I remember when...

Just as my blogging here seems to be dying off, today I had cause to remember something we did together way back in 2005. Do you even remember 2005? I ask because I've just employed someone who had graduated and was born in 1996.  You know, 2005: when everyone blogged and had a magnificent nom de plume like SwissToni, Urban Fox or Lord Bargain? 2005: when the internet wasn’t only used to reinforce your own increasingly firmly held opinions and to throw anonymous hatred at people with slightly differing but equally entrenched views? When the USA didn’t rip children away from their parents and keep them in a cage?

Ah, good times.

Well, it was so long ago that you probably don't remember, but way back in those halcyon days, we did a handwriting analysis thing.  We had participative, inclusive fun then, didn't we?  No fewer than 18 people submitted a handwritten song lyric to me for analysis by B1rdienumnum (who had read a book on the subject and was thus more of an expert than any of the rest of us). What marvellous fun we all had reading that analysis and trying to guess who had chosen which lyric.

You can read the whole saga here (and just in case you can't stand the suspense, the results are here)

You just don’t see quality content like this any more, do you? Who has the time?

Heaven knows how, but in those crazy, early days when the world was new, as well as analysing handwriting, we also managed to do bookshelves, fridges and several rounds of a compilation CD swapping game.

I miss those days.

What happened to us?  Life just got in the way, I guess.

We were probably making other plans.  Or something.

threads...

As part of the package for being selected as one of the official bloggers of the London Marathon,  I received a few freebies.  A few weeks ago, I was the lucky recipient of a pile of Lucozade nutritional stuff (jelly beans, drinks, protein bars etc.  Then, this weekend, the postman brought me a substantial parcel containing a whole pile of green accented, London Marathon branded adidas training gear and a pair of Ultra Boost ST trainers.  The trainers alone are worth £130, but apparently the rest of the gear (long-sleeved top, short-sleeved top, running tights and shorts) are also from towards the top-end of the adidas range.

...not that any of this particularly matters.  I would have written them blogs for nothing.  After all, I've been doing that here for more than a decade.

Still, if they want a few blogs in return for all this clobber, then I'm more than happy to oblige.  Here's what they say in the introduction piece on their website for this year's official bloggers:

"Meet the runners who will be sharing their training journey to the start line on Sunday 24 April in a regular blog. Follow their journeys as they complete their training and look ahead to race day as they each plot their course to hitting their goals in London! From the high of a new training PB to the low of a missed run due to illness or injury, training for a marathon is never easy, but it’s immensely rewarding, so don’t forget to support and follow our runners every step of the way".

Nice.  Except that they've only asked for one blog so far, which they put up a couple of weeks ago.  There are twenty days left until we line up at the start on Blackheath Common.... so exactly how much of my journey are people expecting to read?  Come to think of it, with all my longest training runs now done, how much are they realistically hoping that I will talk about all this lovely training gear they've sent me?  It's not as though I'm going to wear a completely brand new set of trainers now, is it?  In fact, I'm going to be wearing exactly none of this kit for the actual marathon itself.  I'm not a complete idiot.  Apart from anything else, I look like an especially ugly adidas catalogue model.

Well, what do I care?  I've got the kit now, right?

...except that I'm a blogger: the idea of writing the same shit that you good people have been reading here for years to a potentially completely different audience and passing it off as brand new work is an attractive proposition.  Surely you can understand that?  If you're lucky, I'll then republish the stuff from there on here, so you can enjoy the recycled drivel all over again.

It's win:win, as far as I can see.

nice to hold when I'm tired...

Regulars around here will know that I don't have a great deal of time or patience for pity parties.  They might also remember that I get frustrated and amused by much of the writing about MS that I find on the internet.  There's a lot of good information out there, and a lot of good writers too.....but when it comes to MS bloggers, it sometimes seems that everybody wants to wallow in what they can't do rather than to think positively about what they can.

A particular bugbear is the "post of the week" that is chosen by ShiftMS.  They're a good charity, and usually very upbeat and positive because they're focusing on young people and want to keep thingks light and airy....but the person doing the choosing clearly didn't get the memo and seems incapable of picking a piece of writing that is remotely positive on the subject of MS.

This week's post is an absolute doozy.  It's on chronic pain, but just take a look at those pictures.  Here's two of them, but the rest are pretty much as good too.

 

Amazing, right?  Wow.  I'm imagining that man in a jar is voiced by Rob Brydon's small man in a box, and if you do read the post, be sure to imagine the author using the same tone of voice as Antony and the Jonson's in "Hope There's Someone".  I know I do.

Look, I get it.  MS is a crappy condition that can take away so much and dealing with chronic pain or any of the other myriad of possible symptoms is certainly no fun.....But as Tyrion Lannister said in this week's Game of Thrones,"There’s always been more than enough death in the world for my taste. I can do without it in my leisure time".

(Besides, as Steve - we're now LinkedIn connected and everything - said when he pointed me in the direction of this week's highlighted blog: TL;DR)

New image added as it's Steve's favourite: "sad-faced woman in wheelchair being pointed at by disdainful able-bodied normals"



Beautiful.

all about me...

Some years ago, I installed a widget that enabled me to track visitors to these humble pages.  It's not that I'm obsessively interested in every person who may be passing by on their way to somewhere much more interesting, or that I'm vain enough to want to graph my readership and compulsively try and work out what sort of content drives the traffic*....

*You guys like cats, right?  Everyone on the internet likes cats.

...I was just curious.

I check them once in a while, but when you use song lyrics for your post titles, you quickly learn that you get a lot of traffic from Google that basically isn't interested in what I have to say in the slightest.

Just recently though, these stats have become even less interesting than usual.  I write about all kinds of random stuff here and always have, so the referring search terms have always been a bit off-the-wall.  Here's the current selection:

-> girls in wetsuits flickr
-> over night bondage stories
-> skinny cheap monday jeans sagging
-> stunting in my onesie

I think I can work out the first one okay, but the rest?  What the hell are monday jeans and is it a thing that if you buy the cheap ones that they sag?  Why are those people being sent here? Are they finding whatever it is that they need?  Is that code?

Perhaps the answer lies in the referring sites: apart from Google itself (US, UK and Canadian versions - most of my visitors come from these beautiful countries.  Thank you all!), all of the other sites that send traffic here seem to be exclusively from either Russia or Romania. They look like the kind of sites that stream video or something like that, and no doubt probably infect your computer with more viruses than you can shake a stick at.  Why on earth are they linking here?

Well, the principle of Occam's Razor states that when there are multiple possible explanations, then you should always choose the simplest.  So with that in mind, I've decided that they must just be fans.  I'm not a vain man, but for each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there is always an infinite number of possible and more complex alternatives, because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypothesis to prevent them from being falsified; therefore, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are better testable and falsifiable.

