…and when you spot a navel, what do you do? Why, contemplate it, of course, especially if it’s yours.

Bernice and I are now just entering the home stretch of Shuggie Bain, which I know I have referred to previously here. We are 372 pages into the book (over 85% of the way through) and, let me tell you, up to this point, the comment of the reviewer in the Telegraph (India) suggests to us that she was reading and reviewing a different book entirely. She writes of ‘…the exhilarating experience of reading this…novel’.

It is certainly a beautifully written book, but the rawness of the emotion and the ‘grind of poverty and the suck and drag of addiction’ make it a very tough read. Very far from exhilarating. Indeed, inhilarating, one might say. I’m hanging in there, but I suspect if Bernice were reading this by herself she would have given it up 100 pages ago, and asked me to finish it and tell her what happens.

I remarked a couple of days ago to Bernice that I could not imagine sharing with an agent, then a publisher’s readers, let alone a broad reading public, a manuscript that so clearly draws on, and so honestly examines, this particular lived experience of the author. I have always been a fairly private person, with Bernice my only confidante for the last half-century…and there are things I don’t even tell her. (But don’t tell her that!)

It then struck me that this blog business has, using some mysterious alchemy, seduced me into revealing far more of myself than would ever have been the case otherwise. This manifests itself in various ways.

David 1.0 would have sworn Bernice and Micha’el to secrecy over the fiasco of getting our rental car stuck in the ditch – What happens in Penamacor stays in Penamacor, as we swingers say! David 2.0, on the other hand, can even laugh when a niece leaves outside our house, as an eloquent tribute, a copy of Duck in the Truck, a children’s book that centres on efforts to free duck’s truck after it gets stuck, one day, in the muck.

David 1.0, on the rare occasion when he had anything medical to talk about, never shared it beyond closest family. David 2.0 – and this may partly be because familiarity has bred contempt, or at least blaséness (blaseur? blasitude?) – has no such inhibitions, and will, metaphorically, show you his scars at the drop of a hat – or, indeed, a trouser.

So what is it about the medium that encourages this openness, this sharing of concerns and passions, this readiness to expose myself (there’s that flasher again) in ways that, a few years ago, I would have found it hard to imagine?

One answer, I suppose, is that, when I am blogging, I am performing the act of revelation in isolation. I am not sitting in the same room as the people to whom I am baring my soul. I cannot even hear them breathing at the other end of the telephone. Instead, I am simply facing a blank screen that is incapable of doing anything more than reflecting back to me my own words. At the time of composition, the confession is simply thought made manifest to me.

Add to that the fact that changing that screen from a mirror to a conduit requires nothing more than one mouse click on the Publish button. Such ease of transition is seductive, and gives no hint of what the consequences will actually be.

Finally, I am not present (even at the other end of a phone) at the moment when those to whom I am baring my soul actually see my bare soul. If I ever learn of their reaction, it is mediated through time, and, more often than not, through the computer again, reaching me in the form of comments. The entire exchange is distanced, sterilised.

I am also very fortunate in that my entire readership is made up of people who are pre-disposed to me. (If I’m wrong there, please don’t feel a duty to disabuse me. As a precocious schoolboy debater, I once spoke passionately in favour of the motion that ‘This house believes it is better to know that one lives in the darkness than to believe falsely that one lives in the light’. I’m not sure I’d pick the same side now; there’s a lot to be said for the warm comfort of illusion,)

Bloggers with a wider public readership face a potentially more antagonistic readership; mainstream as well as social media commentators run the risk of being humiliated or even cancelled. In two years, the worst that has happened to me is that I have had my knuckles rapped for buying fruit at Rami Levy. My shoulders are narrow, but broad enough to bear that.

I have a friend who writes occasional opinion pieces for the Jerusalem Post, and whose personal blog has been taken up by another online platform. He asked me some time ago whether I fancied trying to follow the same route, to attract a wider readership. It did not take me long to decide that I actually didn’t. I’m not sure my skin is thick enough to hold up under a lashing from people I don’t know. It’s also true that I find the prospect of writing for an anonymous audience daunting.

Whenever I write, I always have one or other of my readers in mind, readers whom I know well and whose reactions I flatter myself that I can imagine fairly accurately. I am not sure how one goes about writing for an unknown readership.

But, if I’m going to be completely honest, I suppose that primarily I write for myself. Writing in general is, I am sure, a very egotistical activity. Writing explicitly about oneself is even more so. When I started this blog, I told myself that I was performing a service for friends and family who wanted to hear about the kids’ and our experiences in Portugal. Fairly soon, some of the output was unconnected to Portugal. Now, probably a good 50% of the pieces are my musings about life in general.

If I stop to think about it, I am astonished that you all find this worth reading. When I discover that a particular one of my friends or family is a regular reader, that is usually even more astonishing. Naturally, I consider myself a witty and erudite commentator, but I find it remarkable that such a broad cross-section of my circle agree at least sufficiently to read the blog regularly.

Reading back over what I have written, I discover that it is even more self-centred than usual. If I get away with this, then I will be even more surprised than usual. In return for your conspiratorial silence if I don’t actually get away with this, I promise to look for a more objective and concrete subject next week. Meanwhile, if you have been, thank you for reading. (There’s a 10-point bonus if you can name the BBC radio presenter I misquoted there.*)

On a different note, Thursday this week (Purim) will be Tao’s third birthday. Here he is planted his almond tree on his first birthday and all dressed up his second birthday. For his third birthday, his other grandparents – his savta and saba – are coming to visit him.

*10 points if you identified John Ebdon. (I dredged up the John, but had to google the Ebdon.)