Come out, come out, wherever you are!

OK, OK, I'm cheating because this post is appearing a few (ahem) hours late, but I've been meaning to do this anyway and I'm not waiting a year for the next one.

When I first started this blog I didn't much anticipate anyone else would read it. It was just our scrap-book/journal of Hayley's first pregnancy for our nearest and dearest. More recently I've used Sitemeter to show me where "Life Begins..." readers reside in the world. (OK, it's a bit hit and miss. I work for a French company so it looks like I go to Paris every lunchtime to check in.)

So... I'd love to know who my readers are and I'd love to hear from my regular (and irregular) commenters.

If you need a reason to bother, tell me another blog I should be reading. Or the greatest food known to man. Come on now, don't be shy, you know you want to. (And don't let the fact it's no longer Jan 10th put you off! I'm making it a de-lurking week.)

Lurkers

When I created this blog it was with a very clear audience in mind: me.

More precisely I had in mind me, Hayley and our future child. I pictured the three of us in about 20 years time when I start struggling to remember which drawer my socks are in, let alone what I felt about the variety of buggies available back in 2005.

But I also realized there might be a further interested audience: friends near and far who would like to read what we've been up to and respond via email, letter and telephone. I've been delighted to find that that audience not only exists but responds too. I really appreciate that.

But of course, as this is the world wide web, there is a further constituency of the audience: lurkers!

This is the unseen, unheard audience of an uncertain size that exists in cyber-space. It's a motley crew who find themselves on our patch for diverse reasons. They've stumbled across us by chance or perhaps were washed up on our shore courtesy of a shared interest and a search engine.

For some perhaps this blog is a brief distraction. For others maybe even a form of entertainment. I know I regularly re-visit certain blogs. They interest me. They entertain me. They give me a window into the lives of people I will probably never know. I may not even bother to send a single comment on what they write. But after a few months I feel I start to know them.

Of course, I don't.

Watching a soap opera character on TV, you may start to feel you know them, but they are a facade. And you certainly don't know the actor behind the facade, whose life is rich in reality in a way that his fictional persona will never be. And so it is with blogs and bloggers.

Don't get me wrong, everything in this blog is true. But it's a 2-D sketch of a 3-D life. There's no substitute for interaction. I can say more in person than I ever can in a blog.

So if you want the real picture (and the real dirt), it's good to talk.