I don't blog. Besides not being much of a writer I have so many other things to do that I doubt I could find the time to write something each day. As it is I can't find the time to read most of the really cool blogs I have come across. Not having a fast connection it takes time, not to mention money, to reach out across bitspace and read each of the interesting blogs, journals and news pages that I would like to keep track of.

That is why I like, and sometimes think I am addicted to , mailing lists. With a mailing list the data comes to me. I can read it whenever I wish. If I don't have time today, it will still be there in my mailbox tomorrow. I can choose to read posts in detail, just scan through them or even delete threads en masse if their topic does not interest me.

Most of the mailing lists I subscribe to are technical. Only two are not. Firstly there is Armytalk, a group of old and serving soldiers, bolstered by journalists and military writers and topped up with a sprinkling of those who have no military experience other than an interest. Secondly there is Daveworld.

I often feel that I am out of place in DW. So many members are intellectuals, able to write copiously on subjects that I have only the scantest knowledge of. They talk of movies they have seen and books they have read. Ones considered art that I would not even contemplate viewing or reading. Sometimes I finish reading something or watching a movie and think that I might post to DW about it but don't, because it is not what many would consider art. I like to project an image of not caring what others think of me but somehow this is not true in DW. I care very much about the way other DWers see me and find myself witholding things that others might see as trivial and not worthy of discussion. Sometimes I go through agonies, when, having posted something I think will prove interesting, there are no responses. Sometimes I even worry that there is a parallel DW in which my posts are trivialised and ridiculed when I see no responses. My conscious mind scoffs at this but the subconscious remains unsure. This is the reason that I rarely start new threads. I prefer to read what everyone else has to say and give some input when I have it.

For all this, I love DW. It is the only contact I have with such a diverse group of people, with so much experience and knowledge of the world. Although I sit here at the tip of Africa and have not met any of you I like to think of you as friends.

I look at the DW of today and think back to the days when we might have a hundred or more posts in a day and there would be many concurrent threads running. Other the past few weeks there have been very few posts and it seems that DW is, if not dying, just slowly fading away.

Some say this is due to the fact that DWers now write in their blogs instead. I hear that Beau is to marry. "Yes", somebody says, he told us in his blog. I see this as evidence of the decay of the DW family. In times gone by such information would have been trumpeted on DW and discussed at length. Now it is hard to tell whether Beau is even a subscriber any more.

I miss the DW of days gone by and hope it doesn't die.