Schrödinger's Cough

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder so I have no doubt that over the last three months, although you have all been preoccupied with steering your loved ones away from the evils of extremism, trying to combat the attritional effects of ever-increasing austerity and washing your smalls with the cheapest but most eco-friendly washing powder to be found at Lidl you are now - upon discovering a new blog post from yours truly after a break of a quarter of a year - overcome with emotion so deep and so raw that you can barely read these words in front of you as the realization of how much you have missed me finally hits home.

Well, let it wash over you in great waves. Don't try and fight it. Let the deluge fill your teacup to the brim and then slowly but surely raise sea levels the world over.

For my part I am trying to think of a suitable celebrity couple with which to best represent my odd relationship with you all. Thelma & Louise? Not quite. Batman & Robin? Sorry, you don't have the legs for it. Closest I can find is Freddy and Stuart from Vicious. Of course I am Freddy, ever demanding and not really able to express the slight fondness I feel for you all though perfectly able to articulate my sneering contempt for any effort on your part to please me whilst you potter about the house (paid for by me) catering to my every whim and trying to kid yourself that you are utterly indispensable.

Yes. We are all entangled in a slightly clichéd gay relationship that exists only on the television.

But on the bright side, we can now get married.

"What have I been doing?" You clamour. "Where have I been?" Unlike the pussycat from childhood rhyme going to London and visiting the Queen has not featured on my itinerary at all.

Unfortunately, my father dying, trying to sort out stuff from Karen's mum's will, and trying to keep heart, body and soul together have featured large. And none of it has reached a stage that anybody could term "resolved".

As an aside - and thankfully it is only an aside - I had my own health scare last week when a persistent cough drove me to the doctors. Given my father's demise through lung cancer my doctor thought it best that I go for a chest X-ray immediately - to make sure there was "nothing nasty" causing me grief. Up until then I had gone for 8 weeks, coughing away without a second thought. As soon as the X-ray was booked in (and I realised my doctor was taking it all rather seriously) my mind kind of imploded with all of the unwelcome possibilities that exist in the world of disease and medicine. I had to wait a week for my results with my former casual cough now being the harbinger of chemotherapy at worst and the inaugurator of the iron lung at best.

It's appalling how one's mind can torment you and torture you. And it is totally self-defeating. Especially when you consider how some theorists posit the idea that thought and observation inform and create reality. As I waited for the 7 days to elapse before I could ring in for my results I found myself thinking of Schrödinger's cat quite often and realized that, in this uncertain interim, according to the laws of the Quantum universe, I both had and didn't have cancer at the same time. The answer lay in a closed box and would not settle into one of the two states until I opened it up and had a good look at it. Until then, to some degree, my behaviour in the universe would determine my fate.

Some believe that to get what we want from life we have to behave as if we already have it... and then the universe furnishes it to us accordingly. If we fill our hearts with yearning and desires that seem hopeless then the universe merely gifts us more of the same. The key is to live your life as if your desires are already met.

I have no idea whether that is true or not. I do not have empirical evidence that it works.

All I know is my results were clear and the doctor has put my cough down to either the onset of asthma or hay fever and since I have dispensed with subconscious fears about the Big C my cough seems to be getting better on its own.

And I am back. Back amongst you all.

So all is well that hasn't ended. See? Life can still be good.

Now put the kettle on and stop your embarrassingly high-pitched whimpering.

End Of Year Arse-Wipe

Like my natural propensity for forgiveness, blogging hasn’t come easy this year. I’ve struggled. Not so much with ideas or subject matter – there is always some kind of fat that my mind is chewing over – but with inclination; the desire to write and by writing, sharing. “I can’t be bothered,” are the 4 most common (non)spoken words that the little voice inside my soul has thrown out at me this year. Can’t be bothered. And if I did write something who would be bothered to read it? Is it worth my time and effort? Will anybody miss it if I don’t write about it. Will anyone miss me if I overdose on Yorkie bars right now and drive my metaphorical 18 wheeler off the petty minded cliff edge of social media?

This is a bit of a turn around. When I first started writing this blog back in the heady days of 2006 my answer to most of the above questions would have been, “of course no one will miss it if I don’t write about it; of course they won’t miss me, mad fools that they are; and no, no-one really will be bothered to read anything at all that I write BUT I don’t care, I want to write it so I shall – if nothing else it will entertain me.”

And therein lies the problem, I fear. I am no longer entertaining myself. But like a starving tramp scouring the floor for dropped popcorn I still feel a duty to turn up at the theatre just in case I find a hot dog.

To be honest the last half of 2014 has been so unremittingly crap I haven’t wanted to write. I haven’t wanted to engage with the stuff that has been happening. Couple that with an estranged relative who has quite viciously taken against me and this here blog and feels I have no right to write about things that directly affect me if they also happen to affect her and has basically condemned my outpourings here as a feeble minded attempt to garner sycophantic approval from a bunch of faceless, equally needy and nerdy peers and you have the recipe for a perfect storm. Or at least a very wet weekend which makes you not want to get out of bed or do anything very exciting at all.

If I was in any way consistent I would stop writing. I would stop this blog and disappear.

But I can’t. I can’t quite give in. Instead I fudge and mither. I seek a halfway house. I try and instigate a cotton-wool rebellion. Softly softly not quite catchy monkey. I throw a hand grenade but make sure nobody is around to get hurt before I pull out the pin. This is not the spirit in which this blog was bathed at its inauguration.

But there you go. Older and wiser and all that. Certainly a darn sight more tired.

And a darn sight more underhand. For a very brief rundown of current events do visit here (most of you who are regular readers will find you have the correct access rights)… the general hoi polloi, however, will be unable to follow.

Sorry for the cloak and dagger stuff but some of it is quite sensitive and I really don’t want to be dealing with the inevitable fall-out from Estranged Relative (who is like the Argentinian Government to my blog’s quite innocent car registration number*).

