I am still intrigued by a comment which has filtered back to me from one of my readers. She was confused by the fact that ASBO's blog-voice is at variance with her perception of the writer's knockabout, everyday persona. I can see what she means. But I can't help feeling that that is how personality, or rather personalities, actually work. I think it was Hume who said that, in subjecting himself to objective scrutiny, he could find nothing constant or fixed in himself. If we had what it took to really see ourselves, I am sure that is what we would all find - that we are not one. But of course we don't. In fact we spend much of the time seeking to bolster our more or less contrived self-images, choosing to ignore often glaring inconsistencies. We must all of us, surely, have some inkling of how we become different people depending on who we're with. It's not really even hypocrisy or affectation, in that the spontaneous change in the chameleon mask is involuntary. As a linguist, I am very conscious, for example, of how my inner "shape" changes subtly, depending on the language I'm speaking. Buddhism enjoins us to acknowledge and accept this constant state of flux in ourselves, and, in so doing, free ourselves from the illusion of the personality. I would be very interested to hear of readers' practical experiments in this field.

Of course, people have preconceived notions as to how a blog should sound - easy, modern, happening, throwaway, spontaneous, casual, whatever...The fact is that ASBO's diary is a blog in name only. What it is, in truth, is an exercise in creative writing carried out at the expense of the "readership". It's something between a travelogue and an eighteenth century novel written in blog form. Tristram Shandy meets Patrick Leigh Fermor in cyberspace - sort of. The existence of my (largely notional, I imagine) readership serves as a discipline. It makes me write even if I can't be bothered and makes me try to write "well". Which means, for me at least, language which I like to think is ever so slightly raised above the repetitions, hesitations and diversions of daily usage. In "East Coker", T.S. Eliot writes of writing as...

...a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In a general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion...

I do not pretend to be Eliot, but I certainly share the desire to tidy, organise, interpret and structure the raw material of experience, to elevate it above mere random chronology. If I sound pompous or stilted, it is because I can do no better. Perhaps, dear reader, you will be able to forgive me, knowing that my intention is good.

Thank you for reading.