Thoughts Upon Blogs

You may have noticed that my list of scrumptious people and places on the internet has grown lately. I have developed a new system, where each month I have a folder in my favourites, and in go any blogs that I stumble across, and if I have looked at them frequently over the month, I add them to my blog, otherwise I delete them and let them slip away.

I have posted before about how I find it slightly worrying that I discover my most favourite blogs by luck or coincidence, and I feel there must be wonderful amazing blogs out there that I am destined not to find. I feel like that about books as well though, and think it is part of being human, so I try not to worry too much.

Something that does worry me though, is where do people go? There must be thousands of blogs started and abandoned after a post or two, but I have found numerous well established blogs that have just been abandoned, like the Marie Celeste. Take this blog http://sunshineandroses-rockinloubylou.blogspot.com/ fifteen months of lovely posts and photographs, and then....nothing. Did she know when she wrote her last post that it would be the last? Did she start a new blog? What happened to make her just...stop? I worry...not in a staying-awake-late-at-night kind of way, just in a quiet, momentary way. I suppose the thing with blogs is that we just see that little snippet of a persons life. A little bit of ivory, as Jane Austen would say.

But on to less sombre thoughts. Something that made me smile today is that whilst the internet is a huge vast web, it is also so small and lovely. An early blog I discovered was Vintage Pleasure. I have been reading her for several years now. A very recent discovery, made during a google search is A Thrifty Mrs. Imagine my surprise when I read on a recent post that they are friends!

Likewise, there are some blogs that often crop up on bloglists, such as Brocante Home and Yarnstorm. It is lovely to see them as they are the 'classics' for me. But then time to time I will discover a new little blog, and then discover that they are friends with or read an entirely different blog that I also like.

A complicated and inarticulate way of expressing the pleasure at connections made, and discovering lovely places to visit on the internet. Two things that I would love to see someone invent would be a pair of magic buttons. Button number one would give you a list of blogs who have you in their blogroll, just so you can see who reads you, and where you pop up. More importantly, what I would adore is a magic button that would reverse a blog for me so that I could read it in chronological order. I like to do this with new blog discoveries that I know I am going to like. Of course you can go back through the archives, but I find that sometimes you go to the first month, scroll to the bottom, and then realise they posted enough times that month to make several pages, so you have to go back further and it all gets a bit messy and complicated. I have asked my lovely husband to invent me a magic button, but I know he is very busy with work...so if any of you know of such a thing, do share please!

Something else that came to mind, was the Mass Observation Project http://www.massobs.org.uk/index.htm. I have been reading Nella Last's War, which was published after her death, and are her diaries that she kept during World War II as part of a mass observation project to record the daily life of everyday people. I can really imagine it translating into a blog, if she were alive now. She writes (I nearly typed posts!) about her cooking and housekeeping and crafts and day trips...all the kind of things you find on blogs now. I wonder too, if we are, without really realising it, writing social history as we blog?

Enough musings for now...I have got a blog or two to go and read the archives on! Oh, but before I go, do go over to www.brocantehome.net and look at the lovely redesign Alison has given it.

Love
Mimi
xxx