Venus and Mars

I tried to get some people at my company interested in blogging a while ago. A great way to give information to our customers on product availability, information about "known issues" (i.e. shoddy products that don't work properly), compatibility (ditto), carefully selected case studies etc.

One of the great ironies about working for a technology-based company is that you'll find more technophobes per square metre than on the Clapham Omnibus. Simon, who is the person I know who has the most in-depth and extensive knowledge of computers, is also the person I know who hates them the most. There's a clue for you, if you care to think about it.

Anyway, the short version is that nobody got involved, so the whole company blog thing never took off. And it's one more thing I'm associated with that sullies my good name.

But it's not the end of the world. And nor is the fact that The Observer Blog, that bold mainstream newspaper experiment with blogging, is to be mothballed. The Guardian still has a fair share of blogs, but none of them are quite as much fun, nor give quite as much insight, as The Observer one did.

But, you know, the Beatles may have split up, but we can still have Wings.

I'm not a great newspaper reader. I don't like the black finger thing, and I don't really have the time. I used to buy the Guardian religiously, but then realised I could buy the Radio Times and get the telly listings for the whole week. Sunday newspapers are a different beast. Much as I'd love that "New York Sunday Morning" kind of lifestyle, where you crawl from bed, grab the paper, make a bacon sarnie and a cuppa, and sit in bed reading the newspaper looking fabulous in your Boden pyjamas, I've never had it. My youngest wakes at the crack of dawn, regardless of the day of the week. And she wants her Weetabix and her CBeebies, and after that, well, I've got the album to finish.

That said, we'll sometimes walk round my sister's on a Sunday afternoon, and I'll read her paper, if she has one. Or one that's a week old, if it's all she has.

In fact, I'm more interested in the newspaper production process than I am in the newspaper content. It's like being more interested in cooking food than in eating it; or, to ride another hobby horse, wanting to know more about how a record is produced than about the personal life of the artist concerned. I'll happily read those long articles in Sound on Sound about how some crappy Sting record was recorded - though I'd never in a million years buy the album.

So I enjoyed the Observer Blog, and I'll miss it, and the generally cheery discussions that went on there; there were hardly any flame wars, and only the occasional, "Share a biscuit with an Ethiopian Child," which is pretty unusual for something so public, with such a large organisation behind it. But, just as most of the best Beatles songs, post 1966, came from Paul McCartney, most of what made the Observer Blog so enjoyable was down to the person who did most of the work: Rafael Behr.

So we'll still have Wings, is what I'm saying, and we've got C-Moon and Silly Love Songs to look forward to, and Mull of Kintyre 8 weeks at number one.