The silly season has come early to media blogging this season. Jeff Jarvis started it with a picture of a Pukka Pies sign and one of those “aren’t foreigners funny comments”: “Puke a pie? no thanks.”

I suppose we should not expect him to know Britain’s rich heritage of of Indian words. Collins defines pukka as “perfectly done” and derived from the Sanskrit, via Hindi.

Neil McIntosh has provided Jarvis with a full explanation, including the football ritual. In this context the name of the blog, completetosh, may not encourage full confidence among Americans. But, I assure them, he is right.

Jarvis is remaining true to his roots, writing, “Surely one can’t eat a piping-hot gravy-and-grease-filled pie as if it were something truly sensible like a hot dog. I’m betting he’s trying to trap me.”

Now, I am worried about the adulation of Pukka Pies. I am nostalgic about Fleur de Lys steak and kidney pies which were essential sustenance in my early days as a reporter in the Midlands.

Today if you order a pie in a pub it comes with chips and salad. You can’t eat it standing at the bar as you phoned your copy — the landlord would put the phone in front of you before pulling the beer. The last time I was able to order an unadorned pie was in Edinburgh. Can you still order “a pie and a pint” in the Scottish capital?

The king of pies were those from Fleur de Lys, named after the pub where they were first made. The landlord started selling them to other pubs and then opened a factory on the banks of the canal in Warwick. Every piece of meat was cut by hand and no hint of gristle was permitted.

They came in just two flavours, steak and kidney, and chicken and mushroom. The man who started the business eventually decided to retire and sold his thriving business to big pie.

They thought corners could be cut (machine chopped meat) — the Fleur de Lys pies lost their flavour, and nasty bits stuck between your teeth.

I am not the only nostalgic pie eater. The Birmingham history forum is full of them. Someone who asked where the original Fleur de Lys pub was got this reply:

The pub is at Lowsonford which is near Lapworth. Unfortunately the menu has now gone up market, with meals like wild boar, venison and pheasant etc.but no pies. :’(
Mind you, I find PUKKA pies are quite a good alternative. ^-^

A Technorati search for “pukka” brings up 1,439 results including one that mentions pukka pies and the Glastonbury Festival.

Wordblog takes takes on a different meaning for this post which is about “The Word”: I have been asked to lead a blogging workshop at a conference of Church of England communications people in October and need help. I hope a few priests who blog will come across this and share their experiences with me.

Nick Clarke, the St Edmondsbury diocesan communications director, has emailed me with some questions he feels the participants might have. They are:

• Why should Bishops/Priests in the C of E Blog?
• Isn’t it just a passing fad?
• What sort of audiences do blogs reach that conventional communications (paper) don’t?
• What do I need to blog?
• Who should blog?
• What elements make up a good blog?
• How often do I need to blog?
• Where does blogging fit into a communications strategy for organisations like dioceses?

I can make a stab at providing answers, but if blogging is meant to be about harnessing the knowledge and experience of the community, I thought it would be a good idea to share the questions. I fear that there may be no bloggers on religion who read Wordblog, but perhaps my questions can ripple outwards.

Responses, as comments on this post, will be welcome from bloggers of all denominations and religions: the issues must be very similar.

I am giving a introductory talk on blogging at the Suffolk Mac Users Group in Ipswich next Wednesday (May 30) and I am getting a little nervous about how to engage an audience which will include people ranging from those who want to promote their businesses to those who want to keep in touch with grandchildren in Australia. Advice from anyone who has given similar talks would be welcome.

All are welcome (there is a small admission charge) and the time and place is on the group’s website. There is also Talking About Blogging which will eventually have notes on the talk.

Marcel Berlins argues in his Guardian column today with his usual power against the £15 surcharge on fines introduced on April 1 to help pay for better services to victims of crime.

My own experience makes me wonder whether the money already going to support victims could be better used. When my bicycle was stolen from the car park of the flats where I live when working in London, the first official response was a letter from Tower Hamlets Victim Support offering me counselling.

I would have put it down to isolated idiocy but for the fact that a few months later my wife reported the theft of a plant pot and contents from the front of our house in Suffolk. She received a letter from Suffolk Victim Support offering counselling.

Listening to the on-hold music at Onetel TalkTalk’s call centre for 45 minutes without any response left me ready to take the advice of the refrain which was along the lines of, “We have to get together because the revolution is coming.” After three days without broadband, it can’t come quickly enough.

Who is prepared to join me in forcing Charles Dunstone (chief exectuive of Carphone Warehouse which owns Ontel TalkTalk) into the tumbrel and pulling it to the guillotine?