Not sure if that makes me Jeremy Clarkson or Richard Hammond. Probably more likely to be James May.

So, going into 2015 there is some major booty that needs kicking (or otherwise dealing with). In the midst of all that though there might be the off-chance of acquiring a flattering girdle which may offer an attractive backdrop to some of life’s more sombre moments. But, like helium, so much of it is up in the air at the moment that it’s just not worth buying the balloon until things become more definite.

I will, however, try and reinvest this blog with a little more spirit and vigour in 2015. I will try and reclaim it for myself and go hang the dissenters. Because, maybe, just maybe, life it too short not to.

*Or possibly even the Mel B to my chirpy Micky Flanagan...

To Write About Nothing

2013 has not been a great year for this blog.

Several times I made the decision to stop writing but either through inherent inconsistency or perverse stubbornness (not sure which) I recanted and elected to continue.

In the lead up to 2013 my blog had suffered several attacks from work based sources (as a consequence I can no longer write about work issues) and also, most damagingly, was attacked by a close member of my family. A family member who dismissed this blog as self aggrandisement, self-publicity, a fantasy ego trip and bizarrely as a means of fencing memories and feelings that they plainly thought I had no right to air to the anonymous, fake "sycophants" who read every post that I write [I wish].

The aftermath of all this was that I began to question every flowering of inspiration, every issue that motivated me to write, every idea for a post that happened to impinge upon my brain.

I went from writing three posts a week to barely managing to cough up one.

I accept that for some of you that was a positive outcome.

For me it lead to a year when this blog stopped feeling like it was mine. When my voice was muted, censored, diminished. When it was no longer enough for a subject to be close to my heart in order for me to write about it; I had to somehow justify it to these "other voices" that had insidiously invaded my head and presented me with a list of rules and regulations that I had to obey.

It's taken me the best part 2013 to realize that these voices have no right to be in my head and I have no business at all to be listening to them.

In that sense 2013 has been a great year for this blog.

The blogging landscape has changed enormously since I began writing here in 2006. Many wonderful blogs have fallen by the wayside to be replaced by automated shop windows and market stalls. Blogging has become less about sharing the experience of the everyday (and sometimes the unusual) and more about selling product.

Call me a puritan but I believe the only thing that should truly be sold on a blog is the writing. The words. The language. [So do buy my books.]

The disappearance of wonderful bloggers means less wonderful readers around to comment and bolster the spirits of flagging writers. You few who visit here regularly are very definitely diamonds in the rough. I know there are amazing blogs out there but having tried to find them I can tell you it is like searching for a needle in a haystack that is made of straw pretending to be needles.

But I have come to realize that that too doesn't really matter. Chasing a readership is just another way of obeying a voice in one's head that has no right to be there.

So at the end of 2013 and the start of 2014 - at the end of 1000 posts and hopefully at the start of another 1000 - it is time to rededicate this blog.

Not grandly or overly ambitiously. Not fakely or servilely.

But honestly.

To write as I see fit about things that matter to me and mine. To share and not to impose.

If you don't want to be here then - please, in the nicest possibly way - don't be.

But if you want to stay then know that you are most welcome.

Happy 2014 to you all.

I’m Gonna Text You Up

So. New phone. Nokia Lumia 510.

My first ever smartphone. Email. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Skydrive. All in one place. I’m loving the sense of centralized connectedness. All these different ways of communicating with people literally at my fingertips.

Decent contract too given my traditional parsimonious nature when it comes to mobile phones. I get 500 minutes, 750mb of date and 5000 texts all for just £10 a month.

The data I might use – browsing, downloading apps, updating blogs and feeds, etc. The 500 minutes… hmm, doubtful but you never know when you might need to have a long conversation with someone.

But 5000 texts?

I must admit that had me rolling my eyes.

5000 texts per month?!

Who sends 5000 texts a month? That’s (on average) 166 texts a day! What can you possibly find to write about so frequently on a daily basis? Apart from sending someone a novel a line at a time?

“Hello, just sending you a text.”

“Hi again. Just me. Just another text.”

“Did you get my last text?”

“Not my last text but the text before that?”

“This is just a text to check that you’re getting my texts.”

“Please text a reply.”

“If you’re able. If you want to.”

“No pressure.”

“Have you run out of texts? You really ought to go to Tesco. They give you 5000 a month.”

“That’s 5000 texts.”

“Which is a lot of texting.”

“Erm…”

“Actually my finger is really hurting now. Do you mind if I just ring you instead?”

I don’t think I have ever sent 5000 texts in my entire life. Let alone in a month. And now I have an allocation. I kind of feel morally obliged to honour it. To share the minutia of my life with some as yet unnamed other in my address book as frequently as possible until they get so sick of hearing from me that they stop acknowledging my very existence.

Rather akin to blogging.

Proof I’m Not An Axe Murderer

Over the long years of writing this blog some of you have, on occasion, thrown yourselves shamelessly at me. Showered me with invitations to hook up and meet. Quick but passionate rendezvous in love hotels and back streets where the bins are secluded and not too dirty.

I have as a rule refused to acquiesce to your requests (means I said no).

This decision has been driven by two things: (1) a desire not to render the rest of your existence flat, drab and unappealing by comparison to the glorious sunburst of life that a meeting with me would engender and (2) I’m rather skittish about meeting new people and despite the fake protestation of (1) above I am actually quite paranoid that I myself would come across as flat, drab and unappealing compared to the literary personality that inhabits this blog. I fear I would not live up to the easily obtainable personality goals I have set myself because no matter how low I set the bar I can almost always be relied upon to not quite reach it.

I live in fear of personality fail.

So this has meant a lot of flattering requests over the years (well, 2 that I can actually recall) and the same number of disappointing responses.

August of this year changed all that when quite out of the blue a fellow blogger turned up at my place of work having journeyed all the way from New Zealand. I must point out that an interview with me wasn’t the purpose of the trip, just an aside, as the blogger in question – Lady Mondegreen – had family and friends over here in the UK whom she’d long been planning to visit.

