… people ask. Not as a prelude to anything in particular, and not because they woke up that morning with the question burning on their tongues, but most usually in an off-hand, vaguely curious kind of way. A sort of hiccup between silences. Why blog?

Initially, because a friend who knows me well and has done for a long time suggested I mark my 70th birthday by starting something different, something new, something that would harness a few at least of my many and varied interests. And I suppose I responded positively because whereas nowadays I am quick to castigate anyone who wastes precious time reading the many columnists who litter our newspapers and magazines [with the more than honorable exception of Deborah Orr and, just occasionally, Gordon Jack] I would confess to writing, back in my Goldsmiths’ days a column for the college’s weekly newspaper, filled, I imagine, with the usual opinionated diatribes and slanderous waffle. Called, unless my memory yet again deceives me, In a Mellotone. So, there you are, I had some form. And once started, I found I liked what I was doing. On days when I was writing nothing, shall we say, professionally, it gave me something to do with my fingers and the keyboard – and, more importantly, I began to realise whenever I’d gone to a concert, a movie or an exhibition that I was likely to want to write about it, the effect was that I concentrated more on whatever I was listening to or seeing; some part of my brain was asking, How would you describe this then?, while another part was scrabbling for answers. In other words, the possibility of writing about it enhanced my experience, made me more conscious, more aware, made me think – if only a little.

This all came to mind when I was leafing back through Geoff Dyer’s book Zona, about Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, before slotting it finally on the shelf, and found this passage that I’d underlined. [Actually, that's not strictly true – what I'd done was mark the page with one of those natty little transparent sticky strips with different coloured ends you can buy in Muji.]

Besides, of mankind were put on earth to create works of art, then other people were put on earth to comment on those works, to say what they think of them. Not to judge objectively or critically assess these works but to articulate their feelings about them with as much precision as possible, without seeking to disguise the vagaries of their nature, their lapses of taste and the contingency of their own experiences, even if those feelings are of confusion, uncertainty, or – in this case – undiminished wonder.

So that’s what I’m doing then, trying to articulate my feelings about this and that – and occasionally, the other. When I began I made an informal arrangement with myself that after 1000 posts I would stop – and this is 1001 – I guess I’m going to carry on a while longer yet.