblog.co.uk . . . it’s about as reliable as a shipwrecked mariner’s message in a bottle!

 BLOGGER’S FOOTNOTE: As you can see from the above, I am trying to mend my ways . . . from now on my every printed utterance - plus some that only hit the spike - will appear here. Promise.