Last night I caught the back end of Russell Howard’s BBC show ‘Good News’ where after some quite amusing attempts at humor, he introduced viewers of his show to Post Pals. After watching a short film he showed at the end of the show, I thought that as well as posting something to one of the children on the site, I’d also write a ‘We Like’ article about it in the hope that someone reading this might also be compelled to ‘post a smile on a sick child’s face’.

Post Pals is the brainchild of Vikki, who for the past seven years has been bed bound with severe ME. Like so many people with chronic illnesses all her friends lost touch and she became isolated. When she first became bed bound she was sent  many cards which soon became her reason to wake up every day.

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I have a love-hate relationship with blogs. There are several I enjoy – travel blog Going Local is an absolute delight, for example, and James and The Blue Cat is consistently chucklesome – but there are many more that incense me. Like spite-filled celeb rumour mill Perez Hilton, an ever-present reminder of humankind’s inexorable retreat into idiocy. Though it’s the ‘personal diaries’ that have traditionally acquired the majority of my goat.

“Come on”, I thought. “Wake up and smell the narcissism. How can you be so arrogant as to expect total strangers to give a flying fig about the mundane happenings of your mundane life? It’s the 21st century equivalent of popping round the neighbours’ to show off snaps from your latest break in Bognor.”

So when an old friend of mine started her own online diary in 2006, I was predictably blasé. I took a courteous glance but quickly dismissed it. Then, at the end of 2007, events conspired to turn her world upside down. Her blog took on another dimension, reporting every twist and turn of a tumultuous life. Before I knew it I was captivated – and I have been ever since. Over the last 24 months, her blog has changed my opinion of personal diaries forever… Read more…