So they're definitely fans, then.

Well then, a massive buna! to my Romanian visitors and привет to my Russian guests.  In case you haven't already worked it out since you arrived, you won't find much streaming video here, but I'm an inclusive kind of a guy, so pretty much everyone is welcome here.

Yeah.  Maybe I should just ignore the stats and continue wittering on about whatever pops into my head without a thought for a possible audience.  It's worked for the last ten years, right?

 ....if by 'worked' we actually mean 'successfully shouted nonsense into the void'.

sweet little lies....

If you'll indulge me again, I think I'll do just one more nostalgia post to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this blog before putting it all behind me and moving on to the next decade (!).

I've been writing about earworms here almost since the very beginning (well, March 25th 2005, so almost the very beginning, anyway...)  Maybe I'm more susceptible than most to songs worming their way inside my head, or perhaps I just like cataloguing stuff.  Maybe both.

Over the years, I've listed all kinds of shit.  For a while, I had lots of other people guesting in the regular Friday earworm slot, sharing the things that were stuck in their heads.  Sharing is caring, after all.  I like hearing what's playing on other people's internal jukebox.  Besides, as a cut and paste job, it usually made for an easy post.

I think my absolute favourite guest in that slot was Lizzy, and her earworms guest slot produced what I think is probably the single most brilliant piece of writing that this blog has yet seen or is likely to see.  Reading the post again now, I just have to marvel at her creativity.  Read it and weep.

The clue is in the title....

-----
Falsehood Merchant, Nobody Believes You
Friday, December 15, 2005

Evening all. Earworm time again. My internal jukebox is still alternating between Nelly Furtado, Panic! At The Disco and vintage Iron Maiden, so it's probably just as well that I'm handing the keys over to a Guest Editor with a much more varied and interesting musical palate than my own rather blunt instrument.

If bloggers were musicians, then I rather think that she's probably the virtuoso lead guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and song writer to my rather lumpen bass player.

Ladies and Gentleworms, without further ado, it is my great pleasure to present for your earworming pleasure, TAFKATUF....

Earworms of the Week - Guest Editor #51 - Lizzy from Literary Hoax

MY WEEK IN MUSIC – Lizzy Hoax

1. Mouldy Persephone – Umbilical Glow

I heard this lo-fi garage rock song in a dream in the small hours of Monday morning. When I awoke, it was still playing. As you can imagine, this confused me for anything up to a minute. Looking out of the bedroom window, I saw the fit man from two doors down slumped and snoring in the front garden, while his phone rang loudly from his lap. Perhaps it was his worried boyfriend? Perhaps it was a wrong number? I don’t know. Anyway, this song was his ringtone. It annoyed me, because I hate waking up suddenly to songs. They stalk you all day.

2. Egg Might Wake – I Fashioned A Simple Tool

When Tanya Donnelly left Throwing Muses, rumours circulated that she would soon join Egg Might Wake. They were entirely without foundation. This song sounds like Billy Idol being dropped down a lift shaft.

3. The Dullards - Epic Transport Stench Syndrome

Yes, a song that is over 14 minutes long if you include the cymbals solo at the end. Inconveniently, I have a rare form of musical OCD which requires me to sing the entirety of any song which I find myself humming. I didn’t get much done this Tuesday as a result.

4. Samantha Happen – Coruscate

This is the club anthem that samples the Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummers advert from 1988. (Sorry, non-Brits: I doubt you know of these high quality meat products at all, let alone the attendant promotional campaign from nearly 20 years ago.) It includes the classic mother-son exchange: “Did it rain?” “Not all the time!”, mashed up and looped with a Timbaland-style Indian drum track. I feel obliged to say “Bootiful!” now, as a weakly amusing verbal tie-in. But the track’s useless, so I won’t.

5. Mine All Mine – Double Poinsettia On Ice (bonus track on ‘Christ & Co’ EP)

The first and last festive entry. This song is quite rare even among hardcore M.A.M. fans, so how it kept waltzing into my shower all week, I have no idea. It’s on Mine All Mine’s 1992 Christmas EP which is unfeasibly hard to find. The “John Major’s got no baubles” chorus dates it terribly, but it holds up rather well apart from that. Sort of like Tina Turner gargling paint stripper over a Polyphonic Spree B-side. That good.

6. Leatherette – Parachute Offences

Probably the only song in my collection that rhymes “faecal contamination” with “Ascot train station”. For that, I can almost forgive its relentless hounding of my synapses last Wednesday. The saxophone intro can go to hell though.

7. White Crime – If Dick Thought It Would Help (He Would)

How this electronica bleepfest managed to hijack my internal jukebox this week, I really couldn’t say. I only heard it once and that was while walking past someone’s car. It must have hooks like a scorpion. Why do some songs do that? Why do some people drive a convertible with the top down in winter? Why do attention-seeking maniacs install enormous bass bins in their cars so that one’s teeth rattle at 140 bpm when they drive by? Or is the clue in the question? Hey, if I had all the answers, I wouldn’t be talking to you now. I’d be on a beach with Joaquin Phoenix. But would I really be happy?

8. Riga – Fuerteventura Kidnap 1982

The original singer from Riga once threatened to punch me. This exchange took place outside the Spread Eagle pub in Camden in the summer of 1996. Admittedly, I had just written a a review saying his band made Menswear look like Motorhead. I stand by that statement, and the rest of the band dismissed it good-naturedly as fair comment. Which meant his suicide attempt in the Dingwalls gents’ later that night came as quite a surprise. He moved to Bournemouth 3 months after that strange night, without telling anyone but his sister. I hear he still makes music, after a fashion. ‘Fuerteventura Kidnap 1982’ was recorded shortly after Riga got their current singer, Jo Pinto, but it’s still the same old fey jangly shite.

9. Dominik Pringle – Not Even With Yours

Dominik Pringle is the pseudonym of someone very famous indeed. I won’t spoil it for you, but you’d almost certainly recognise him if you saw him. Here’s a clue: he’s married to someone really thin. Go on. I bet you can guess. This is standard R&B, incorporating a cameo-by-numbers from a middle level American rapper, and boasting a video full of gyrating nubiles. Our host would love it.

10. Manifest Deceit Corporation - Tricks Of The Trade (Queen Liar Liar dub)

I was hoping for some peace and quiet today, but I’ve been mumbling this shouty electropop to myself all day. Inexplicably, it performed really badly on release in the UK but was huge in South America. The woman behind it made enough money to retire, just from the Peruvian market alone, or so the music industry gossips claim. Good on her, I say. It’s a great song and you really ought to buy it, or your record collection will have a yawning chasm where it ought to be. In fact, the void will be so big, you might fall into it. Years would pass before you were found. Your friends would shake their heads sadly and resolve never to let their own music collections fall into such disarray. Small children would devise innovative new insults derived from your name. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

----

Thanks Lizzy. I have to confess that I'm a touch disappointed that Cliff Richard hasn't made it onto your list this week... but apart from that it all sounds aces! (erm, not that I've actually knowingly heard any of it, that is... stuck in the pale, indie guitar ghetto as I am).

