I was a proud man, always had been but times they were a changing. With the election of Gorbachev came Glasnost then Perestroika. The iron curtain was fraying at the seams. For the aging party faithful like myself, the final days of our once proud totalitarian state brought precious little to smile about.

By day I braved the ice-strewn, mountainous seas of the Bering Strait, trawling the depths in search of the slippery and highly elusive cock-fish. The pittance I earned could be tripled in port at Vladivostok or Petropavlovsk with just half a dozen of these sublime creatures of the deep.

And by night, well, by night I played chess with Vladimir – a one-eyed salt-dog who stank of shit and stale tobacco. We drank potato-vodka from a tin, shared a battered corn pipe and told tales of far-away women and loose ports. It wasn’t until the next day amid the haze of a potato-vodka hangover you could see, that we’d realize we should have been talking about loose women and far-away ports. That potato-vodka is some fucked up shit man!

Me: So I’m thinking of giving this whole blogging thing a bit of a go. What do you think?

My Friend: A blog, what the hell for? Haven’t you got like ten web-sites sitting out there silently gathering cyber-dust already? Why not re-vamp one of them?

Me: Because I want to write what I want to write, when I want to write it, I’m slightly aroused by the ease with which I can incorporate WordPress plugins and none of my sites up until now have had a yellow logo……but mainly the writing thing.

My Friend: What are you going to call it?

Me: Astray buffet dot com.

My Friend: Ashtray buffet, you don’t even smoke, that’s just weird!

Me: No, astray buffet.

My Friend: Oh……that’s weird too, and nonsensical!

Me: So what, it rhymes. That’s important right?

My Friend: What are you going to write about?

Me: I dunno, all sorts of stuff.

My Friend: You’re going to get on your soapbox aren’t you?

Me: No!

My Friend: I bet you will. You’re going to rip the piss out of easy targets like late night informercialists, Judge Judy and Eastern European fashionistas.

Me: Easy tiger!

My Friend: You’re going to rant and rave about the fundamental genius in films like The Kentucky Fried Movie and Top Secret, you’re going to rally for the return of Arrested Development and you’re going to call for the culling of a largish percentage of TV chefs.

Me: So?

My Friend: I bet you’ll write a piece a week pretending to be someone else like a Russian oil tanker captain, a Moldovan farmer or a Cuban dissident. You’ll play on national stereotypes, prefix every noun with about eight adjectives and look for cheap laughs using gutter humour.

Me: You going to take a breath?

My Friend: You’re going to incessantly bang on about how crucial coffee is to morning productivity, you’ll wax lyrical about advancements in toothbrush and razor blade technology and you’ll talk with forged authority on far away places that you know no-one else has visited. One day in a fit of desperation after a prolonged bout of writer’s block you’ll share your chicken and mushroom risotto recipe with your oh-so-lucky readership, building it up to be some top-secret ambrosia and not the crunchy white mud it is.

Me: I hate you!

My Friend: You’ll blather on about Formula 1 and Le Tour de France like you know an air intake valve from a 48 tooth sprocket and I’ll put money on you eventually mentioning you wish you: a) could play the guitar b) were a carpenter and c) had perfect teeth. Oh……and I bet there will be some links to your second rate photography somewhere on……are you crying? You are aren’t you, you’re crying! You’re bloody pathetic, you know that! I’m outta here!