'Nothing will come of it,' said Humpty. I mentioned I had started a blog. 'There weren't such things in my day,' he said. 'We had very fast carrier pigeons, and a mail packet could be out of Falmouth and into Bordeaux before you could say Jack Robinson.'
I mused. Of course Humpty had something. He usually has. A sceptical frame of mind is often a help, especially when, say, a double-glazing salesman rings the front door bell. Actually from time to time a Jehovah's Witness team of two calls on me. They're nice people and I find myself drawn into a conversation. Sometimes we talk about Car SOS. The JWs read the Bible and that makes conversation easy, even if there is no prospect of agreement. Despite having a Mormon temple in the town, I can't remember the last time I opened the door to two presentable young Americans canvassing on behalf of the Latter-day Saints. I ask them if they know my friends in Boulder, Colorado. Not a chance.
But enough of that. I intended to talk about my blog and its prospects. Could it be that the only people who look at it will be a handful of my old mates and a similar handful of those who, like me, belong to a parish church and join the on-line worshippers on a Sunday morning? Yes, indeed. That's how it could be.
But it could be something altogether different. Older readers may remember how it was when radar came into being. Defence chiefs in the UK were beavering away to improve an existing system of acoustic echoes. Robert Watson-Watt was thinking upon very different lines. He asked the fundamental question of how to identify aircraft miles out over the sea. He came up with radio echoes. The outcome was radio detection and ranging, radar for short. R.W-W. was knighted for his efforts.
So for me the fundamental question is how to increase the spread of the blog. And I have to say it largely depends on present readers. It's a matter of getting through to them. My two sons and I go about this via the vicars. That means we work away at a top-down approach. A really significant breakthrough can occur only if my present readers pass on the details of a new blog to friends. That means a new habit. Forget the lock-down. Forget the slow-down. Instead think in terms of accelerating transmission rather than slowing it. We're talking about faith, not disease. Spread is what the chain icon on the website is for. And for spread there is also that key-pad in your pocket or handbag or on your desk. It can be a way to win new readers. It can spread the blog. The digital can massively trump the postal. (And it might be possible to get a notice in the church news-sheet.)
Humpty nodded. He was on his way to the post office to buy stamps.
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