I suppose I should explain why I've been impersonating various bloggers this week. There's nothing devious behind it; I'm not parodying these people or trying to show them up in any way. In fact, it's the opposite - I'm deliberately choosing people whose writing I admire, hoping they'll get a few extra readers from the exercise.

On Monday, I wanted to write about Swedish attitudes to drinking. Then I thought to myself, "But that's the kind of thing Francis does so well. People will think I'm trying to copy him." How to get around that? Why, make it blindingly obvious you're copying him, of course!

The walls in our toilet at home are covered with photographs, postcards and quirky newspaper clippings. There's one in particular that always makes me chuckle when I'm, er, sitting there for any great length of time - the obituary of Brian Brindley. Again, I thought I'd love to reproduce bits of it on my site, but that's Ian's thing, you know? Solution: I make it perfectly clear that I'm doing "an Ian thing".

As for Mike: I am currently so in love with john Foxx's Europe After The Rain that I wanted to make an mp3 of it available for downloading. Damn! Mike's bound to think I'm copying him. So I'll copy him good and proper. And nick his birthday idea, too. Hey, he's nicked a few of mine! [Oh, and did I mention it's my birthday on the 28th of April?]

So... what next? Who next? This presents a bit of a problem: I have something I really want to talk about, something that I wouldn't normally discuss here. Talking about it under the guise of being someone else somehow makes me more able to share it with you. But what I want to talk about isn't pleasant: depression. Choosing a blogger to emulate presents a problem: I would like to show how much I admire their ability to talk about their feelings openly and honestly. But they will undoubtedly think I'm saying they go on about how sad they are. I may just have to be me. But open and honest.

So I hope nobody has been offended. And I hope no-one is offended by Friday's [possible] Spot The Blogger's Style competition...!