Despite Appearances

"Pole up my ass, eh? You seem a little touchy at my suggestion that Friday's list of 'dogs, togs and yogs' was less than vintage HHN. But I apologise: I hadn't realised that the only function of HHN was to make three specific people laugh. I was under the impression that it also involved self-validation, the democratisation of communication in this brave new digital age and giving shelf space to broccoli-obsessed nutjobs. Now that I've been ticked off, I shall, of course, keep my thoughts to myself. "

This from an anonymous commentator after I was complaining yesterday about his previous comments about Friday's post. Am I getting too touchy about comments to househusbandnot? I thought I was just carrying on the conversation. I do genuinely want people to send comments to hhn. So I guess I should be nicer to anyone who does bother to do so. So, sorry. Will try and be less pole up assey myself re comments. (I have taken the comment moderator option off by the way, so at least I am not censoring them anymore.) But I did think the A-Z of blogs was funny. The one about Johnnie Boden made me laugh for about 24 hours. So there's the self-validationing covered - again.

I can't really get out of my confession that I do write hhn to make three people laugh. I was thinking it was a good focus exercise not trying to be something for everyone, and keeping a consistent 'voice'...sorry, just had to get up from the keyboard there to remove (different) pole from (same) ass. And mrs hhn was one of the first people to complain when I was banging on about modern communications, baying from her office across town for more animal stories. (She doesn't think I do, but I do listen to what she says. From "You need to comb your hair before you go out. You will scare people" to "Your blog was boring today", I'm down with what she has to say about me, and my hair, and my blog [even if she is still not talking to me this morning because I wouldn't let her have 'tux' in scrabble last night].)

So, despite appearances, I am trying to be responsive to comments and thoughts on hhn (hence comedy dog photo above), even if they are mostly from mrs hhn and my friend the 'anonymous' commentator from yesterday. (I thought I knew who he was, until who I though he was sent me the above photo saying it wasn't him.) As to reaching wider audiences with hhn, I need to give that some more thought. mrs hhn says I need to be more 'political' because she read somewhere that political blogs are getting the largest audiences. I tried that during the Labour Party conference in the summer. But I just ended up slagging off the Labour front bench for how they looked, rather than about what they said. (Incidentally, I was reading that David Cameron went to a Morrissey gig the other night. How very sad on so many counts. I do find Cameron's I'm Just A Q-Reading Bloke Like You persona really irritating. A musician friend of mine spent some time with him recently. Apparently he knows deeply little about music. And all that wanting to discuss role images in rap music with black rappers. Give it a rest Vanilla D.)

So, the main points of the news this morning:

• househusbandnot apologies to his critics


• househusbandnot in does listen to mrs househusbandnot shocker

and

• David Cameron should stick to what he does care about, which is..er...hmm...well...er...