It could be said I asked for this: to be sitting at my laptop scratching my head wondering why I asked Jon Cuss to provide me with a blogging facility. What the hell is blogging anyway? Apparently something people do, and so I thought I should be doing it too (“Do you always do what other children do?” says my mother. “Some of them play in the traffic and get run down!”).

Jon said I should write something – anything really – just something to get me into the habit. But the habit of what? Of talking bollocks to strangers? (“What have I told you about talking to strangers?” says my mother. “And don’t go accepting sweets either.”)

My mother had a habit of speaking like a character invented by Alan Bennett. Imagine her in a pinafore with her hair done up in a turban and a Woodbine dangling from her mouth. On her feet she wears a pair of bedrooms (as she calls them: the word “slippers” having got lost somewhere in her history). What she is doing wandering into this blog is a mystery: she just turned up, and will likely do so again.

OK, Jon? Is this a long enough exercise? Can I switch off and do something useful.

“I hope this blogging doesn’t mean you’re going to get above yourself,” sniffs my mother.