Faff the first

Faffer Extraordinaire

I'm known for my procrastinatory abilities. To some people who know me well, they are the stuff of legend. If I weren't a Caesarian, I'd probably have put off my own birth.  Not only that but I forget. What I'm doing, why I'm doing it, where I'm supposed to be, even recalling which middle name to use (legal requirement or nicer name) isn't simple thanks to my mother's last-minute change of mind between registering my birth and baptising me........... middle age may have slipped to being 70 rather than 50, but either way I'm a senior greying blonde disaster area waiting to forget what happened.

 

So it's taken me an inordinately long time to get around to blogging. Even though social media types tell us we should take to the pixels in every form possible, sharing rather than creating content when it comes to Twitter, sharing and liking when it comes to Facebook, following SEO advice wherever it is available and on and on and on............. I just kept doing other things. Relevant, irrelevant, time-wasting things. Stuff. I was doing one of the things I do best. Faffing.

 

I should interrupt myself at this point and admit, shamefacedly, that I was about to start the next (ie this) paragraph with the word 'So'.  Not content with one 'so' at the beginning of a sentence, I was on the point of using two in quick succession. Like every pundit at the moment. When did that happen? When did it become common custom and practise to begin each and every response with 'So I did... '   or 'So we find' or any other incarnation along those lines?  Why use the superfluous 'so' ?  Seriously?

 

Anyway I've avoided the issue again. Whether there's a substantive subject for this first post I'm not at all clear in my muddled, multiple-thoughts-at-any-one-millisecond mind.  What I do know is that I had a pleasant 'conversation' with some online acquaintances the other day in which I used the word 'faffing'.   Much merriment ensued, with seemingly total agreement among those involved that it is a wonderful word, much underused.  Not by me, though, as self-appointed Faffer Extraordinaire. I faff for England, sometimes, and say so. I question everything (maybe just maybe journalist's training but is that in itself an excuse?)  I double check and triple check and Google so often it's not my friend but pretty much my intimate bedfellow. 

 

On which, Google is probably my worst friend ever, actually. Good fun, a source of endless time-wasting as if I needed one of those.

 

I think the point of this first post, unless I change my mind again before clicking Save - Publish, is simply to say that there's a faff moment in pretty much all of life. Especially life lived in two countries, one of which is Spain.  And it's those moments I'm going to try to Blog/pontificate/burble on about. Not only my own faddling and time-wasting, but the many frustrating things that happen multiple times a week (sometimes many a day) for which there is no logical explanation to one brought up in uber-organised, rule & regulation-obsessed UKplc.  Maybe I'll explore these humorously, maybe in a way only I'll enjoy and it'll prove if not cathartic then at least a way to be loquacious (hopefully rarely if ever garrulous) without boring anyone in my immediate vicinity to death.  Or maybe it'll be the hoped-for mildly amusing five minute read, and others of you who have a tendency to pootle about interminably doing very little will feel comfortingly less alone in the world!