Chapter 29. Wednesday 10th December 2025. Bridlington East Yorkshire. End of term Blog Report. Oh dear
Two reports, best one first.
Lambo has gone to see his dad, he does look knackered, after 1,363 Zone minutes last week and 16,000 steps on a jolly (expenses paid) in London. He is down to 92kg and BMI 28%. He still has to manage his replaced hip joint (not that joint silly) as easily stiffens up and I told him to take the day off as his fitness report says, 'Good keep it up', my editors report not so good as you will hear.
I am sat in bed, 1052am with a ever present feeling of guilt that I should be doing something more productive than writing. I then remind myself that Lambo and I have a story to tell and this is the only way. We have a mantra, ‘I am the left eye, you are the right, it would be madness to fight, we come as one’. The words come from a song by the band Faithless; seen them twice, first time amazing, in the mosh pit at O2, high on MDMA. The second time is for later. Where was I? Oh yes.
I received my end of term, Lad from Featherstone blog, report today from my former editor. Elaine, whom (or who, not sure) I used when writing for the Sherborne Times magazine. I wrote Folk Tales, the life story of local characters in 650 words, give or take 50. I generally wrote 700+ and then sent them to Elaine to work her magic. It was fun and only stopped due to my late wife Sheila’s worsening health.
Colin Lambert Blog Report
Overall
I thought the subjects chosen were interesting. Your style is obviously very chatty and you have a good, consistent ‘voice’ which carries through the blogs. Your readers know it is ‘you’ (I once read a series of books in which one had very clearly been ghost-written; it was so obvious to those who felt they ‘knew’ the writer and his way of writing). It’s also nice to be ‘introduced’ to members of your family who appear regularly – it makes it feel like we are getting to know you personally.
The construction is good. You invariably have an introduction, the story, and an end point (and I have read many things which didn’t!). There were one or two places where I felt you had gone off the plot in the middle by introducing something that (to me) didn’t feel necessary. This links to my comment below about length – if you don’t set yourself a word-length, there is always the tendency to over-write and include stuff that is/may appear to be superfluous to the story.
Do you have a target audience in mind? You obviously have fairly high-level language skills and therefore write English to a high standard and so I would imagine your blogs would appeal to an educated, possibly more middle-class audience, rather than having mass appeal. Believe me when I say I most definitely do not have a problem with writing to a high standard (!), but if you were intending them for ‘the masses’ then you may need to think about making the English slightly more accessible.
Objective
All of the blogs contain at least one, and most several, of the following linguistic errors:
Punctuation
Spelling
Syntax
Superfluous words
There are also occasions where the English could be improved slightly for better dramatic effect, and there appear to be occasional errors in formatting.
Subjective
Length – I felt several were over-long for a blog. I’ve looked on the internet and the ‘ideal’ length for a blog is obviously still up for discussion! Some sites recommend 500-800, some say up to 2000. I feel that 2000 is getting on more towards a short story than a blog! Yours range from 495 to 1942 (excluding titles) so you practically cover all the suggested lengths! Notwithstanding suggested lengths, I would say that 1000 words would be all I wanted to read – for me, if someone couldn’t get their point over in that length, they should reconsider how they’re making it.
Phrasing – there were times when I felt you over-used the phrases “That’s for later” and “As you do”. Perhaps you might consider limiting these to one of each in each blog, max of two. Repetition can work quite successfully sometimes, and having a couple of phrases that you use in each blog could work as ‘your style’, i.e. readers would come to expect them, but over-use should (IMHO) be avoided.
I like the way you end with “And the point I am making is…”, Have a good (whatever), Signature. My suggestion would be that they should always be written/formatted the same so that the way in which you end also becomes part of ‘your’ style. I note you changed the signature from Colin to Lambo part-way through and I am assuming you will keep this name now; alternating between the two might risk losing the identity of the writer in some folks’ eyes.
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