The difference between this and those family round robins

This is written for the benefit of my dad Brian, whether he reads it and follows any of my suggestions or not! Sometime during my childhood, the concept of the Christmas time family round robin emerged, and one of our favourite family past-times was to watch the chestnuts roasting on the proverbial open fire and take the piss out of these monstrosities of corporate family marketing. You know the sort: this year dear little Fulanito (I use the Mexican Spanish for an unknown person no 1) got an A starred in Astrognome'onics at XCollege while Sutanito (unknown person no 2) once again won BankY's top prize for gnomesecurities sales, and our dear Menganito is still hard at work unscrambling the human egnome with his colleagues at ZUniversity etc... all shown with Macleans advert smiles in the family photo enclosed. In later years the photo was scanned onto the letter.

Well, I have to admit, my motive is to provoke Dad into learning how to write a comment on my blog: you press the button "Post a comment" (below this very blog) and follow the instructions from there.

The point of this post is to say this: my blog is NOT a progression of that nauseous brand of marketing. Unlike the round robins, it is thrust on nobody. Log in to this blog at your own peril. There is probably a high bollox (bloglocks?) content, and possibly the odd wry smile too, but I make absolutely no promises over quality, accuracy or grammar innit? If you really are interested you can get email updates - this is the meaning of the little orange RSS feed icon at the end of the post. If you choose to subscribe you will be notified of any other follow up comments on what is written here. By the way, this applies to other family members and friends too, but I'll deal with you in turn.

Oh by the way 4-1 Charlton v. Coventry wasn't bad Dad. I also notice that the Addicks still have at least a couple of (non-Faroes Islands) internationals left in the team, which must bode well for promotion to the Premiership next season. Perhaps on the strength of that small piece of publicity you'd start your first post from the Blogmaker's Arms (Dad lives at the Blockmaker's Arms and that was his joke not mine) with a link to my blog, or alternatively you could forward your friends, like fellow Addicks Brian and Shirley and Ian, a link to to my blog. Or alternatively when they next ask after me over a post-match pint, you can give them the URL of my Blog:

alexattewell.blogspot.com

That way you, Brian, Shirley and Ian can spend more time talking about post-season transfers and the post-operative state of fitness of Darren Ambrose, or whether it is worthwhile going to see Chris Powell's testimonial. Will Derek Hales be playing, is that the question on your lips at the moment?

Anyway Dad, these are just a few thoughts on internet reciprocal and relationship marketing, which is funnily enough what I spent my MBA doing.

P.S. In case anyone might think my Dad is "into" marketing by adding in his friends, commenting etc, I would like to add that Dad very much liked the character of the grandfather in the film "Little Miss Sunshine" (though not of course the personal habits). So don't be shy Dad, get stuck into this Blog thing, owoit?