----

Dear, oh dear.  Lizzy.... that was frankly brilliant.  You cheeky scamp.  Now that I put YouTube links on every song in an earworm post, I don't think this would work today, but it sure as hell worked back then.  Or maybe I was just really lazy and gullible back then.  Yeah, it's probably that.

Incidentally, it's also Lizzy that I have to thank for my current non de plume... She's quite the talent.  I salute you, wherever you are!

can you read my mind?

As we continue the 10th birthday celebrations, here's another memorable post - to me anyway - from out of the archives.  In this one from 2005, I prove once again that I share more of myself with my readers than most other bloggers.....

Insane in the Membrane....
Saturday, September 24th, 2005

If you're at all squeemish, you may care to look away now.

Allow me to present for your viewing pleasure...... my brain.

(Feel free to click on an image if you want a close-up....)

I ask you - what other blogger gives you more? Could you ask for a greater insight into the innermost workings of my mind?

Samuel Pepys eat your heart out.

And yes, now you mention it, I do look a little bit like a fish in some of these shots....

(**respect due to the Eye In The Sky for these quality photos of the original scans....**)

And the neurologist said:

Brain: Coronal T1 and T2 sagittal FLAIR

There is no evidence of a space occupying lesion. There is a mild enlargement of the posterior bodies and occipital horns of the lateral ventricles with a slightly colpocephalic appearance. Areas of ill defined high signal change on FLAIR and T2 imaging are noted adjacent to the bodies of the lateral ventricles bilaterally and a small subcortical high signal lesion is noted involving the right middle temporal gyrus. There is no definite involvement of the corpus callosum or posterior fossa structures.

Cervical Spine: Sagital T1 T2 axial T2* sagital and axial T1 plus Gadolinium.

vertebral height and alignment are maintained. Canal dimensions are generous. There is a discreet oval high signal lesion located ventrally in the cord at C3 level causing mild cord expansion. This is poorly visualised on T1 imaging but shows evidence of marginal enhancement on the post contrast images. Axial images show the lesion lies on the left side of the cord at the C3 level. No other cervical cord lesions are identified.

Thoracic cord: Sagital T1, T2 and T1 plus Gadolinium.

Vertebral height and alignment are maintained. Canal dimensions are generous. There is no evidence of extrinsic compression of the thoracic cord, or of an intermedullary lesion.

Conclusion: The combination of the definite left ventral cord lesion at C3 and the subappenydymal lesions on the brain imaging is rather suggestive od demyleination.

---

Pick the bones out of that.

(as I said at the time I originally posted this, "And what does that mean? Well, my neurologist actually disagreed with the hospital neurologist that wrote the report, and said he couldn't see any lesions in my brain, but only on my cervical spinal cord. This is good - I don't want lots of lesions, as that way MS lies. I have a single lesion that seems to be on the way down. It's probably caused by a virus and may take about 3 months to go away and they may never know what caused it. It may mark my spinal cord permanently and leave a physical limit that wasn't there before, albeit one that won't affect me in my every day life, but might come into play when I really push myself physically and my nervous system will just say "NO". Ho hum. Back in 3 months time for a follow up appointment, and in the meantime just wait.

It's if it comes back that I really have to start to worry.

The colleague of mine who had similar symptoms to me at the same time has just been diagnosed with MS, so I'm currently feeling that there but for the grace of God go I....")

Hmm.

---

It was another four years from here until I was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The entire journey from that first morning in summer 2005 when I woke up with a numb hand all the way through to diagnosis and starting to inject myself in 2009 and beyond.... it's all documented here.  I don't know if any of it has, or ever will be, of any use to anyone else.  Who knows?  What I do know is that it has certainly helped me to be able to take my thoughts out of my head and to put them down here.  The act of writing has always helped me to see what I'm thinking more clearly, and that's never more so than working my way through the mass of emotions that come with a diagnosis like this.  I just hope that I don't come across like I'm moaning all the time.  I do seem to talk about my condition an awful lot.... But even now, looking at pictures of the inside of my head just seems impossibly amazing.  Even if I do look quite a lot like a fish and appear to have a large hole in the middle of my brain that the neurologist doesn't seem to think worth mentioning.....

dirty....

As we continue the 10th birthday celebrations, I thought I'd come back to a post that I often think of; a post that confirms once and for all that this is not a sophisticated establishment. Of all the many things that I have written here, this has to be one of the low high points....

unusually copper-coloured plughole?

And All The Things You Do
Tuesday, February 01, 2005

I'm now going to seriously lower the tone: if you are of a nervous disposition, or if you harbour delusions that I am some kind of sophisticate, please look away now.

----

Who am I kidding? You're all still here, aren't you? Nobody thinks I'm a sophisticate?

Well, don't say I didn't warn you.

I have a question for you.

I was inspired by something that Charlie wrote over on Late Night Radio (one of the first blogs I ever found, actually. Discovered using the "next blog" button and still a regular read).

Over to you Charlie:

"after years of reluctance, and after the longtime recommendations of all 3 roommates and several of my friends, I finally found an opportunity and peed in the shower last night. I didn't like it, and don't think there will ever be an encore."

As I said over there, on the one hand, that's gross. On the other hand, his roomates have clearly been pissing in his shower for months, so it's partial payback, right?

Before you take the moral high ground here, think on this:

Have you ever had a bedroom with a sink? Could have been a room at University, a room at college, could have been a bedsit, perhaps even in a prison - wherever.

Here's the question:

Did you ever take a piss in that sink?

Come on now. Be honest. You can tell me.

----

Some of the best bits, of course, came in the comments that followed:

Damo: Ben Elton's never been that funny a comedian. But he once told a story about how he got embarrassed when he was in a public loo cubicle and he took a dump - he couldn't have anyone else hearing the noise. So beforehand he laid paper down on the water, which deadens it. At this point he looked round the crowd, hoping for recognition that he wasn't the only person that did that. Well personally I never have. But I now feel like Ben Elton must have done every night on that tour when he found out that he wasn't the only one. Because I too had a hall of residence room with a sink. And did I REALLY want to get dressed every time I needed the loo in the night? Naaaaaaaaaaah.

Guilty. And anyone here who had the opportunity and says they didn't is a liar... I hope...

Mark: Yes. It was one of those hotels with a toilet shared communally at the end of the corridor. I couldn't be arsed walking 5o yards just to go. Not proud of it, but there you are.