She’d written to me a few times asking how I would feel if she happened to drop in and see me. I did that English thing of responding positively because I harboured the suspicion that it was just never going to happen.

Well, suddenly it had and it was. And actually I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. And unless Lady Mondegreen says different I don’t think I performed too badly. I think I met and perhaps even exceeded the bar. We had a pub lunch and a damned good chat and it genuinely was like meeting an old friend. All very relaxed and easy and wonderfully life affirming. It proved that being open to new experiences and opportunities can be an enlivening philosophy and is to be recommended. Though I must here point out that all thoughts of love hotels and passionate bins were eschewed.

Lady Mondegreen is now back in New Zealand and neither of us appears to have been permanently scarred by our encounter. And so, heady with the bravado of success I feel the urge to extend an open invitation to all my regular readers. If you’re ever in the area and want to say hello – a quick coffee and a bite to eat, whatever’s your poison – then do feel free to drop me a line and make it a date.

I don’t bite. I make some effort toward entertaining conversation. I will try to be urbane and debonair. And I promise to keep my animal magnetism under control (but do keep me away from the pub bins just in case).

The Bookkeeper's Husband Writes...

Some of you will know of the illness that has plagued my wife off-and-on for the last few years. After Karen endured a second hospital stay earlier this year which resulted in her being signed off from work longterm we both realized we had to instigate a major rethink into how we go out to work, finance ourselves, keep the roof over our head, food on the table and the wolves from our door.

Plans are now afoot - for us both. Ideas are being swirled around in the wine glass of opportunity. Most of them are them are still at the very faint bouquet stage. Most of them might not mature into anything very palatable at all. But some just might; some may have legs enough to actually go somewhere pretty decent.

If I could be paid to mix-metaphors all day I'd make a small fortune but until then my wife has taken the brave decision to resign from the accountant's where she has worked for the last 7 years and start up a work-from-home bookkeeping business. Provided we get some regular work it will be an ideal solution for her: she's highly qualified, very knowledgeable but needs to work at her own pace in a relatively stress-free environment. Working for herself is definitely the way to go.

To that end we have spent the last few days placing advertising, printing business cards and designing a web site: http://www.brighter-bookkeeping.co.uk.

By our reckoning we've got 12 months to make this venture work - and then it's a return to the drawing board if it all goes pear-shaped. Hopefully, we're onto a winner, albeit a slow grower... but slow and steady wins the race.

So, cutting to the chase, I am temporarily hijacking this blog to sling a bit of free, totally partisan, completely biased advertising out into the electronic ether.

Please take a look at my wife's web site. Please bear us in mind should you be in a position to require a first class bookkeeper. Please pass our details on to your family and friends and work associates should they be in that same position. Web sites and business cards are all very nice but it is word of mouth that reaps the biggest rewards and we'd appreciate your help.

Here ends the Pearl & Dean advertising. Your feature film will follow shortly.

It’s Quite An Experience To Live In Fear

It’s not like the Stasi have been after me. Or the SS. Or that I have felt myself harassed by the CIA.

But emotionally perhaps I have let their shades stalk my mind and my thoughts.

It takes a lot to stop me from writing. And sometimes it takes nothing very much at all. Most of the time it is simply writer’s block and I have been through enough of those kinds of episodes not to be overly concerned when they strike. It’s best not to fight them but to just ride them through. Take a holiday. Take a break. Recharge those batteries. Sometimes they last years but if that is the timescale that is dictated so be it. Sometimes it’s nourishing to catch up on other stuff and live a little bit. Ultimately writer’s block is usually a good thing.

Sometimes, though, I am stopped from writing by the actions or opinions of others.

And I hate myself when that happens. For allowing it to happen.

Because most of the time when I write I feel big and bold and will fight my right to write freely with every tiny flourish of my penmanship. But sometimes stuff sneaks in under the fence. Scores a hit under the radar. The attack gets personal.

As is often the case these attacks always occur when you are a low ebb anyway or when life dictates that now should be a time of trial and tribulation and you find your back breaking under a rain of “final” straws.

In such times I do not so much as stop writing but feel myself to have been stopped.

And as I said, I hate myself for succumbing to that. For feeling that suddenly it is simply not worth the waves of negativity that some people are intent on unleashing. Worse, the waves of misunderstanding, presumption and arrogant conjecture that some people dredge up in themselves which leads them to believe they know enough about you and your life from the little you choose to write about to be able to judge and condemn you and your life as a whole.

And worse still. They condemn the very need to write. They belittle and besmirch it. They don’t entertain that it is a freedom and a right or an aspiration in itself. They condemn it as some kind of pathetic, ego-driven, desperate need for self-validation and sycophantic approval from others. They make it into a pewling inconsequential whine for attention; an inflation of the trivial and mediocre; a caterwauling of personal opinion and emotion that for some reason the writer himself is suddenly not entitled to as a human being even as the complainant stamps their own ill-founded opinion and emotion over every available surface.

Suddenly your find your throat stoppered and your voice silenced. You don’t so much edit yourself as perform a murderous hatchet job on every idea and possible source of inspiration before your mind can even get them through the foetal stage.

And that part of you that since you were a child has burned with the need to write suddenly finds itself caught up in a sealed vacuum and the flame has no choice but to go out.

Or so you’d think.

John Lydon once sang “anger is an energy”.

Well, in the absence of oxygen it is also a fuel.

I’ll write what I like, about who I like and whenever I like.

This blog is an ego thing. That much is correct. It is about me and my thoughts, my feelings, my memories and my opinions. But they are not the complete sum of me. This blog will never be the full picture and you will never know the whole of me or my life from what I write here. You will simply know what I write here. And I do that because I want to and because I have a right to.

