The story is entitled after the last lines of Keats’ poem Ode to a Grecian Urn. They sum up nicely an attitude that existed before we all became so infuriatingly post-modern.

You can read Beauty is Truth here and there are also some notes on the story.

Anyway, where was I? Yes, that’s right. Inevitability. (It was probably inevitable that I would meander aimlessly away from the point in the first paragraph but that, dear reader, is another story) It was with some inevitability that after creating a site for my writing I would add to it with the seemingly mandatory blog. Is there anyone’s homepage that doesn’t have one? And, once that inevitable step had been taken and the blog was created it became apparent that I should write something in it. This is, of course, no challenge in the sense of conventional blogging about things but it seems to me that the first post (as opposed to the somewhat less merry last post) should be somewhat an introduction, a cheery hullo and welcome, as it were; a beginning.

What to put in this beginning post remains somewhat a challenge. It’s apparent that the word welcome should appear somewhere, which it has and probably will once more before I close, but beyond that what does one say? I could cover the basic biographical facts but if it isn’t already written in my about section then I probably didn’t want to say it in the first place; I could perhaps venture to tell you what will be in the blog but there are only so many ways you can say the words ‘random gubbins’ before they get tiresome. I did have a long standing tradition in internet ‘about me’ forms to go off on a tangent that started with the word narcissism and ended with a talking horse. It’s possible, however, that the rights holders to Mister Ed would prefer that I didn’t. See? Clearly it’s questionable whether I should ever be left alone with a keyboard, let alone allowed to publish books.

So here we are then, my first entry in this nice shiny new weblog. Greetings, salutations, a hearty welcome and whatever else one is supposed to offer on such occasions. I’ll try to stay on topic, next time. (Okay, that’s a lie.)