Blush

So. I don’t want a blog, I told her, at the time she was starting one, because . . . Oh, lots of reasons. Probably all the usual ones, but mainly because it’s – isn’t it? – a form of masturbation, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, if it becomes regular, a habit – daily, for god’s sake, isn’t that what these things are? – it loses something, maybe its whole point. Diminishing returns. It becomes something like washing the dishes and I’ve got enough of those things in my days already.

Other main reason being that I doubt I’m suited to this. I tend to stand back, let others talk. Except sometimes, and then I hear myself and am frankly disgusted. This goes back: I remember not putting up my hand in class even though I knew the answer because people would look at me and I’d blush.

Now, many many years later, I’m all in favour of blushing, a wonderful thing. Nothing to be ashamed of at all. It’s a lovely word too: blush (the 'sh' doesn't end, goes on, just as you blush more the more you are aware that you're blushing). As is, though not as good, shame. (For maybe a year I’ve had the ghost of a detective story of sorts hovering at the back of my head, about an amateur criminal, a beginner. Who commits some very minor, almost incidental crime – not even that: a faux pas, a peccadillo – and then, because of the shame he, or she, would feel at being found out, almost unwittingly commits a much more major crime to cover up the first one. I’m guessing that this may be how a lot of crimes enter the world.)

I’m going through an odd phase of being shameless.