Des: Yup.  Halls of Residence are a very conducive to this kind of behaviour.....sink in the room, but loo 30 yds away....was there ever any doubt at 0200 on a Sunday morning in Newcastle, ne fooking chance man!

Jenni: I've never done that, but maybe it's a bit different for women? I did, however, live next to a girl in my dorm who wouldn't take her finger and toenail clippings to the trash bin, but would instead just drop them on the hall carpet right outside her door. Oddly, I am more okay with the thought of someone else peeing in the shower/sink than with stepping on someone else's toenails.

Di: Um... I thought everyone pissed in the shower.
Am I a non-girl? Do I get banned from the fraternity now or something?

Bee: Of course it's possible for a girl to have a wee in a hall-of-residence-room-sink. All you need is a chair to stand on. And yes, I do speak from personal experience. The toilet on the 1st floor of Furzedown was VILE (and so were quite a few of the people who lived on the same floor ...)
Also, I can recommend the lining-the-toilet-with-a-piece-of-paper thing mentioned by Damo. It not only minimalises the sound, it also lessens the chance of skidmarks and eliminates splashback.

LB: I would like to also heartily comment the use of toilet paper as a sound insulation device for pooing in public toilets. As is running the cold tap very fast if you are in someones house and there is a chance they may hear you...and as for the shower. well. if you haven't done that, you're a liar.

John: There was a guy on our uni golf team who got the nickname 'sinks' - for months, no one would tell him why. Finally, someone got sick of him asking and told him that, when he'd been standing at the sink in his room with his curtains open in the first week of term, someone on the same floor of another building had happened to look across and see him doing what he was doing.

He wasn't pissing.

Ka: The first time someone told me that they didn't pee in the shower, I was shocked! You don't? It's gross? REALLY? I mean, it's not like peeing in the bathwater and sitting in it for an hour - the entire point of a shower is rinsing ick away. Isn't it?
I feel vindicated by your post and your readers, SwissToni.

Yoko: Everyone pisses in the sink at Uni. I didn't even need a chair, I'd just hop up on the edge like I was scaling a low wall.
I think the piss-deny-ers are the same people who never masturbate.
Oh, wait, you mean none of you do? Oh, me either...

---

BEST.  COMMENTS.  EVER.

.....Funny.  Confessional.  Informative.

We lived in simpler times back then, friends.  Happier times.  Cleaner times?  Ok, maybe not.

the writing's on the wall...

As part of the 10th birthday celebrations of this blog, I'm digging back into the archives for posts that I love.  Actually, I might only do this once, as I've got better things to be doing than rummaging around ten years of mostly pointless posts.  Panning for gold?  There's very little decent prospecting around these parts.....  Anyway.  When I was thinking about ten years of blogging though, this is the one post that really sprang to my mind.

I can't quite imagine doing something like this these days, and if I did, I'm not sure that anyone would be interested enough to take part.  Still, those were different time.  So, without further ado, a repost of something I wrote in November 2005.  Morrissey lyric post title, obviously....

Anonymous call, a poison pen....
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005

So here's the thing:

In the end, eighteen people answered my call for handwriting samples:

[2014 note: I imagine many of these links are now defunct, but I leave them mostly intact as a point of historical interest]

--> Jenni from Wonder(ing) Goddess

--> Aravis from Exploring Aravis

--> Di from Suburban Hen House

--> Le Flash from The World of Flash

--> Statue John from Stand By Your Statue

--> Foxy from The Urban Fox

--> Spinsterwitch from Life As I Know It

--> Chig from World of Chig (welcome Chig!)

--> Mark from Fear & Loafing in England

--> SwissToni from SwissToni's Place

--> Adem from The Big Blog

--> Rufus-Fan (who has a blog, but isn't ready to tell us where it is yet!)

--> Bee from Life in the B

--> John from The Ultimate Olympian

--> Michael from Yummy Brain Gravy

--> B1rdie Num Num from The Num Num

--> The Eye In The Sky (who doesn't have a blog, but likes prog rock!)

--> LB from [redacted]

Each one of these lovely people sent me a picture of a handwritten lyric. For a dazzling prize -- the honour of naming a post on this blog and perhaps a SwissToni mix CD -- all you have to do is match the handwriting to the person.

To help you out, an eminent graphologist (the numnum) has kindly provided an analysis of each sample.... click on each picture to enlarge.

You ready? Here we go then......

Sample 1



Mystic NumNum says: "This person has a good level of confidence, requires personal space a lot, and is fairly caring of those around. The convex baselines indicate a good starter, but a rather poor finisher in most cases. The short upper loops indicate a material person who does not partake in religious type thought. The short sharp hooks indicate a irritable and cranky persona. The lack of a g/y/f/j may have tilted this analysis off track though."

Sample 2



Mystic NumNum says: "This person is a clear thinker who is reserved and caring. This person is a tad hypersensitve, so I shall tread gently. Focused in the here and now, but with a strong fantasy drive and a very childlike demeanour in most cases. (This person is also one who dislikes unlined paper, which makes my job bloomin hard!)"

Sample 3



Mystic NumNum says: "This peson is a logical thinker, who is keen to keep distance (slightly reserved). This person is unfortunately a tad insecure, and tries to balance that by involving in social activity. The clash of behaviours leads to insecurity. A strong focus in the past, and a non-egocentric view of life. However, the slightly falling baseline indicates a level of fatigue with life, which needs rectifying to balance the usually strong focus."

Sample 4



Mystic NumNum says: "Optimism, and a bit of a penchant to dwell on the past. Another good starter but not really geared to finishing with much aplomb. Strong level of self confidence, this person is slightly emotional and spontaneous with a bit of a quick-judgement. Sometimes prone to inferiority bouts, the optimism helps keep the driver going. Sometimes childish with a bit of a dreamy quality."

Sample 5



Mystic NumNum says: "An entire song when a lyric would have sufficed, matches the overreaction quality of the narrow spacing. Unfortunately I cant see it in good detail, but it looks like a bit of an inconsistent personality - at one stage calm and another very nervous and insecure. Very here and now, material driven, so no dreams of utopia or unrealistic futures, but a bit of an optimisitic streak."

Sample 6



Mystic NumNum says: "A balanced mind, thinking a fair bit about the future. Keen to continue learing from mistakes, this person is sometimes a bit too impulsive. However, mostly a very clear thinker with a high capacity to care for others. Very determined too. But again, could do with a bit more freedom and some plain-paper!"

Sample 7



Mystic NumNum says: "An orderly person who is conventional and requires privacy. Has a strong ability to care for others. Fairly confident and proud, though more leaning towards a religious view of life, and extremely hypersensitve. A strong penchant for all things olde, a childlike behaviour and a fantasy driven mind. A very bad starter but manages to finish in the end."

