I was one of the quondam blog commenters who got pinged by Richard about 18 months ago and invited to re-join his blog, so I started reading it again for the first time in over a decade. I’d been a regular reader from around when he started with the health/diet blogging until the late 2000s when the ‘diet wars’ really took off (I knew what worked for me and lost interest in the back and forth of argument about the best approach).

To be honest, when I got those emails I was surprised and impressed that the blog was still going. I started reading again and signed up to paid originally because I wanted to read those paid member only posts about ‘International Living and Geoarbitrage’ and the ‘Prosper anyway series’ written by someone who was clearly doing just that. One criticism I will make is that these are not being updated often enough!! But, Richard does make up for it with lots of other interesting stuff produced in spurts of intense enthusiasm: the food posts, the travelogues and the videos adding immediacy as well as scenery.

I am that rare thing a paying female member. Why? I enjoy getting the honest male point of view with all the rawness and crudity that sometimes entails. Yes, sometimes it’s a bit rough to take in, sometimes I disagree or I’m shouting back ‘well, I don’t think that!’ or ‘it’s not all women’! But that’s the point – you do not have to agree with everything someone says – and it’s a great stimulus to be challenged by a different point of view. It’s a great thing to be offended sometimes and to realise that it does not matter, you can still like the guy and value his contribution.