The picture below has done the rounds on Facebook a couple of times now but each time I see it I republish it on my own Facebook page. It is very apt. And very true. And, ideologically, is currently where I stand.

If you have a problem with that then you need to deal with it. Write about it yourself, sound off to those closest to you or just shut up and suck it up and wallow in your own negativity. But don’t dump it on my blog, or my family, or me or my right to write.

Because, aside from a momentary pause, I shall just carry on writing even more.

Hand Prints

Not for the first time in the comparatively short history of this blog my reasons for writing have yet again been called into question by a third party.

Why do I write? What need does it satisfy? What good does it do? Who the hell do I think cares enough, is interested enough to even want to read it all in the first place?

Needless to say such questions weren't posed in an emotionless psycho-scientific vacuum but were given a hefty wallop of negative spin that created a curve-ball with enough thrust to smash through even my superdense cranium.

Well if you've got this far I guess you've just answered the fourth question.

As for the others I'm pleased to report that it didn't take much brain searching to come up with a few answers.

The way I see it (and that statement alone is the fundamental starting point for any blog, letter, email, newspaper column, book, film or play) blogging of itself it a pretty pointless activity. It's not going to stop world poverty, end human trafficking or child abuse or even get The X Factor axed from our television screens. It's not really within its narrow remit.

But what it could do is flag up to the powers-that-be that enough people want these issues sorted out with enough urgency and passion that the powers-that-be actually plough some energy and money into sorting them.

Yeah. That's a naive argument but I live in hope.

In all honesty I personally see blogging in its entirety the world over as a wonderful ever-expanding social-history document. Kind of like the Bayeux Tapestry but this time mostly about mundane stuff and one where everybody gets to voice their opinion - not just the winners. Taken as a whole it represents lots of truths (some of them conflicting) about human nature, human society and how we all, as a species, interact - not just on a local scale but also globally because the great thing about the online community is that geography as an obstacle is completely and utterly removed.

In fact there was an experiment a year or so ago where everybody (not just regular blog writers) was invited to submit a blog post on the same day so that a group of curators somewhere could have a digital snapshot of what the 20th century world was doing on 25th July 2010 (or whenever it was - I just made that date up so that the sentence would feel like it was going somewhere). Blogging in general is like that. Our descendents 300 years from now will look back at all this online verbiage and feel that they know us a lot more intimately that we can currently say we know the population of Restoration Britain, or the Elizabethans or Stone Age Man.

Which brings me onto a neat conceit.

Whenever anyone asks me why I blog (and no, it isn't just about my ego) I always think of the hand prints our ancient ancestors left on the walls of caves all those millennia ago.

Why did they bother? What need did it satisfy? What good did it do them? Who the hell did they think would ever be interested enough to look at them and care about them?

I mean those hand prints by themselves don't tell us very much at all apart from the date they were made (like most blog posts in fact) and what colour paint they had available. They don't in themselves tell us what these people ate, what they wore, how they spoke or what kind of relationships and hierarchy their society was composed of.

Apart from the aesthetics and the wonderment of how old they are those hand prints don't add to the total sum of human knowledge a great deal at all. They were made by simple folk, in a nascent civilization with nothing very big or world shattering to say at all.

And yet they are invaluable. They are important.

Those hand prints say quite simply but nevertheless very fundamentally, "I was human. I was here."

And actually, on a cosmic scale, that is quite world shattering.

For me, blogging is a bit like that.

I am human and I am here.

And quite honestly if you don't like the shape my hand makes against the wall feel free to drag yourself onto the next cave. There's some "horsies" in that one.

Private Review Club

Well, it’s that time of year yet again when we pull up a chair, swill a bucket sized glass of brandy around in our hand, enjoy the burlesque dancing girls and reflect meaningfully on the year that was and the year that is to be.

And what a year it has been. 2012, for all it had some magnificent personal highs (solely comprised of family holidays and time away from work, funny that), felt very often like it was the straw determined to break the donkey’s back. A straw made of kryptonite, as locatable as the Higgs Boson and as irritating as John Sessions on QI. An itch that just couldn’t be scratched but was nevertheless going to follow you around for the entire year and make everything hard work and dreadfully miserable.

I confess, I have come close to giving up on the dream.

After the highs of completing what I would consider to be my first ever proper, publishable novel I found myself tumbling into the slough of despond. The mental Slough of Berkshire in fact. It was that bad. Agents and publishers were not fighting themselves to rip the manuscript out of my hand. The rejection letter pile was swelling like an infected bladder. I began to wonder what the point was.

And then the ol’ blog began to fail as well. What was the point of that, I began to wonder? My sacred, little platform for free speech and opinion expressing (as is my inalienable rights as an Englishman) had been compromised and curtailed. It’s proud borders had been eaten away and annexed by the Nazis of censorship, suppression and bowdlerization. Lord knows I had tried to go on with the fight. To keep the flags of satire and sarcasm flying aloft.

I maintained a sly campaign of guerrilla warfare for years but in the end I was beaten by a war of attrition.

Those who objected to my writing made life outside of the electronic ether difficult and miserable and in the end concessions were wrung out of me.

If I am honest my soul felt compromised and sullied.

I tried to move on. I tried other tacks.

I tried to court the blogging audience I had found for myself. Tried to style and cater my output for their eyes. I don’t regret this. It was a good writing exercise. But such exercises can only be good in the short term. If you sell too much of yourself to others you end up with little left over for yourself.

So it was that I came close to chucking it all in, literary speaking. Censorship and self-editing were not what this blog was supposed to be about after all.

Grand visions.

I now realize that, actually, any kind of writer has a responsibility to the words they write which is a little more subtle that simply “it’s my opinion, therefore I have a right to express it”. None of us exist in a vacuum. Sometimes the most honest and effective expression is that that expresses an idea without seeming to express anything at all. Like that last sentence in fact.

And I found I couldn’t quite turn my back on writing.

I need to do it. It keeps me sane.

