My autobiography - not really

As most of my friends and many of my acquaintances will know, I am an inveterate story teller. Sometimes those stories have a point - most of the preceding entries do - and sometimes they do not. Occasionally someone says "You ought to write your autobiography". I admit, I have occasionally thought about it, and concluded that my life is not biography material.

I enjoy reading the biographies or autobiographies of others; I particularly enjoy those of actors - Peter O'Toole and Sir Alec Guinness are favourites - and chefs - Rick Stein and Keith Floyd. Published biographies have one thing in common that is missing from my life - there is a plot line. My life consists of a series of anecdotes which can be read in more or less any order without losing meaning.

I have concluded that a blog is probably the best way of publishing my stories, and avoids me having to confront the possibility that nobody would want to read my autobiography anyway.

Some of my stories are about my experiences when carrying out management consulting projects. In deference to my clients, I will not mention them by name.

POSTSCRIPT

Living near Oxford we have easy access to the Ashmolean Museum and the Bodleian Library, both of which have regular exhibitions which we try to visit. A few months ago the Bodleian held an exibition of papers gifted to the Library by John Le Carre; it gave many insights into how he wrote and, as is often the case, there was an accompanying book, which I bought. I discovered that not all autobiographies are chronologically organised; some authors prefer to organise by theme. This was a welcome insight and will influence my future writing. I'm afraid I still can't promise an autobiography but I will have a lot of fun writing.