Sample 8



Mystic NumNum says: "Heavens, this is all over the place. An inconsistent personality, flitting between impulsive behaviour and a bit of a guilt complex afterwards. A strong fantasy type mind, that is dirving to optimism. A not so good finisher, but adaptable, caring and conventional most of the times. As an aside, if its a man, he sure has very feminine handwriting! The kind of guy who would have a tie pin and button hole, or the kind of woman who has a trinket or two on her person, but not really driven to catwalk-style (?)"

Sample 9



Mystic NumNum says: "Looks to the future this one, but has a bit of a hangup in learning much from the past. Strong self confident, lives in the here and now. Oddly enough shows signs of a need to fit in! Sometimes childish, but a dislike of y/g/j in their lyrics, leaves me little to work with in 5 mins."

Sample 10



Mystic NumNum says: "Secretive. Sometimes hypersensitive, this person has a lot of guilt driven behaviour. Optimism keeps them going, they are a bad starter but manage to finish in the end. An objective outlook of life, they do need some time alone to themselves. An odd sense of confidence, though the ego is sometimes taking over."

Sample 11



Mystic NumNum says: "Very neat! An artistic view of life, prone to walk off the beaten track somewhat. Very controlled behaviour, with a lack of confidence in most situations. A caring outlook, with a motherly view of life, though very focused in the here and now with little time to dream and fantasise. What is striking, is that amongst this, is a bit of inconsistency, so prone to moods."

Sample 12



Mystic NumNum says: "No time to waste here! Alas inconsistent behaviour shows that this person flits a bit now and then. Keeps their distance, then jumps right in and takes centre stage. No lack of confidence here, though it is sometimes masked as uncertainty. Driven by a need to satisfy material and physical aspects of life, this person is always on the go!"

Sample 13



Mystic NumNum says: "Seems like a clear thinking person, but there are aspect of extreme chaos here. Not sure where they lie, but could be on the personal rather than work side. A spontaneous person, who seems to lack confidence. Living in the here and now, they are able to learn from the past and use that well. Optimistic behaviour, but sometimes lacks pragmatism."

Sample 14



Mystic NumNum says: "Hmmm. Lack of performance confidence, but a stong physial and material driven person. Respects authority, but lacks confidence. Clear thinking, caring and holding a bit of hidden aggression. Conventional, but a need to be slightly different. Doesnt experiemnt, but should do, and if it doesnt go well, should try again and not give up!"

Sample 15



Mystic NumNum says: "This person is tired, fatigued. They dream of something, but something is distracting them, and they dont have the energy to progress. There is confidence there, but no ego. Largely living in the here and now, they can think clearly but have a hard time finishing things. A streak of individualism, but conformist too! I suggest a holiday!"

Sample 16



Mystic NumNum says: "This essay was a bit hard to read. This person is very realistic. Very driven, and a bit on the physical/sensual side! There is a strong ego there, and a bit of a fantasy mind. But a lot of inconsistency, which means there may be some confused people around this person. A bit tired, they do finish what they start, sometimes!"

Sample 17



Mystic NumNum says: "Sometimes forward thinking, sometimes not! Very inconsistent in that aspect. Strong healthy like for the past, but a very healthy confidence. Optimistic, caring, but somewhat conventional. It looks like two people to be honest - or a split personality! One is more grounded than the other, but both have healthy fantasies!"

Sample 18



Mystic NumNum says: "Last but not least - A very bold statement. Determined, though a bit tired. Childish behaviour somtimes, but largely optimistic. Good levels of confidence here, very much here and now though. Conventional, clear thinking and caring. Very good margins too! Person is good with budgets!"

---

Over to you.... shall we say you've got until Sunday night to make your guesses?

Thanks to everyone for sending in their handwriting samples, and an extra special big thanks to the numnum for giving up his Sunday afternoon to pore over them and provide his often scarily accurate analysis.

---

Back to 2014....

If you're interested, then the answers and winners can be found here.  I think what I loved most about this post, apart from the collaboration and how everyone got involved, was the selection of lyrics on display.  I'm reminded, flicking through these comments, that I did one of these on bookshelves too, so I might dig that one out too.  Wasn't blogging fun all that time ago?

Oh, alright then:

1 - Bee
2 - Di
3 - Michael
4 - me
5 - Flash
6 - Jenni
7 - B1rdie Num Num (thanks again for the analysis too, mate!)
8 - Foxy (still love that choice of lyric)
9 - Rufus-fan (aka Sarah)
10 - Statue John
11- LB
12- Spinsterwitch (aka Kari)
13- Adem
14 - John the Ultimate Olympian
15 - Mark
16 - The Eye in the Sky
17 - Aravis
18 - Chig

Good game, everyone.  LB won, but mostly because he'd seen 5 sets of the handwriting before!  I'm still not sure why so many people had me down as the Streisand lyric, mind....

I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs....

Ten years ago today, on a whim, I started a weblog.  I was twenty-nine years old.

Ten years represents 25% of my entire life, and some things have changed a lot in that time: I've got married, been diagnosed with a chronic, incurable illness, travelled around the world, eaten a tarantula, got a cat, installed wireless internet, bought my first mac, grown a beard....

Other things have hardly changed at all: I'm living in the same house, I work at the same place (albeit in a completely different job), I still listen to lots of music and do a lot of running....

I'm probably not the right person to ask about whether or not I've changed much as a person in that time.  If I had to guess, I'd probably say both yes and no.  Still, let's look back at that first ever tentative foray into blogging and see if we can discern anything about me from there:

Tuesday March 02, 2004
Well, this is my first ever entry.
Not quite sure what plans I have for this blogspot, but I guess we'll find that out as we go along. I've sort of been thinking about this for ages, and now I'm taking the plunge. Here we go then.

Thoughts for the day:
(1) Oh shit - I forgot to buy 30th Birthday presents for 2 of my friends who are up for a shared 30th bash this weekend
(2) Thank you Amazon!

G'f is away today. It's sort of hard to settle without her. Haven't been able to concentrate on the TV (University Challenge, Nevermind the Buzzcocks) or on my book (The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud). When I'm finished here I think I'll wash up, do some ironing (oh how domestic) and then try the book again.

Hm. I'm sure it will get more interesting than this.

Well.  Those two friends and I all turn forty in the next week or so, and I haven't got them presents for that yet either... so no change there (and I could well use Amazon when I do finally get around to it).  My wife will probably laugh at the idea that I ever did the washing up or the ironing, but she's away a lot more now and I still find it harder to settle when she's not around.

I especially love the charmingly naive belief that somehow my blogging would get more interesting over time.  Well, 2398 posts over 3652 days, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of words, and no sign of it yet!

You never know though, do you?  Maybe over the next ten years.....

A decade of blogging!  Good grief.  Who would have thought it?

heavy words are so lightly thrown...