But there has to be a purpose to it. An end in itself is not enough for me. So that means reclaiming some of my old joie de vivre...

To that end then, not a Resolution but a resolution. My aims for the coming year are to commence writing a new novel whilst continuing to push the previous one onto an unwilling public and to blog a little more the way I want to. I make no apology that forthwith some of my posts are going to be self indulgent, minority interest, selfish exercises in self expression.

I’m not going to advertise or review products and services for material reward. I’m not going to court attention or approval. Audience participation would be lovely but I’m not begging for it or chasing it. I’m going to write about the things that matter to me, no matter how trivial and inconsequential they might be to the outside world.

I’m reclaiming this blog and my writing for me.

Everybody is invited but the party is mine.

Back

I spat the dummy and now I'm sucking it back up again.

I had a hissy-fit, I was hasty, I erred in anger.

Or something like that.

Giving up Bloggertropolis has been harder than I thought it would be. It's been like having an arteficial limb that has seen me compete in the paralympics suddenly ripped off and denied me.

Plus my wife has pointed out that (a) Bloggertropolis is a weird kind of family annal that we and the kids can look back on when Karen and I are old and grey and the kids have booked us into the Tombstone Express Nursing Home and remember the good old bad old days and (b) I am advertizing myself as a writer - flaunting my novels and poetry - and it rather undoes all that good marketing if visitors to this blog then find I'm "no longer writing" anymore.

So with apologies I am kind of back.

My other writing projects will continue (Lord knows I have another novel to write even as I continue to push The Great Escapes of Danny Houdini onto unreceptive agents) but alongside them will be Bloggertropolis. Probably not as it was before. The posts may be a little more infrequent and out of the blue. But continue they shall.

And it feels right.

I am going to have my cake and eat it.

And if that's a hissy fit, well, I love it.

I'm getting all diva on yo' ass and there ain't  a thing you can do about it.

Except, er, maybe not read my posts...

Gag

Blogs. I wrote a few. But then again, too few to mention...

Well. That’s not factually true.

Since I began this on-line journey into the egotistical sublime back in the heady days of 2006 I’ve managed to rack up a mind-numbing 920 posts. I’ve been pretty darn consistent too. 3 posts a week for much of it, covering a wealth of subjects that have ranged from TV shows, politics, news events, social issues, home life and whatever doe-eyed beauty off the telly that I happened to fancy in any given moment.

But most of you won’t have failed to have noticed a gradual tailing off of productive output. A creative brewer’s droop. A distinct lessening of literal vitality.

My Bloggertropolis mojo is all but spent.

It’s time to draw a line beneath, put an end to and snuff out the guttering candle that is Bloggertropolis.

Oh hush your wailing. The end has been nigh for months now and the writing has been on the wall for longer than that.

The rot for me began when my blog was outed and touted by those who know me in real life (as opposed to just virtually). Without going over old wounds it caused upset and strife and made life difficult. Mostly for me (and I have to say my life is the one that I’m most concerned about). Certain subjects became taboo. Certain emotional chakras were suddenly blocked. Despite my best efforts I found myself gelded and my teeth pulled and a whacking great gag shoved into my mouth. Sure I kept going. Kept the writing production line rolling. Desperately tried to search out loopholes and ways round the restrictions... but euphemism and metaphor can only express so much.

Suddenly I woke up and found that Bloggertropolis had lost its bite, its bile and its balls (though thankfully not its alliteration).

I had become the blogging eunuch.

As much as it has tickled me to be a thorn in the side of so many for so long I have to admit to myself that the pale reflection this blog has become is now more of a thorn in my side than anybody else’s. Simply because it is not doing what I want it to do nor allowing me to express myself in the way that I would wish.

So, my old muckers, mateys and fellamelads, ‘tis time to say goodbye. Time to sign off and let the blogging underwriters evaluate my creative credit. I have other projects planned. Some of them not involving world domination or getting into Professor Alice Robert’s handsomely scientific knickers. Some lucky few of you will receive an email from me soon describing ways in which we might stay in touch.

The unlucky few can kiss my blogging ass.

This is how my blog ends.

Not with a bang (alas). But with you whimpering.

Private Dick

I’ve been feeling a little glum of late. A little uninspired. Every week I’ve got to the point where I’ve thought: this is it, old boy, your mojo has gone; it’s time to hang up the blogging hat and call it a day. I’m not feeling the love like I used to.

I haven’t written about it and I’m not going to go into it here. To write a post about how I’m finding it hard to write posts seems horribly, embarrassingly self indulgent. And although that would be totally in character I have to draw the line somewhere.

There are many reasons for my glumness:

Change in home life – the eldest son started at secondary school, the youngest starting school for the first time, Karen back in full time work and me changing my work shift completely so that I can be finished in time to pick the youngling up from the school gates. We’re all tired and frantic and not yet settled into the new work/life routine.

My novel is getting nowhere and I have temporarily lost the will to send out postal submissions or bum-lick my way up into the higher colonic echelons of Authonomy.

I also applied for a dream job and didn’t even make it through the initial paper-sift.

Police Community Support Officer.

It fairly rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?

Everyone I spoke to said I was made for the job. Even my boss. Ideal candidate material.

I spent more time on this particular application form than I have on any other. It was a work of art. I cogitated. I mulled. I thought about what I wanted to say and made sure what I said matched the job profile.

I had high hopes.

It sounded the perfect job. Not precisely a proper policeman but as near as damn it and without the responsibility of nicking / coshing / handcuffing / rubber-bulleting some ne’erdowell through the hallowed doors of justice. I would have been a bobby on the beat. A big friendly policeman (PC McGarry number 542). Dixon of Dock Green. H-evening all, madam, may I h-assist you in carrying your shopping home?

Walking about, outdoors, meeting people, in uniform. Who knows where it could have led?

But as always it led nowhere. I didn’t make the grade for interview. I wasn’t good enough to be not a proper policeman.

