Soooo…. you know how it is. People have been banging on at you for years to start a blog, or a website, but it keeps sinking to the sludgy, guilt ridden bottom of your ‘to do’ list (somewhere just above ‘write novel’). But you think, ‘well, I’m busy, actually writing plays and TV shows and directing things and playing online scrabble’ so frankly you should be proud of yourself for having better things to do. Then, as chance would have it, you are temporarily incapacitated by a spot of cancer, and frankly you’re not feeling up to much what with all the pills and radiation and shit (the latter being the most painful).

The thing about cancer is that it involves many things – fear, stress, hilarity, love, camaraderie, loss of dignity, more loss of dignity and lots of sitting around feeling generally a bit crap and somewhat disinclined to do any real work.  You’re not doing very well at this being ill malarkey, and keep wandering off to the local Co-op where you nearly nearly keel over at the checkout into the basket of cut price malt loaf.  And then when you get home your wife of just nine months tells you off for over doing it, as does your sister, and it’s only when you tell your somewhat wonderful niece about your frustrations that she texts you and says: ‘What you need, Uncle Martin, is a PROJECT. Why don’t you start a blog?’

So for want of a good reason not to, now seemed to be the ideal time.

The blogging guides recommend that you set out a kind of manifesto in your first blog, something to aim for.

Well… I like a good rant (as any of my Facebook friends will testify), but I also like to analyse and interrogate the world around me; culture, politics and other assorted collisions with life.   I travel a lot, so occasionally I’ll do a bit of travel writing…. And then there’s the day job.  Hopefully I can find some vaguely original things to say about writing, directing and miscellaneous other media tartery.

So let’s see how it goes, and whether the blogging itch persists beyond the dreary indolence of cancer.   Or whether what I write is something you guys are going to want to read, and not just an exercise in solo air trombone.

Oh yes, and ‘Ninja Marmoset’?

That’s probably the other reason I decided finally to dive into the world of bloggery.  I had guessed that my usual online moniker ‘Smartartz’ would doubtless be taken, and so when, a few weeks ago, my old friend, George Dillon, pointed out that Martin Jameson could be rearranged to suggest a cuddly new world monkey with pugilistic tendencies, it did seem to offer a more than appropriate blog-moniker.

Soooooo…

Like I say: ‘You know how it is….’