Did a blogging course

I was doing a blogging course. Why would I be nervous- it is supposed to be fun. But it involves finding a room in a unfamiliar building, not believing it will have wheelchair access and a disabled toilet, despite checking with the coordinators in the lead up to the day. A woman with two white yappy dogs discovers me looking for the entrance. She has been sent to check I find my way in, up a ramp and to point out the toilet that is normally locked and unavailable. So far so good. We will be in the FutureSphere with thousands of dollars worth of Apple Macs, their screens fingerprint-stained by teenagers. Contrary to its name the building is not futuristic. No lift. Drab beige seventies brick work. Concrete stairs. The Apples with their massive monitors are the only sign of the future. And then there will be the scary other students. What will they be like? Young groovers, ears lobes made large with spacers? And the tutor? A black belt web master? Perhaps I don’t know as much as everyone else. Perhaps their blogs will be superior and I will be shown to be a fraud – a writer who is masquerading as a blogger with a site that lacks cohesion and purpose. Asked what my site is about I can hardly answer the question. For what is more than writing? The blog is a place to go and tap about on the keyboard and send self out into the ethernet. I don’t understand how it gets out of my computer and into someone else’s. It is a form of magic or wizardry. Something both medieval and sci-fi at the same time. Like a cauldron, my Apple, the wicked soup the words. A chookhouse is a home for hens, so concrete and real. So yesteryear. It is dirty and organic, smelly and full of squabbling birds. It is earthy and uncomplicated. It is what it is. And yet I have called my blog this- so the blog is about what this word conjures to me. A homely comfortable place. Maybe I can make the web my chookhouse. The other students turned out to be the same as me; no spacers, some like me blissfully unaware of what SEO or RSS even stands for. They want readers too.We are in search of the real and the tangible connection with other bloggers, but we use this virtual, whimsical medium that few of us really comprehend. We could just as well tap it out on a typewriter of old and post it in your real life mail box or sing it in an alley way, waiting for eye contact, for an outreached hand.