KEY POINTS:
I've never read a blog and this is my first attempt at writing one.
I don't text and I don't drive a computer. Call me a cyber-bimbo if you will, but I love a pen and a blank sheet of paper.
I love to write a sentence, look at it, weigh up its relevance, smile at its brilliance, frown at its awkwardness. Every week I write a newspaper column and am on radio, television or speaking at meetings.
The job of a Mayor is to continually communicate. So why am I too conservative to change? Even Granny Herald is blogging and Fairfax spent millions on Trade Me.
Radicals are supposed to embrace change. Perhaps I've been spoilt by having a private secretary? Perhaps I've been terrified by speaking to fellow Mayors who are rushing home early from a function to answer their 200 daily emails? I can hardly keep up with my snail mail.
As well as that I'm trying to write my autobiography - a sequel to 'Bullshit and Jellybeans'. The Shotbolts were a Saxon tribe invited to Britain as mercenaries to fight off the Vikings after the Romans left in 400AD. The problem with mercenaries is that once the battle is over, they refuse to return home, and this was the case of the Shotbolts, so named because they were crossbowmen.
Thankfully my great, great, great grandfather changed our family name to Shadbolt. The schoolboy tradition of name-calling would have caused me a lot of grief. I'll keep you in touch with the book as it progresses.
