No Rules

It occurred to me that one of the things I love about blogging is that there are no rules. (It immediately strikes me that I have learned the hard way that there is one cardinal rule - don't allow your work place to be identifiable.) No rules about what, when, how much, in what style, to what purpose you write here. Individual bloggers make their own of course, to suit themselves - create a house style, a theme or series of themes, things they do and don't do. But these can and do change. And as for me, I have made a point of making as few as possible. Then I don't have to apologise for breaking them. I experiment here. Sometimes I play, sometimes I seek attention, sometimes I explore creative possibilities or chat about what I think or feel about things. Sometimes I just show up in the new post box without a plan, and sometimes the result is very exciting, sometimes not. But the blog is mine and I don't have to explain or define, praise or blame its content.

When I was 17 I wore a little badge on my lapel that said there are no rules. It might have been pinned on my jumble sale waistcoat, which I wore over a collarless khaki shirt or a blue and white striped prisoner's shirt, red needle-cord Levi's, and big boots, first hand made crepe soled ones, later Doc Marten's. My hair was cut short and I was already 6 foot tall. Some boys in the school used to laugh at me as a matter of policy, loudly every time they passed me on the stairs, on a corridor, or out in the grounds, and I can tell you now that it hurt. Even though I knew they were the fools, I still felt foolish.

I liked the idea that I didn't have to follow anyone else's rules about my appearance or anything else. The idea, mind you - the many rules we unconsciously follow are hard to spot at any age, especially in your teens. Family rules, social rules, cultural rules. The badge was a kind of statement of intention - to explore life outside the rules, to question the rules, to break the rules and not to care if people laughed.