I feel properly gutted.

The only option I have open to me now is the one that all ex not proper policemen have before them... that of becoming a private dick.

Some of you will no doubt say that I am already halfway there...

Airplane

If I seem quiet over the next 7 days it is because – with my wife’s gracious consent – I am trying something new.

I am trying something I have never done before. I am experimenting.

It may or may not involve dressing up in a weird costume and hiding in the wardrobe, re-enacting choice scenes from Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Upon reflection, I suspect it won’t.

For the next week I am not going to be here. I am going to be even more virtual than I have been previously. The family and I are taking a week’s holiday away from the ol’ homestead (our eldest is already experiencing X-Box withdrawal symptoms) and heading out of town. For the next 7 days we are house-sitting / cat-sitting for friends down in Nailsworth – a gorgeous part of Gloucestershire that feels like someone has cut out a small segment of Wales and transplanted it into England.

Access to the internet might be scanty. We shall have some, no doubt, but I don’t intend to be slaving away at a computer keyboard composing masterpieces for you all to read whilst I am on my holiday. Instead, using the old noggin to forward plan and utilising the nifty little scheduling tool on Blogger, I will be publishing a couple of posts via autopilot. Please don’t blame me if the plane crashes.

I will try and check in and reply to comments (should there be any – I find it never bodes well to assume), but if you find you are not on the receiving end of the kind of immediately witty reply that you have come to expect and adore then I hope you can understand why. It may take me a day or two to get back to you... but get back to you I shall and I shall endeavour to make it worth the extra wait.

It feels kind of weird to leave this blog to fly alone. To leave it to the mercy of you guys – my passengers.

I do hope I can trust you all not to misbehave while I am absent.

Please leave the aisles as clean as you found them and I want no smuttiness in the toilets (especially at altitude). Any attempts to storm the cockpit and take control will be not be thought well of, I can assure you.

And please, please, whatever you do, do not play around with my flaps.

I’m Going To Blow Up The Olympics

So Paul Chambers, the man who sparked a full-on security alert at Robin Hood airport (near Doncaster) when he Tweeted “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!” back in 2010 when the airport was temporarily shut during heavy snow has finally won his appeal against his conviction for “sending a menacing electronic communication” at the High Court in London.

I’m pleased for him in a kind of passive, passing, glad-somebody-finally-saw-sense kind of way. Mainly though I just feel hugely disgruntled at the amount of tax payer’s money that has been wasted bringing this case to trial, bringing it to appeal at a Crown Court only for that appeal to be initially quashed and then being brought to the High Court where it was eventually brought before someone with a brain cell who could finally see it for the ridiculously petty pile of shit that it actually was.

Apparently his initial appeal at the Crown Court was overturned because the judge said the Tweet was “clearly menacing”.

Clearly menacing? I’ve received begging letters from the RSPCA that were more menacing than that.

It is surely plain to everyone that the Tweet was a joke. A joke in poor taste admittedly and not even particularly funny but a joke nevertheless. The guy was cheesed off. His flight was delayed. It was snowing. He was stuck in Doncaster. It was an unthinking moment of heat and frustration. It was a little guy sounding off against a big corporate machine that had let him down. And can I just say again that he was stuck in Doncaster?

Even if he really had blown up the airport surely that alone would be a mitigating circumstance?

As it was, John Cooper QC last month said: “[the Tweet] was certainly not sent in the context of terrorism and it was wrong for the crown court to make such an association”.

Hallelujah.

Commonsense prevails at last. The Law is less of an ass than I thought it was.

But the staff at Robin Hood airport ought to hang their heads in shame along with all those who helped push this case along via the hard earned money of the likes of you and me.

Have we actually really reached an age where the average man on the street can’t cock a snoop at the big corporations with the only weapon available to him that is still free – i.e. his speech?

We have to accept here that there is a huge, clearly recognizable difference between “you have five minutes to evacuate, there is a bomb on your premises, die infidel pig-dog, the code word is kebab” and “your service is so crap you need a bomb put under you to get things to improve”. Real bomb threats are, after all, plainly not funny.

Real bomb hoaxes are also not funny. But “you've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high”, oh and by the way you can clearly identify me by my Twitter account and my 600 Followers is clearly not even in the same ballpark. That isn’t even remotely threatening. It’s someone throwing their rattle out of the pram and then having it taken to the police by a prat who then complains to the police that they felt frightened by the rattle - please lock them up Mr Policeman for I was very fwightened.

Honestly! Some people need to get a life.

Preferably before I blow them sky-high with the two tonnes of Semtex that I have rabidly secreted down my Y-fronts and packed into the hairy chambers of my armpits.

Go on. Complain about this fucking blog. I just dare you!

My finger is hovering over the button right now! One wrong move and you’re all going to die with the smoke of my singed underpants in your lungs!

50,000 Votes But No Cigar

So the Brilliance In Blogging awards came and went last Friday and though yours truly was a finalist in the Lit category, I nevertheless went home a runner-up. In fact I didn’t even have to go home on account of never having left being too niggardly and anti-social to even attend the event despite the lovely Katy Hill being the compare and Ruby Wax also being in attendance. And of course, Ruby is undoubtedly lovely too.

I didn’t win.

Not a bean. Not a sausage. Close but no cigar.

I now know what it feels like to be the “also-ran” at an Oscar ceremony or The BAFTAs. The chin-up. The fake smile. The autopilot applause for the lucky individuals who did win.

Actually, I truly didn’t expect to win. And I mean that. I’m not just saying it to make out that I don’t care or to belittle the event (though of course I’ve maintained all along that I don’t do this for the accolades or the money or the loose women, sorry, the loose change; I do it for the art and the love and for you guys). This is no embittered lie to cover up a crushed soul fermenting itself into poison under the grinding weight of being passed over yet again at yet another award ceremony. I honestly didn’t expect to win.

