Crystal

Stephen Fry once outlined one of the golden rules of newspaper column writing.

He averred that you are allowed to write about writing your column, but only once.

More than once was tantamount to self-indulgence.

I'm sure this is good advice for columnists, and it may even be so for bloggers too.

This, then, is my 'once' - at least for this year.

As the end of the first year of this blog approaches, I am bound to ask myself why I keep writing it, especially of late when other events have precluded me from engaging  fully with the EFL and BESIG communities as I would wish.

And the answer is simple: crystal.

Writing this forces me to crystallise my often attenuated and dispersed lines of thinking, and to corral them into some kind of sense.

It also make crystal clear the topics that have been pre-occupying me during the year.

And finally, it is, like crystal, a solid record of those thoughts.

So there we have it: I promise not to do it again!

(Image: NASA)