…all right, not to me, but to Glad All Over, which has reached the stately age of four today. My birthday, in case you were wondering, is in August, and I like jewels, boots, detective stories, flowers and kitchen implements. If you can’t wait till August, I believe it’s nearly Valentine’s Day.

Glad All Over sort of started off as a blog about football, but now it’s more or less a blog about nothing, or if you prefer, a blog about everything (except theatre, because I write about that elsewhere, occasionally). I try to write impassioned, well-argued pieces on language and design and travel and food and music, but the posts which get the highest traffic are invariably about baby baboons or a swimming pool I’ve never been to. I’m not sure how I should feel about the fact that, in general, the fewer words a post has, the more views it gets. Perhaps I am more of a visual person.

As it happens, 2011 saw Glad All Over’s highest ever traffic, and 2012 has gotten off to a belter of a start, so thank you ever so much for reading, and if there’s anything in particular you would like me to write about, do please let me know. I will write about everything except for rugby, about which the only thing I can tell you is that it’s a highly technical game played by warriors (© the beloved).