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Submitted by Julian Tuesday, 17/05/2011

Thank you, all the friends and well-wishers, for your reading, comments and encouragement. Where to start with all those fond memories of two years a-rambling? Two points will have to be enough. First: 'Groovy Grapes'? Really?? Then, on a more serious and personal note: Contributing to the Wine Rambler has changed my view of the digital world as a whole. I remain a pre-digital person in some ways, I do try to get more and more deliberate offline time for books and good old-fashioned CDs (the kind you listen to from first to last song, and read song credits in a little printed booklet). But by being part of a blog, I learned first-hand how satisfying it is to have got a text in the right shape after hours of editing, how - in those rare instances where it has worked - to get it so that it is well-rounded, but not too staid, how little or how much you need to make a point convincingly, to criticise fairly, to discuss with a civil tongue. I owe all this to my co-rambler Torsten, but also to the digital world. Now, when people talk with ignorance and derision about the internet and the foolish things young people get up to in it, I defend the digital world as the commons and the public square adequate to a democratic society: Everybody can speak their mind and be their own journalist, publisher and editor. What's greater than that?

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