Birth of a Blog

Dear Friend,

I’d like to take this opportunity to cordially invite you to the christening of Ladma’s first blog. Various things run through your mind when you decide to bring a new blog into the world. Can you support the blog financially? Are you bringing the blog into a loving relationship? But more important than the blog’s health or weight is the blog’s name. There’s no easy way of choosing a blog’s name. It’s not like naming a baby. There’s no book that says “You better not call your child Adolf because people might wrongly (or rightly) assume that he’s a fascist”. You can’t just reminisce about people you’ve known throughout your life and think “I remember Phil, he was a nice guy. I don’t know many other Phils so I think I’ll call my child Phil. And the good thing is I’m not in contact with Phil anymore so he won’t think I’m naming my son after him (even though I am) because that would be weird. Also, Phil doesn’t rhyme with penis, fanny or minge so he shouldn’t be bullied at school.” To apply this logic to the world of blogging would be farcical. Only a fool would do so. We’d be left with a blog called ‘Ladma’s Phil’ which would be shit.

But we didn’t call it ‘Ladma’s Phil’. Instead we called it ‘Thoughts of a Ladma’. To reach this stage we first asked ourselves one simple question: who are we? Ladma came the reply so out came the suggestions:

The Curious Incident of the Ladma in the Night
Harry Ladma and the Philosopher’s Stone
The Good, the Bad and the Ladma
Treasure Ladma
The Guinness Book of Ladma
Ladmas Aren’t the Only Fruit….

These all seemed like weak suggestions. And so we asked ourselves the second question: what are we doing? We’re writing down our thoughts. We’re chronicling our opinions. We’re logging our ideas. So what would it be? The Diaries of Anne Ladma? Very nice, but none of us are called Anne. The Tale of Two Ladmas? Nice literary reference but there are three of us. If only Dickens could have been more forward thinking! Ladma’s Daily Log? Well, I’m not sure we could keep our logs that regular…even if we do eat more roughage. And so we came careering and skidding to crash at the door of Thoughts of a Ladma. Thoughts because we will be logging our thoughts and ‘of a Ladma’ because it will be written by one of the Ladma team– be that Chris, Pete or Dan.

God knows what form the blog will take. He also knows how often it will be updated. So if that’s what you’re interested in why not ask him at god@hotmail.com? All he’s told us is that these entries might be funny, they might be us venting our spleen, or it might be us letting you know in a bit more detail what the hell is going on with our petty little lives. Hopefully there’ll be a new entry every couple of days, but don’t hold your breath.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to return to the newborn baby analogy. Like a new born baby, a new blog is finding its way in the world. Both often smell of excrement and both take a while to find their feet. After all, they’ve both just spent 9 months incubating in a lady’s womb. Some grow up to be Harold Shipman, and some grow up to be Mother Teresa. Who knows what this blog will grow up to become? I hope you’ll join us along the way. At least that way you’ll be partly responsible if the blog ends up killing 300 old women in Manchester.

Anyway, thus draweth to an end the first Ladma blog. It consists almost entirely of an account of the naming process. One can only wonder at what the blog may have contained had we immediately stumbled upon ‘Thoughts of a Ladma’. Perhaps we would’ve gone on to discuss how we designed this colour scheme or decided upon our description. But that, my friend, is for another time. I hope you’ll return in the future to join us on what promises to be a prolonged and agonising journey.

Please, why don’t you join us, please.

Dan