So why Mad Dogs and Englishwomen?

This whole blog thing is a new venture, so please bear with me...

Where to start? Well, the name of the blog first of all I suppose.  You know the saying "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun"? Well if you didn't, you do now.

Anyway, the mid-day sun out here in Italy is something you try not to go out into much, particularly during the Summer, but being English I sometimes do... so not being a mad dog (as far as I am aware at least) that means a slight re-write of the saying...

Result: a blog with the title "Mad Dogs and Englishwomen".

The idea of madness and creativeness seems to go hand in hand for me lately. I mean, I must be mad to start up a series of creative writing projects when all I seem to do anyway is sit in front of the PC and type.... although that is work so perhaps does not count. Then again, I have been messing about with creative writing projects of one sort or another ever since I was a teenager, so maybe the idea of this blog was not such a strange one after all.

To be perfectly honest, I don't even really have a plan for what to write here. I have never been the sort of person who keeps a diary (that was my sister's thing, not mine). Perhaps if I had it might have made interesting reading, who knows? This will not be a diary anyway, because I know myself too well, and am depressingly well aware that I will never be able to keep up the kind of concentrated writing effort that is required for a proper, "tell-things-as-they-happen" sort of a diary.  My style is rather more on the line of jottings, with no particular rhyme or reason.  A kind of verbal sketch-pad, impressions, views, people, colours, sights..... but like a real sketch-pad they will be drawn by me, so will not necessarily be good likenesses, or even likenesses at all.

So.... we have a start.... the first page of the sketch-pad has a few squiggles and lines drawn on it.  We must now turn the page to see if there is anything worth looking at on the other side....