Given that the tenth anniversary of this blog is in less than a month's time, it's probably a little bit late to start wondering what would happen if some of the stuff on here got out into the public domain.  It's already out in the public domain, of course.... just because I could probably count the regular readers on the fingers of one hand, doesn't mean that everything on this site - including a vast archive of fascinating posts on an enormous breadth of subjects -  isn't available to any passing browser (from the look of my stats, that's an increasingly large number of people from random websites in Russia, Romania and China).  What I mean is if it became more widely known that I was the author of this blog; that.....

**flourish as I pull off my mask and step out from behind the curtain**

.....I am Swisslet.

**tiny, sad trumpet noise and single cymbal crash**

I don't really make a secret of who I am here, and the avatar is really only a thin figleaf to prevent casual googling, but neither do I really advertise the connection.  Many of my friends know about this; some of my family know; my wife's family know; one or two of my colleagues know.... and that's about it.  As far as I know, people don't walk past me in the office fully up to speed with my thoughts on beard grooming because they've read some of my many posts on the subject.  I quite like it that way.   I'd be lying if I said I don't self-censor myself here, because I do and because there are some subjects that I just don't touch at all.  On the other hand, I do not really feel the pressure from anyone else about what I should or should not be writing about.  I don't write all that much about my job, but I do occasionally tell stories about things that happen there, and over the course of the last eighteen months or so, I've vented my frustrations about my last boss.  How would I feel if those thoughts were more widely known in the office?  Is it even possible to damage my already-stillborn career any further?

To be brutally honest, the simple truth is that most people simply won't care.  My experience tells me that, even amongst some of my dearest friends, their willingness to read every one of the lovingly crafted words here is somewhat limited.  Most check in from time to time, I think... but very few read on a regular basis.  I think the same would likely be true of my colleagues at work.  If you remember, I actually kept a separate blog when we were travelling in 2010, copied all the posts from here to there, and publicised the link to my colleagues so they could follow us as we travelled the world.  I don't think very many people followed the link, and if they did, then their interest in photos of me on the other side of the world was somewhat limited.  If they found out about this place, I suspect that there might be an initial interest, but even with handy tagging to take you to all the interesting bits, there are more than two thousand posts on here, and the only person that interested in what I think is me.  In fact, probably not even me.  I'm not vain enough to assume anything different.

Would it matter if more people connected me to this blog?  Probably not.  I'm sure there are things on here that I might regret writing and would rather weren't dragged out of context and into the daylight.  On the whole though, what you see here is what you get: opinions and feelings honestly given.  Take it or leave it.  I like the act of writing and I mainly write to clear my mind and for the discipline of structuring my thoughts into sentences, but perhaps it would be nice to have more of an audience.  I guess my only worry might be embarrassing someone else.... specifically my wife, but also anyone else identifiable by proxy through me.

What do you think?  Is there anything on here that I (or anyone else) should be worried about if word got out?  You might think this is another sign of my impending midlife crisis, but I've been wondering about being less coy about the ownership of this blog, for example when I write elsewhere about my MS.  Should I worry?  Is anyone really likely to care?

Your thoughts please.......

I'm not here, this isn't happening....

I was wondering what to write about today (if anything) when I stumbled across the latest post by the ever-excellent Wheelchair Kamikaze.  If you've not come across this blogger before, then I can only heartily commend him to you as being one of the most eloquent writers you are likely to find.  He is stricken by an ever-advancing form of progressive MS, and writes movingly and evocatively about his life as he watches his body slowly disappear around him.  He's not a misery-blogger by any stretch of the imagination though: he's playful, creative and funny, able to see the humour in even the blackest of situations.  He's also the most determined advocate and informed patient that I have yet come across.... if you want to know about MS research and the endless machinations of the drug companies, then he's your man.

Anyway.  Today's post pretty much broke my heart as our man reflects upon his past and on the mental toll this appalling condition has gradually taken upon his life.  He's not self-pitying in the least, and even from here he can see the upside of the wheelchair as the single best way of navigating New York City, but it's hard to read this and not feel the aching sense of loss.

"I find myself, despite my best efforts and better judgment, increasingly getting lost in the past, wishing that I could turn back the clock several decades for a second shot at it all. Given the time and opportunity to pick apart my old life as one might dissect the intricacies of a piece of enigmatic prose, the many mistakes made, the missed opportunities, the undeniable missteps of my long gone existence stand out in stark relief. Might a different choice here or there have put me on a path that would not have led to my being afflicted with this goddamned scourge? Live in the moment, I tell myself, stay in the now, embrace with gratitude all the good you still have, but the siren song of days long gone, faded times once so pregnant with possibility, penetrates my defenses like a laser guided bomb."

Read the whole post here: Wheelchair Kamikaze - a certain kind of crazy.

Now that's writing.

who knows what's after?

I know I blogged about something similar myself a little earlier this week, but I simply have to point you in the direction of this excellent blogpost.  It was flagged up as "Post of the Week" by ShiftMS from their Facebook feed today and it's an absolute cracker.

Weaving a Way - "That horrendous neurological disease"

The author is a medical student with MS and she hits the nail right on the head here and I'm going to quote large bits of the post at you here, and I make no apology for that because it is spot on (although, please do go and read the whole thing....)

Apart from type 1 diabetes and SLE the medical school curriculum seems unduly focussed on teaching about MS. Whilst I suppose that makes sense because it is relatively common, they don’t seem to have decided to teach us that it’s a condition (like the others mentioned) which exists on a spectrum of outcomes. Just as they imply that all people with diabetes will eventually go blind and have their feet amputated, all of “those” with MS will be in a wheelchair. Just after my diagnosis I met a local consultant, diagnosed with MS in later life, who told me that for years before diagnosis he had been delivering a lecture entitled “the worst five conditions to get.” Top of his list was MS! Full of hope I asked him whether he had changed his mind but he dashed the hopes by saying “no, it’s bloody terrible.”

In my experience, it remains overwhelmingly true that people who hear I have MS almost always assume that my outcome is dire and that I am certain to die young and in a wheelchair.  Maybe I will, but I don't know that any more than you do.  It's slightly depressing to hear that this seems to be a view taught at medical schools though.

With the exception of paediatrics, I have had teaching about MS in every speciality we have covered. In my fourth year exams there were questions about MS on three of the four exams. In addition to neurology lectures I have heard about it in lectures about eyes, pregnancy, bladder and bowel, end of life care, lungs, vertigo etc etc. The “finest” example was when someone giving an obstetrics lecture referred to MS as “that horrendous neurological disease.” The upside of this is that it can generally be given as the answer to any question along the lines of “which diseases cause…?”; the downside is that it is a regular reminder of what MIGHT be to come.

