A blogroll is, for those unfamiliar with the term, a list of links that one puts in the sidebar of a blog so that readers can ignore them. As you will notice I do not have such a thing, but it is about time I did. The problem is that a great big long list is a bit boring, so one really needs to have the links arranged in some sort of categories. I have done some analysis of the internet and noticed blogs arranging their blogrolls in a number of ways. Some examples:

• Richard seems to order people politically with those on the left being ‘Diggers & Dreamers’, those in the middle being ‘Middle ground’ and those on the right being ‘Right believers’. People from Swansea are in a class of their own.
• The Evangelical Outpost lists the blogroll categories in Latin. I have absolutely no idea what any of them mean.
• People like Ian and Sarah subdivide the youthworkers from the rest. Fair enough really.
• TallSkinnyKiwi Andrew’s two categories are ‘Worth a Look’, (a very short list) and ‘Vintage Theoblogians’, which one assumes is a list of the spiritually profound. I don’t know if you can be in both. Oh and there’s a ‘top referrers’ category, perhaps for the spiritually unprofound, I’m not sure.

But what about my blogroll? I could list blogs by subject matter, geography, shoe size or how interesting they are. I thought briefly about ordering people by their spiritual state, so at one end of the spectrum we’d have ‘Fervent’, followed by ‘Lukewarm’, ‘Backslidden’ and so on and so forth. I thought better of it.

Perhaps just alphabetical is the way to go, like Jordon Cooper and many others. But that doesn’t seem fair. Why should 42 always be at the top and Youthblog at the bottom? (I don’t read any blogs starting with ‘Z’.)

Clive has among his categories ‘Assertive’, ‘Artistic’, ‘Pensive’, ‘Combative’, ‘Forensic’, ‘Strategic’, ‘Panoramic’ and ‘Melodic’. Yes, that’s more the sort of thing. Some categories with some depth. After all, depth is what I do on this blog.

I think perhaps a combination is called for. So, from now on my categories will be:

Sandwich shop employees
Derbyshire
N
Off to the left a bit
36 waist 32 leg
Bulgaria
Short stay 4 hours max
Non potable
14
High church with a twist

Please feel free to assign yourself to a category in the comments. It doesn’t mean I will include you in my blogroll but if you include me in yours your chances are not bad.

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