Because Heaven Knows, If There's One Thing the World Really Needs Right Now, It’s Another Enormously Self-Indulgent Blog…

Welcome.

So. What possible justification could there possibly be for the publication of yet another goddamned weblog? Latest figures show that of the 100,000 new blogs created every thirty seconds or so, most of them don’t get beyond the initial post, and of those that do, only one in two and a half million is actually worth reading.

So there’d better be a darned good reason for this one. Well, I like to think there is.

What I’d like to say is that through confessing my myriad humiliations and measly triumphs – as I intend to do – I can help others who share my afflictions.

I’d love to say that. But it isn’t true. If that happens along the way, then that’s great. A wonderful bonus. But that’s not my prime motivation.

Rather I’m writing it all down in the hopefully not altogether vain hope that I can, as a result, find myself someone to love. It’s as simple and, I have to say, as pathetic, and, I have to say, as crucially important, as that. So yes, this whole exercise is as much of a device, as much of an attempt to find love as speed dating, placing a personal ad or volunteering at a college of the blind. More of which later. The only difference is, I can do this in my underpants, and I can stop whenever I want, without anyone having a go at me or poking me with sticks and tossing strawberries at me. More of which later.

So this blog was for quite a while, in my imagination, called Bag of Elbows. And I expect you, my imaginary reader, are just dying to know why. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because those are the words that followed me through my entire school life, from the first week when the nickname was coined by Gary Turnbull – who frankly speaking was no oil painting himself, but then that’s often how it is with bullies; they know that if they aren’t dishing it out, they’ll be on the receiving end – the shits – to the last day when I walked out of the examination hall with the word ‘elbow’ chalked onto my blazer-back.

Titles I also considered were: ‘Sex and the Ugly Man’, but that would have been somewhat misleading, at least in part – i.e. the ‘sex’ part; ‘Confessions of an Ugly Man’, which I think sets quite the wrong tone; ‘A Life Less Loved’, which I decided was too self-pitiful; and 'Plight of the Munter’, which I like, but frankly, rather condescendingly, considered a little obscure.

So I decided on Bag of Elbows. Then at the last minute, I changed my mind. (Billie Piper was partly responsible for this. I was wondering – extremely conceitedly – who would play me if my humble blog was televised. I decided it could really be anyone, but that they would have to wear an awful lot of make-up.)

Anyhow, here it is, and if this doesn’t end at least some of the heartache, then at the very least, it’ll provide a place for me to track my progress, as I attempt to turn my solitary, sedentary life into something more lived. And something more loved.

So, enough of the prevarication. Let’s get on with it. Let the seduction commence!