Beautiful, huh?  Imagine being an MS-sufferer and sitting in a lecture hall to hear your condition described by the professor as 'that horrendous neurological disease".  Lovely.

All of this may be irritating to people who are much poorlier than me. Justifiably they can mutter “well what does she know, she hasn’t suffered too badly yet.” And if you read the forums and facebook pages it is obvious that there are people who are unable to stay upbeat, positive and hopeful. I empathise with the vast majority of these but have had to stop reading them due to my rising irritation with those (a minority) who seem to have taken their diagnosis as a reason to take to their beds and give up on life

I'm acutely conscious when I write about my MS that I may come across as excessively stoical.  I have some problems, but I also know that, relatively speaking, I'm doing pretty well and I don't like to grumble.  In addition, I absolutely hate the idea of letting this condition get the better of me and become an excuse for not doing things.  There are lots of MS bloggers who write about nothing but their MS.  I know that what someone writes in their blog is not necessarily everything that's going on in your life, but it's tempting to think that there are some people who are defining their lives by their condition.  Fuck that.

But how positive can you really be?  Then again, if you take that view, how positive can anyone be? Who knows what's coming next?  That's true for everyone else in the world too, regardless of whether or not they suffer from a currently incurable neurological condition.... but at the same time, y'know... I sit in the waiting room at the neurologist every year, and I see the people waiting with me.

So I want to shout “look at me, it isn’t necessarily completely shit” but I don’t because, of course, it is still early days and there are significant challenges to overcome....

I know what she mean, but for myself, I'm inclined to be a little more positive.  Live in the now, for goodness sake. Tomorrow we die.  Today we live.

Great post though.  Hat tip.

but it's still, still life....

Do you remember back in the day when the purpose of a weblog was to share links to other interesting websites?  Yeah?  Well, tonight we're going to go old school.  So let's get the atmosphere all 2004: how about a playlist?  "Milkshake" by Kelis, "Hey Ya!" by Outkast, "These Words" by Natasha Bedingfield, maybe? "Mad World" by Gary Jules? "All This Time" by Michelle MacManus? "F*ck It (I Don't Want You Back)" by Eamon?

Enough?  Yeah.  Probably.

I bought my first iPod sometime around here and downloaded my first song too.  Good times.

Anyway.  Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.  Where are those links?

The first is to the story of a self-proclaimed ‘anarchist philatelist', Angus McDonagh. Angus is a 64 year old man from Somerset who started making his own stamps, all featuring his own image and a number of made up currencies, and then using them to send letter as far afield as Australia.  Apparently, after sending more than 100 letters using these stamps, only one was ever returned as not being legal (which seems astonishing when you look at some of the rather outlandish designs).  He says that he used to send cheques to the Royal Mail to compensate them for lost revenue, but they were never cashed.  Don't look too far down into the comments (and I deliberately ignored the link to the Daily Mail story on the subject)... you don't have to get too far before the first rather self-important "but other people are having to pay for this man's stupidity" remarks.  Better to instead focus on the off-beam creativity that led to the idea in the first place.  You can buy a book that documents all of the stamps, if you like.

The second story is, in its own way, even more remarkable.  This is the story of the strange old man from Kyjov in the Czech Republic who made his own cameras out of cardboard tubes, dressmaker's elastic and lenses he had ground himself from plastic discs using toothpaste.

Apparently, he would wander around his hometown taking mostly surreptitious pictures of women.  He was a well known figure about town, and perhaps because of his tramp-like appearance and the cobbled together nature of his equipment, no one really took him seriously and lots of people humoured him as he pointed his cardboard tubes at them to 'take a picture'.  Turns out he was quite good.

In a way his pictures are a bit creepy: lots are taken of women at the local bathing pool, some taken through a wire fence and many with their subject presumably completely unaware.  Some of the photos are extraordinary, though, and Miroslav Tichý has won awards and been exhibited in places like Zurich, Seville and Paris. The photos are blotched and gritty from dust in the camera and imperfections in the developing process, but they are also very striking.

Director Radek Horacek of the Brno House of Art, which held an exhibition of Tichý's photographs in 2006, describes them thus:

"They are all very careful observations of women from Kyjov and of everyday trivial activities. But soon you realize that these trivial situations such as someone sitting on a bench, women waiting for a bus, someone taking a T-shirt off at a swimming pool, are somehow extraordinary. Tichy managed to give this banality a feeling of exceptionality and rarity. Just part of a female body in his pictures can look very esoteric. There are so many magazines that offer much more nudity than Tichy but his photographs are different. A woman's tights between a knee and a skirt or a swimming costume in his pictures look somehow mysterious"

Tichý himself described his primitive methods more simply: "First of all, you have to have a bad camera", and, "If you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world."

Fascinating.

Anyway.  As you were.

big star overnight....

At the beginning of March 2014, I will have been blogging for ten years.  In all that time, and in spite of the millions and millions of words I have gifted spewed onto the Internet and my obvious talent and star quality, I haven't exactly been inundated with interview requests.  Or book deals.

Never mind.  The worm may finally be about to turn.  I have just been featured over at Uborka!

If you want to find out my views on where I am living, why I grew a beard, my most satisfying achievement of the last seven years and why I feel like a musical fraud, then you'd best make your way over there now and read the article:

Where are they now? An Interview with Swisslet

One of the things that I've learned from doing this is that it seems that my 2009 identity switch from SwissToni to Swisslet apparently confused a few people who wondered where I had gone.  Maybe there's a massive nostalgia market just waiting for a SwissToni comeback?  Or maybe I've been around so long that I'm finally coming into fashion?

Hmm.  Perhaps not.

Well, regardless.  I now await the arrival of my book deal with a renewed sense of anticipation.

Thanks to Karen and Pete for having me, and thanks to Gordon for tagging me and asking the questions.  It's a splendid website anyway, so if you haven't discovered them yet, then you should get yourself over there forthwith! (The most recent post, "Safeguarding" is fantastic, for starters.  "In here [the Internet], shy people can be gregarious, anti-social people can make friends, people having a hard time can get support, people can find out that there’s a name for the way they feel and that they’re not the only one to feel it."  Beautifully put.)

is that the question?

Once in a while, I like to take the dusty path through the stats for this site.

I've been doing this for long enough now (a little over 9 years, would you believe) that I've long since reconciled myself to the fact that I'm never likely to get a book deal out of my blogging and I don't tend to obsess over my visitor numbers.

I write for me, man....which, looking at the data, is probably just as well.

That said, I never fail to be entertained by the search terms that bring people to this humble corner of the Internet.

My current favourite?  "Do beards smell?"

Really?

Well, in the hopes of perhaps increasing my readership, I'll take this one.

Are you ready for this?

OK.  Do beards smell?  Well, I can't claim to speak on behalf of all beards - indeed, I shaved mine off in December, so perhaps I shouldn't really be speaking on behalf of *any* beards - but mine didn't smell.  