Their phone line has been giving pre-recorded assurances that broadband services were working normally and it was not until late on Saturday that I was able to get through to a human who admitted there was a problem.

At another point during the weekend there was an announcement that no one was available and please call back during office hours. Is that office hours in India or the UK?

This morning I was told the problem continued and they hoped, but could not promise, it would be resolved today. I had already been told that the connection at my London flat was working so I had no alternative but to come to town earlier than planned.

I started using Onetel when it was owned by Centrica and had no difficulties. After the take-over by Carphone Warehouse things seemed to running more or less as they had been. I extended the services I buy from them sticking to Onetel because it was cheaper than the “free” TalkTalk broadband. But as Onetel has become increasingly integrated into TalkTalk the quality of service has declined.

Charles Dunstone seems to be just about as committed to blogging as he is to customer service. At the start his blog promises all the latest updates on the free broadband service. The most recent entry was on December 23.

By comparison leaving customers without internet access for three days with no explanation must seem to him to be pretty good. I will be moving my two broadband/phone lines and two mobiles to another supplier as soon as I can.

It’s been a bad blog day — everything has seemed to turn to dust under my fingers on the keyboard, not turning out as I intended. To cap it all my wife decide to check my name on Google and typed in — accidently, she says — andrew rant-adamson. Damn Google, it asked “Do you mean Andrew Grant-Adamson?” Sometimes I hate the way it knows.

In a world where so many people read and speak English, having little linguistic ability becomes embarrassing. Generally when someone links to Wordblog I take a look at their site and, if I like what I see, watch it and usually find something I want to link to in return. That just seems to be good manners.

But I am stumped by Médiablog in Hungary. I cannot understand a word of it. From the number of referrals its two links to me have generated it is a popular and well regarded blog.

While this post solves the immediate dilemma by providing a link to Médiablog, should English writers have an “other languages” blogroll?

A decision to go broadband at the flat I use when working in London has curtailed my blogging this week. First, my ISP, OneTel, sent the wrong username and password. Of course, I thought, for a considerable time, I was doing something wrong.

Then I decided that as the other six Wi-Fi networks within range were encrypted, I should do the same. Something went wrong and the router had to be reverted to factory setting and the computer operating system reinstalled.

All is working fine now and it is good to be able to check my emails and favourite web pages on my Palm without even getting out of bed.

Country Life must have been a journalistic revolution when it was launched in 1897. I have been looking at pages featuring a moated Suffolk house published little more than a year later and was struck by the space devoted to photographs which was innovative at the time.

I was looking at it because the January 1899 issue featured Crow’s Hall just outside Debenham where I live. It is one of the buildings opening this weekend as part of the Heritage Open Days scheme, giving people a chance to visit places that are not normally open to the public.

Debenham has a remarkable number of medieval buildings and six of them and one modern structure are open this Saturday and Sunday. It is also a delightful place to visit with three pubs if you get thirsty walking around. Details are at the Debenham Society website. For information on places throughout England, excluding London, visit the Heritage Open Days site.

That is the advert and now back to Country Life. It was founded by Edward Hudson, a friend of the great gardener Gertrude Jekyll. Trying to find out more I discovered that he was not only someone who used the latest technology to print a very high quality magazine he was involved in what were really the first “videocasts”.

Hudson worked with the publisher George Newnes and another man on the development of the Mutoscope, a news peepshow. The words surrounding its launch are familiar in their enthusiasm for the new: “If there is any value in the shares it comes from the fact that we are going to be a part of the illustrated journalism of this country in the future.”

In 1900 Home Mutoscope was launched with the declaration that, “the novelty of the illustrated newspaper has worn down a little, and what the public want just now is a mutoscopic or biographic newspaper, in which the reader may see the progress of current events.”

It failed but is a nice reminder that rapid change has been something journalists have lived with for a long time. (Information from victorian-cinema.net)

There is a difference between a blog which is intended to be read by anyone who might be remotely interested in what I write and a diary which is essentially private. Yet, there is also a similarity: both are started with the intention of continuing with some sort of regularity although they may both be laid-down when there is little or nothing to say.

This is my third start. At the moment there is a lot to say. I have just wished farewell to the latest group of post graduate journalism students at the University of Westminster where I teach. I hope that those who have not already found work will soon get jobs (note to employers: they have a lot to offer you).

Journalism is at one of the most exciting stages in its history. I wish I could go back 40-something years and start again. It is also a painful time for those who feel threatened and confused by the web, blogs, podcasts, multi-media. Transition is always difficult, especially when there is no clear view of what is going to happen. For me that is the thrill.

I want to express my own views, hopes and fears. Mostly it will be about journalism but the world in which reporters and editors operate is a part of it too.