My blog is too eclectic. Too unfocused. Too nonspecific and too wide ranging in its scope to pigeonhole neatly into any category. And yes I am trying to make a virtue out of a vice.

Of course, some might argue that this blog just wasn’t good enough and that is simply the hard, cold end of it.

And indeed that could be the case but for the fact that, to become a finalist, this blog had to receive over 50,000 votes.

50,000.

That’s a phenomenal number for a snipey little blog that doesn’t particularly sell anything or offer a worthwhile service.

I was gobsmacked when I discovered that 50,000 was the numerical threshold.

Who are these people? Do they read every day? Why don’t they comment? If I sold 50,000 copies of my novel, The Great Escapes of Danny Houdini (plug plug), I’d be laughing.

*sigh*

So 50,000 people like this blog.

But it is the diet coke of success.

Just not quite successful enough.

Come on, people. Give me some sugar!

Here Kitty Kitty

+++ WARNING +++ FLUFFY KITTEN POST +++

Back in the day, back when I wrote this blog's very first inaugural post, I made a silent vow to myself:

No posts about fluffy cute kittens.

It's not that I don't like fluffy cute kittens or fluffy cuteness per se. I just didn't want this blog to be about that kind of thing. Next I'd be employing a blog template that featured flowers and dandelion seeds blowing in the wind and taking photos of my animal face slippers that I'd hand crafted myself from a "Make Your Own Slippers Go On It's Easy When You Haven't Any Friends" book that I'd bought from a stall run by Mr Yoghurt-Weaver at a hippy festival.

It just wasn't my bag and still isn't.

Nevertheless it cannot have escaped your attention that there is a picture of a fluffy cute kitten at the top of this post. And furthermore there is another one just beneath this paragraph:

The top picture is Kiah and the one just above these very words is Artemis - or Missy for short.

In a fit of madness but actually after much on-and-off deliberation for the past 12 months Karen and I took advantage of some kittens that were being sold by a work colleague on Friday. Originally we were only going to take one but by the time we'd made up our minds to go for it there were only two left available from the original litter.

Sentimentality ruled our budget: we couldn't possibly split up these gorgeous little sisters and leave one all alone; two cats are no more expensive than one (I'm sure we'll learn the lie of that soon enough); they'll settle down much quicker with a companion that they already know.

Hence our family of four is now a family of six with the addition of the two darling girls you see pictured above. Kiah (mine) is very much a lap cat and pretty docile and yet has a bossy streak that even at this early stage cannot be mistaken. Missy (Karen's) is unsure about being picked up and yet very much likes being stroked and petted and is also the most adventurous and investigative of the two.

We collected them yesterday from Coventry and, after the trauma of the car journey (which they definitely did not like), they calmed down within seconds of their arrival and seemed very much at home from the instant we got them back to our place. They've slept well, eaten well and are now playing well.

In a house that up to now has had a male majority, I suspect things will never be quite the same again.

How does that awful Sugababes song go?

"Here come the girls..."

Goosey Goosey Slander

So The Defamation Bill is about to be debated in the Commons.

Ostensibly this gives social networking web site owners a little protection against libel suits that may result from complainants taking objection to something web users may write or publish about the complainant on such web sites. If the web site owners identify the “troll” they themselves won’t get sued.

On the face of it, it is a good idea. It makes the right people accountable for their words and actions. I’m sure the owners of Twitter and Facebook et al will breathe huge sighs of relief if the bill gets approved.

But what does it mean for the rest of us?

Libel is a strange beast. People – particularly minor celebs with major egos – like to sue for it at the merest provocation. Even big celebs have been known to pay off mortgages on second homes with a well won libel suit.

But it’s one thing to sue a multinational newspaper but what about an average-Joe Twitter user? What about suing a blogger? What about suing the likes of you or me?

I guess we all need to be careful about what we say or write from now on. We all need to be clear about what is mere opinion and what is untruth or unsupportable truth.

Because part of the deal with this bill is that the complainant has to show that they have suffered serious harm to their reputations, or are likely to do so before they can take their defamation case forward.

I feel rather ambivalent on this issue, I must admit. Lord knows I have no respect for someone who prints lies and untruths and says that so-and-so shagged so-and-so with a hastily bought legume from Tesco just because they wanted to enjoy the emotional fall-out and social trauma that ensued. But at the same time I reserve the right to say that so-and-so is an utter arse with the brain of a Eurovision songwriter and deserves to be knocked verbally into a cocked hat if that is my personal take on the matter. Lord knows I have given the likes of Russell Brand, Eamonn Holmes and, just recently, Gary Barlow a right Royal drubbing on this here blog and done it with hyperbolic gusto.

But what if these guys feel I have damaged their reputation?

I mean, God knows my opinion is the only one that matters and careers are made or broken on my most nonchalant say-so. I am the all-powerful uber-blogger, after all.

But what if Russell Brand blames me for the break-up of his marriage and the loss of his virility? What then, huh?

Whoa! Whoa! That last bit was just a joke, OK? I’m sure Russ is as permanently randy as an IT student at a Spearmint Rhino half price night but you see how easy it is to fall into this libel trap? I make a non-serious joke about Russell Brand’s completely un-alleged flagging bedroom prowess and suddenly I’m libel fodder. Even though it was plainly a jape and just a device to express my opinion and imagine how worse it could have been if I’d rung him up and left him a telephone message saying that his old man drooped worse than an end-of-season bungee rope? I don’t think a bunch of flowers and an apology would get my arse out of the flames quick enough. My goose would be well and truly cooked. And my bank account plundered and dumped quicker than one of Russell’s ex-girlfriends.

So what’s the answer?

Well, it’s simple.

We have all got to start being nice to each other. And more importantly than that: nice about each other.

I know. Terrible, isn’t it?

What the hell are we all going to write about?

I Made The Shortlist

No, not for the Man Booker Prize but for the Lit section in the BIBs – Brilliance in Blogging Awards.

