Onward and Upward must be the cry

It's a quote from Wainwright I think, about Scafell Pike. It has always appealed to me, that line.

Stung by the premature announcements of the end of blogging, generally because Iain Dale has packed it in, I got to thinking about the longevity of the medium. Dale seems to prefer Twitter and, let's be honest, he is no intellectual, he's a chatterer. Whereas I reserve judgement about my cognitive credentials, I know that I am not a chatterer. Chattering was made for Twitter and Facebook. I do neither. I am a thinker and reflector. I always wanted to do posts which were a bit less ephemeral; at least posts which people can refer to in the future, ones that don't just evince a knee-jerk rant on the issues of the day.
If anything has changed with the departure of high level bloggers such as Iain Dale and Tom Harris, it is that they have moved on to a medium that suits their intellects.
Roger Scruton, that cerebral right-of-centre academic, really did not get the blog. He made some fascinating attempts and now appears to have given up.

But it is not all about considered monographs on the influence of Dante in the Work of T.S Eliot. To survive the blog needs new blood and energy and really, variety. This is why I have invited some of my regular readers to submit items. They are going to be published over the next week or two and range from recipes to ideas to anecdotes. This blog always has been a scattershot blog and it is not going to change.

So here, below, are the first and second contributions to be published. The first is from regular commenter and friend, Jim Baxter, who likes to hide his literary light under a bushel. It's time to come out of the bushel, Jim. The second is from a recent addition to the comments section, although I gather he has read the blog for some time: Brian. His first one is a recipe and I thought it best to publish it asap since it will give you time to get the ingredients. Thanks to both. They are published as is without editing by me, so please address your comments/writs to the author. I feel privileged that people have done this and hope it will encourage others to submit articles.