What is the purpose of a blog? What is its subject? What is the difference between a blog and a diary? What makes an effective blog? What happens to a blog in the end? These are all questions I’ve asked myself from time to time and I can only refer to one of the most famous of blogs, although, in fact, it was written over fifty years before on-line blogs appeared. I refer to Anne Frank’s diary (which I am re-reading in the full version) written in ‘the secret chamber’ during those terrible years in the last world conflict when the Nazis occupied Holland and before the secret of that chamber was revealed by as yet unknown betrayers with its occupants marched off to the concentration camp.  Anne’s diary, which she addresses to an imaginary (but true) friend named ‘Kitty’, was at first meant to be a private account of a thirteen year old girl’s opinions and feelings about the straightened environment she was forced to spend her adolescent years in. However, when there was an appeal by the Allied forces for documents, diaries and letters from those living in axis-occupied countries Anne decided to turn her private diary into one to be read by all and began to re-write earlier entries so as to engage a wider audience transforming it into one of the first blogs.

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I was thinking about my own private thoughts on the matter and, in particular about my own family, perhaps the most important socio-cultural factor in moulding us into what we are now (or think we are…).

Families come together in important life-events such as births, deaths and marriages. They also celebrate members’ achievements like graduation day or the receiving of awards. I realised that in the case of my family these events did not quite manage to get us together. Clearly I was present at my own christening at Lewisham’s Roman Catholic Saint Saviour’s Church and undoubtedly my parents were there too!

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My godmother must have also been there. Her name was Helen and she was also a Roman Catholic in a family which on my father’s side had lapsed from that religion. I have written an account of her (in Italian) at https://longoio3.com/2019/07/19/la-madrina-ritrovata/

One of a godmother’s duties is to see that the child she is protecting is brought up within the family’s religious practices. My father never converted to Roman Catholicism although he dutifully attended Mass, at least in the early years of his marriage, and was aware that there would have been an obligation to have me brought up in the Romish persuasion.

Catechism was inflicted upon me at age seven when I found myself in Milan with my Italian grandparents when our new London home had not yet been completed and when the rest of my family were lodged in a couple of rooms in my English grandparents’ house.

Suor Giuseppina oversaw my religious education at the nearby Salesian college and I was duly confirmed and received my First Communion there from the city’s bishop who would later be elected as Pope Paul VI.  

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However, neither my parents were present at the ceremony. Of course, this was before the time of cheap flights, even before air travel became common between European countries, and the usual means of travel between London and Milan was a thirty hour train journey from Victoria station to the Dover ferry and from Calais across northern France and Switzerland (no compulsory changing trains in Paris in those days…). Of course, my parents were both working hard, my father for the Prudential insurance company and my mother for St Ebba’s and West Park mental hospitals but perhaps they might have been able to attend. Strangely I do not remember being saddened by their absence at this important milestone in my spiritual development. In time I became a lapsed Catholic like so many others.

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The catechistical indoctrination wore off and going to Mass no longer became a family affair since neither of my parents would accompany me to the local Catholic Church dedicated to Saint William of York.  My religious meanderings during my adolescent years are too tedious to recount here and, if today, I was asked to state what my religious beliefs were I would say that I still don’t really know!

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Entering a public school from an L.C.C. primary thanks to the ‘Dulwich experiment’ was a great springboard for the place eventually offered to me by Oxbridge. Graduation day would have been a fine occasion for my parents to have been present at the university’s senate house but, regrettably, they couldn’t attend and instead sent my younger brother to witness my B.A.  (Hons) conferral. I repaid the fraternal compliment by attending my brother’s (first) wedding at the same Forest Hill church. This was a more difficult undertaking than it seems since I had to find my way out of a remote Himalayan valley to get to SE23. My sudden unannounced appearance was meant to be a kind of wedding present. My father, however, did not take it all that well as he felt I had stolen some fire from the occasion. I did not attend my brother’s second wedding but that was for another reason.

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Although my wife’s parents attended our own wedding at Caxton Hall my parents did not. It was a romantic, almost secretive wedding; my wife’s family knew about it but I deferred the news of the ceremony from my parents until the day before, my mother being at first against the marriage although she relented somewhat later on. However, at least my brother and his first wife were present at our wedding lunch at San Lorenzo’s, Beauchamp place.

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The conferral of a second degree, this time an MSc from City of London University, similarly did not have my parents present and neither my brother.

Not having had any children ourselves removed the possibility of family not turning up for the christening. Or would they?

Which brings me onto the final part of the great trilogy of life: births, marriages and deaths? But this part would require a whole separate section to itself. Or should I even talk about it?