Oh! Buggar. I suppose it’s over then. Funny how we surprise even ourselves.
This blog was set up to help me understand Web 2 in what now seems like another age, even though it’s just three years. It was a partial success but I quickly forgot its original purpose because bloggledebook assumed another life.
Inevitably though, it has grown old and weary in the blink of an eye. This entry was tapped out on a mobile and sent remotely via wi-fi. There are other forums. New ways. The world has moved on.
As some of you know, I’ve long been fascinated by time and the nature of things, the cycles and rhythms of existence. My first stab at fiction, which has been gestating for an eternity, explores this as far my poor wee head can take it. But unlike the book which is yet to be born, I can’t help feeling that this particular entity has run it’s course.
In any case, my recent threads here have manifest crushings of heartache, frustration, anger, disappointment and disillusion. Hardly the nourishing fruit of creativity.
It’s been a terrible year. Accidents, friends dying, a bankrupt country and the feeling that I can’t do a damn thing about any of it. At the moment life really really sucks.
You know what – I’m pig bloody swine sick of playing the passive witness to bad news, having no option but to just stand there and take it. So in 2010 I’m sticking two fingers up to the universe and changing everything that can be changed. It may mean some significantly drastic, eccentric decisions.
So look you. Its also time to give bloggledebook a decent burial.
Things end. And sometimes they have a rubbish conclusion. The end.
A few things made me smile over the last 48 hours, including this headline from the Sunday Times Business section:
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, Dubai
And this from Voyager…
Tuvok: I’m not human
Doctor: No kidding
And this video….
I’ve realised that one of the major drawbacks of living alone is that I always award myself such generous portions of genoa cake. I need more cajoling to get out walking (and some time off).
It’s well under way and so far going with form. Clocks go back, end of half term and a spell of wet weather – fixture list in chaos.
However, it’s early days and and the real carnage starts in the stressful two-week run-up to Christmas. Watch out for spectacular fatals where Audis, BMWs and Mercs prefer to merge with the fast lane at motorway junctions, foreign lorries pull out blind into the middle lane and wild spins are caused by madmen tapping each other in the 120mph chase.
Even money on the big players – M25 clockwise through the roadworks on the western section, M4 flyover, Hanger Lane gyratory, M3 both ways, M6 northbound between Birmingham and Manchester, A34 where it meets the M40 at J9 and the M1 both ways south of Watford. If you’re thinking of a punt though, there’s favourable odds at the cutting at J6 M40 in the mornings when the sun shines directly into the eyes of eastbound traffic or the Woolwich ferry which sounds like it’s grinding to a halt. Or you could have a flutter on the length of the queues. More than 25 miles on the M25 clockwise southern section last night.
… at least I got home in time for the Armstrong and Miller show. Best comedy I’ve seen since Bill Bailey.
Managed to squeeze in a very enjoyable walk with Mort. Rather predictably, we got lost-ish. We misjudged how quickly it gets dark and ended up blundering round a farmyard in the pitch black, detected only by silently bemused cattle. All good fun, and if Mort hadn’t found his head torch I would still be going round in circles in a ploughed field somewhere in west Oxfordshire.
Had to laugh at the biker war that broke out in Canada. Apparently the Canadian branch of the Bandidos has been essentially wiped out after an internal power struggle left eight wasted, denuding the group to an unviable rump. They didn’t have enough money to buy the gasoline to burn the bodies. Then I read that most of them were living at home with their mums. And, er, half of them didn’t have motorbikes. Don’t suppose the Hell’s Angels are quaking in their colours.
Just for the record, the victims were:
John ‘Boxer’ Muscedere, 48
Luis ‘Porkchop’ Raposo, 41
George ‘Pony’ Jessome, 52
George ‘Crash’ Kriarakis, 28
Frank ‘Bam Bam’ Salerno, 43
Paul ‘Big Paulie’ Sinopoli, 30
Jamie ‘Goldberg’ Flanz, 37
Michael ‘Little Mikey’ Trotta, 31
Caught a bit of Bill Bailey earlier. Mike and myself once saw him perform in a pub. Brilliant.
He described footballers thus: “Borderline rapists whose job it is to shepherd a leather pouch into an outdoor cupboard.”
And he thought the Belarus flag was two bears fighting over a pineapple.
Been and gone and done it. Invested in an iPod touch and now waste more of my precious leisure time looking at applications I never knew I needed. Who spends 59p online to download a host of annoying noises? (I kid you not – there really is an application for that. They should just live in my street for a bit and then they can enjoy the sound of scaffolders putting up posts for two hours on a Sunday morning. Cheers for that). I can, however, see the sense of Chippy Finder (as in fish, not carpenters).
Thought the Today programme unleashed a bit of a cheap shot at Beth Tweddle this morning. She fell off the uneven bars and can now only compete for a World Championship medal in the floor exercises. Gary Richardson said that was “appropriate”. Ha-ha. Ripper.
She remains the best female gymnast we have ever produced by some distance, represented the country for more than a decade and came within a whisker of a podium finish in Beijing despite taking on the Chinese, Russians and Americans. The BBC sports reporter admitted live to the nation that he didn’t know what the uneven bars were – to more guffaws from the presenters.
I notice Ms Tweddle was stoic in her disappointment. “I’ve just got to go back and work harder for next season,” she said.
Gymnastics is not really my bag but I can recognise a dedicated professional when I hear one.
Big thanks to Al and And for organising the reunion. What a night.
Our one remaining teacher was on great form. No wonder we liked him so much. He’s still got a lively, acerbic wit, and talking to him again I was reminded of the amazing range of voices he employed in his story-telling. He also came up with some incredible revelations – for example, our old headmaster had been an MI5 officer in WWII. Wow.
But the thing that really blew me away was the picture Andy produced. I was joking in an earlier post that 1970s Hereford was stuck in a time warp, and that snap perfectly illustrates it. Our first class was in a shack with a wood-burning stove in the middle of the room – guess it wouldn’t be allowed now. All of us kids look like we are trapped in 1944.
