Well, as Eccles almost said, “Everything’s gotta start somewhere,” and my blog starts here. Or, at least, it would be starting here if Little Cat weren’t trying her very best to help me – which, of course, involves her trampling over the keyboard and generally getting in the way. Incidentally, I’m trying to persuade her to learn how to pose as the cat from the Cabaret du Chat Noir, but she’s not really taking the hint. But I digress.
A new blog, much like a new story, seems to fill one with trepidation. Will there be enough material in my life, enough ideas in my brain, enough wilfulness in my lower left leg to set out regular blog posts before my readership? Will there be a readership? Will I realise in time and with regret that a blog, like a dog, is not just for Christmas? Will I take it out for walkies even when it’s raining? Will I remember to buy the biscuits it really loves? Will I ever start making sense for long enough for the blog not to stop making sense?
I have begun this project thanks to the work of my good friend Abi (my fingers automatically typed that as my book friend Abi, which is incidentally very true), whose blog So This Is School has greatly impressed me. She offered me a guest post which I accepted with trepidation – no, you’ve used that once, Finn – apprehension, perhaps; that is, until I began to write it and discovered I was having the most tremendous fun. I thought, “I know! I’ll start one of my own!”. Famous last words…
So what, then to write about? My life is, as I have intimated in the subtitle to this selfsame blog, a singularly sedate affair. I don’t have adventures – at least, not in the flesh (my mind has been known to perform terrifying acrobatics on high cliff edges, but that’s not the stuff of blogs either). I don’t have children, who seem to be a source of continual amusement to many parents of my acquaintance, and Big Cat and Little Cat tend to spend all their days lying under the bed, under the armchair, under the sofa or, on occasion, under each other (a tessellation worthy of A.K. Dewdney (like M.C. Escher, only less famous)) and as such do not often afford great amusement. What, then, can I write about?
The answer is simple, and comes in the form of the old adage oft quoted to writers: Write about what you know. I know a lot about several things: music is one, though for some reason I never feel qualified to talk about music, which is slightly absurd. Writing is another; not the process of being published, though I am learning more every day, but the process of producing fiction, and non-fiction, is quite familiar to me. Cats, I know about but don’t intend to blog about; as a student of Mesopotamia I always like to distance myself from anything to do with Ancient Egypt. But I do know about Mesopotamia and, oddly, the 1920s – I’m writing a series of novels set during the 20s/30s, and as such have picked up a mass of random knowledge which I am always keen to share. Incidentally my blog title, outskirtsofthetwenties, can refer both to the 1920s (see above explanation) or the 2020s, that is, BCE – the reign of Ibbi-Sin, last king of the Ur III dynasty and my Specialist Subject (I’ve started, so I’ll finish). So I intend to write about one, some, or all of those, though possibly not all at once.
So, having piffled on for a good six hundred words, I shall open my blog. I have drowned out my original intention, to post a link to my guest post on So This Is School, in half a century of witter, but I’ll link it anyway. Farewell, and happy hunting!
Outskirts of the Twenties 
