"The Whosis Blog"

As you may or may not be aware, Dear Reader, we here at Troubleismyblog have always received our fair share of criticism concerning both the form and content of our work. In the past, these complaints have ranged from the pertinent to the preposterous, the relevant to the irreverent, and most of all the heartfelt to the hollow. As responsible producers, we have always endeavoured to take all suggestions on board, working alongside our readers to deliver better copy; writing that reflects their interests, their concerns, and most of all the sheer lack of time availiable to us to research our subjects thoroughly, or at least to satisfy the minimal legal requirements.

With this freshly in mind, allow us to reproduce -for the benefit of the reader- the most recent example of such correspondance received by us, dated 05/08/06 and originally sent via facimile.

 To Whom it May Concern,
                        Having initially been quite
enthusiastic and receptive towards the style and
foci of your weblog, I now feel as though you have
led your readership up the garden path by failing
to deliver upon your initial aims and intentions.
Your subject matter, for example, fails to engage and all too often bares no relation to the title of
each entry, which themselves are clumsily adapted       titles of pulp crime novels/short stories. How, as
the French might say, "clever". What is more, we   
ask: How interesting can books and bookshops be?
PLEASE WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE, or NOT AT ALL;
have you considered writing a 'human interest'         piece or something concerning social responsibility
? Yes, you have led us up the garden path, and it's     not a nice garden with ladybirds and those             miniature strawberries that are bitter-sweet on the     palate; no, it is a horrid enclosure -dank, dark     and mossy- and the pond at the bottom is full of algae.And bugs, big bugs, just like the ones you include for no apparent reason.

As you might expect, our natural response was to ignore it, bin it, and take out the trash. But we didn't. Instead, we took it out of the garbage pale, made a copy, threw that one away and re-read the original, thus solving the bind we had placed ourselves in. And, as you'll see in forthcoming entries, we've taken it to heart.