I would like to thank all those of you that stirred yourselves to vote for me against an undoubted plethora of good reasons not to.

I’m not sure what anyone can do from this point onwards. Voting closed on 30th April; now I think the judges just cogitate and ruminate on the finalists before naming their champion of champions on the 22nd June.

I guess the last few weeks are up to me.

If I knew who to bribe and sleep with I’d be emptying my pockets in more ways than one and doing it. Alas, the most I could offer anyone is 39p and about 15 minutes (tops) of full-on pash. I’m not sure such gifts would at all be first prize-worthy so it’s just as well the judges are not known to me and are beyond my paltry reach.

All I can do is keep blogging and hope that the gods of blogdom eventually recognize my small votive offerings.

That and like the smell of the fatted calves that I regularly sacrifice on a stone altar for their vicarious blood-thirsty pleasure...

Blue Plaque

I want one.

I’ve decided.

I want a blue plaque erected in my honour and attached to the wall of a house I’ve lived in or a pub I’ve drunk in or an alleyway I’ve relieved myself in somewhere in my home town.

Because – maybe it’s just Leamington – but there seems to be blue plaques being put up all over the place these days, to all and sundry for a whole raft of endeavours that, at best, often strain the bounds of remarkability and noteworthiness.

Lord Isambard Moolah invented the screw top salt shaker in this garret in 1846. Sir Ivor Permanent Backache invented skiving off from work in this bedsit in 1954. Captain Smartarse created the world’s first time machine in this domicile pod in 2539. Etc. Etc.

Forget Facebook or Twitter (or whatever it is you young un’s are using these days to avoid actually speaking to each other), a blue plaque is what you need if you want people to know who you are, to notice you and – most importantly – to remember you.

‘Cos being remembered is everything. If you die and nobody remembers you, well, that’s like you never existed. You were there but you were like dark matter... just holding the bright stars in their place. But if your name is still on people’s lips, still being bandied around backstreet pubs and used as a gross insult in the playground then you have at least achieved some kind or immortality. Future generations will carry your name forth like some kind of socio-biological seed and who knows? You may yet influence the children of tomorrow in some weirdly perverse manner which will either raise humankind to the heights of enlightenment or (more likely) see it damned to the lowest circle of hell.

But the fate of the species is unimportant compared with having had a hand in bringing that fate into being.

Because it doesn’t matter whether you’re remembered for good things or bad things. Just as long as you’re remembered. Fame doesn’t give a shit about morality. Fame doesn’t differentiate between top ten hit singles or the number of people you stuff into a mass grave. History enshrines Hitler and Michael Jackson both on an equal footing (though I know who I’d trust to babysit).

So all I have to do now is decide how I’m going to get my blue plaque.

Will it be for some kind of Nobel prize winning endeavour? Novel writing? Poetry? Blogging even? It would have to be arts based because I’m completely crap at science (if you’re waiting for me to invent a time machine you’d need a time machine just to cope with the wait).

Or shall I choose the dark path? Become a plague to my fellow man? Visit upon him sores and pestilence and endless irritation?

Hmm...

Blogging it is then.

P.S. Just make sure they spell my name right.

Held To Ransom

I’m feeling a bit emotionally hijacked this morning.

I feel like an old friend has stabbed me in the back. Or worse, slashed the buttons off my best coat with a flash of his blade like the Scarlet Pimpernel putting down some damn Frenchie.

In the bigger scheme of things this is no big deal but it has got my goat: Blogger has changed the layout and functionality of its Dashboard.

Some of you will be shrugging. Some of you may not have noticed any difference. Some of you may like the changes.

I don’t like the changes.

Worse, I can’t click on anything without Blogger informing me that my browser is incompatible with the new Dashboard, some functions will no longer work and I might like to try installing Google Chrome instead.

I don’t want to install Google Chrome.

I’m sure Google Chrome is a lovely browser. I’m sure it would make love to my computer and make it come all night long. But I use Internet Explorer, like Internet Explorer and am familiar with Internet Explorer. And further, I don’t like having unnecessary bits of software installed on my computer chogging up the registry and increasing the potential for foul-ups. Having two browsers installed goes against the grain.

I feel like Blogger – owned by Google, of course – is trying to bully me into using its own software. This is not on.

Persuade me (if you can) by all means. Sell it to me. Bribe me. Make me come all night long.

But don’t bully me. Don’t mug me. Don’t hold me to ransom.

Because that makes me dig my heels in even harder. That makes me flex and exercise my rather muscular stubborn gene.

At the end of the day this whole thing is a cynical exercise in overly ferocious marketing. What annoys me most is that if you check your blogging stats via the Dashboard (if you can get yours to work now, that is) you will see that Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser that the majority of people use when logging into and using Blogger.

And yet Blogger / Google has seen fit to deliberately disregard the lion’s share of its own user demographic and create an interface that doesn’t work properly in Internet Explorer.

If that isn’t a slap in the face I don’t know what is.

So what do I do?

Go against my principals and install Google Chrome? Dump Blogger and switch to Wordpress? *shudder*

Stop Blogging altogether?

(I’m going to ignore all of you who are currently screaming, “yes!”)

No.

I’m going to moan about it on my Blog via Internet Explorer.

Screw you Blogger. You’re not the only one who can rip off coat buttons with a flick of a dandy’s foil.


Addendum:

I couldn't even publish this post via Internet Explorer. The compose and edit functions don't work. So I have had no choice but to install Google Chrome. I now feel like, not only have I had the buttons slashed off my coat, but I have also had my balls cut off and shoved into my mouth.

Fuck you, Blogger.


P.S. My thanks to you that have pointed out that you can revert to the old Dashboard by clicking on the cog icon on the top of the Dashboard. Alas, this icon does not even appear when viewed in Internet Explorer... therefore one has to install Google Chrome just to revert to the old Dashboard and then carry on using Internet Explorer.

Damned sneaky. Damned underhand.