Well, I don't think it did.... perhaps lightly of Sex Panther (60% of the time, it works every time...).  Other than that, largely odourless.

There.  That's it.  Happy to help.

Good luck with your enquiries, random passing stranger from the world wide web.  If you have any further questions, please feel free to swing back any time.

That's me: mass appeal blogging since March 2nd 2004.  Any interested literary agents can contact me via the email in my profile.

I was beautiful then....

A helpful random person sent me an email out of the blue yesterday, pointing out that a link on a post of mine from my old site, written in 2004, had a broken link to the US constitution, and suggesting an alternative.  Given that the link he suggested was on an Identity Theft website, and because it's a 8 year old post and not a terribly important link in the context of the post, I haven't bothered to change it (remember when blog posts were full of links to other things?).  What I did do, though, was stop for a moment and read my post.

Have you ever done that thing where you stumble across a dissertation or something that you wrote when you were at University?  It looks so polished and alien that, although you know full well that you did write it, you can't believe that you actually did.

Yeah.  That.

Check me out:

"In the British Constitution, instead of the three branches of government being separate (legislature, executive and the judiciary), in Britain they are concentrated in Parliament. Parliament is sovereign and cannot be limited (in the way that, say, the US Congress can be limited by the Supreme Court). That's not the biggest difference though. Unlike the American Constitution, the British Constitution has never been written down. You cannot take it out of a library and have a look at it. In fact, you pretty much have to be a constitutional expert to have any real idea of what it is. This makes it an inherently flexible system, although its critics would say that never writing it down means that the citizens have no real idea what their rights are or when they are being violated".

Amazing right? It gets better:

"The roots of our parliamentary democracy can be traced all the way back into the middle ages and beyond. It has traditionally been believed that the primacy of parliament began when a succession of kings in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were deposed "by the authority of Parliament" ( a phrase actually used in the confirmation of the claim of Henry IV to the throne).... This view of the "Lancastrian constitutional experiment" is dented somewhat by the fact that Edward IV seized the throne from Henry VI in the traditional way - by battle - and Parliament had nothing to do with it. There is however a substantial body of evidence to suggest that people in the middle ages had a real sense of their historical past and a notion of constitution. This awareness only increased with the advent of the printing press, and is reflected in the popularity of the theories of kingship and law found in "mirrors of princes" manuals (like 'De Regime Principum' by Giles of Rome that had been translated into 10 languages by the end of the fourteenth century). This popularity shows that, amongst the political nation represented at parliament at least (we're not talking about the Monty Python peasant here), there was a notion of a consitution dealing with law, justice and property. Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI - the 3 deposed kings - aroused the anger of the political nation by breaching this notion of constitution to such an extent that parliament acquiesced to their deposition. It is this notion of constitution that still underpins the authority of the British Parliament today. It is the bedrock of the constitution".

Nowadays it's all whining about my job, exercise and half-arsed attempts at fiction.  When did I stop writing boring, barely-relavant stuff about medieval concepts of kingship?

They really don't make blogs like they used to.  Even when they're written by the same bloggers.  Twelve comments too.  What happened to comments?

shake your arm and use your form....

Neil Gaiman always says that whenever people ask him how they become a writer, his response is simple: write.  It's pretty hard to argue with that, isn't it?

I spend a lot of time writing: it forms quite a large part of my working day and then, when I get home in the evening, I usually spend a bit of time in front of my computer blogging.  I like to think that I'm pretty good at writing, and I suppose I probably pride myself on it.  When we get down to brass tacks though, I don't really do any truly creative writing.  I create a lot of words, every day, but I don't write creatively.

This has to change.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my future over the last few days.  I've spent fifteen years working in a corporate environment, this isn't something that I ever really intended to fall into and it's suddenly, belatedly dawned on me that it certainly isn't something that I want to do forever.

I pride myself on doing as good a job as I can, but I lack ambition in the sense that I have no wish to be the head of my department, never mind managing director or anything like that (even if I loathe seeing what I see as mediocrity being promoted past me).  I earn a decent wage.  I could no doubt be earning more if I had moved companies every so often, but I'm not motivated by the extra money and I'm certainly too lazy to put up with the extra hassle any such move would likely entail.

What I really want to do is to write.  It's all I've ever really wanted to do.  It's one of the reasons that I blog: it's a creative act that flexes muscles that I rarely use in the course of my job.  I've never really thought that I could make money out of writing, and I don't want to ever write purely for money.  I write for fun.

It's just occurred to me - and you probably realised this about me years ago - that my job stops me writing as much as I'd like to, but equally my blog stops me spending the time I do have really trying to write creatively.

I'd like to give up my job, and maybe I will.... but whether I do that or not, I really need to start spending a bit more of my time just writing: fiction; short stories; poetry, even.  Anything.  Fragments.  Just anything as long as it's creating.  I just need to find out if I can actually write.  Maybe I'll do some courses, or join some writing groups, perhaps I'll even end up doing an MA.  I just have to have something else in my life.  I need to learn about structure and plotting and dialogue and all sorts of things... but given time, maybe I can learn those.

So yeah.  To cut a long story short, I might spend a bit less time around here and a bit more time trying to just write.  I haven't decided yet if I'll publish anything that I do write on here.  Maybe I will.  Maybe I don't need the added pressure.  Be sure to let me know what you think.  I guess part of the point of writing is to have some readers, right?  You're not much of a writer if you can't take criticism from your readers, eh?

I've churned out a 1000 words tonight.  It's not much, and it might not even be any good, but I'll read it again tomorrow, and I might even try and improve it.  Or I'll write something else entirely.

I've let my muscle go slack and I need to start exercising it again.

Something has to change.

I'm floating in a most peculiar way....

I've mentioned this before, but every Friday morning, I have to sit down and write a brief update for submission to a weekly email newsletter that is circulated around our department. The creative process is simple: I ask my boss and the various other members of my team if they have any highlights I should talk about, they shrug their shoulders and look at me blankly and I have to do the best I can with often very thin pickings indeed.

This, coupled with the fact that the report as a whole is so dry as to be practically unreadable (it is, in fact, almost certainly not read by 95% of the people who receive it....it is met each week with a resounding lack of interest) has led me to spend the time mostly entertaining myself.

It started with the use of song titles as the headers to each of the two or three little paragraphs that I write each week. I would have theme weeks where I tried to insert as many song titles or references into the text as I could (one week it was 80s songs, another it was references to horses).  The lack of actual content and the general pointlessness of the whole exercise soon saw me submit updates that had pretty much nothing at all to do with anything we might - or might not - have achieved as a team that week: I've quoted long chunks of things as diverse as "Blue" by Joni Mitchell, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot and "She Walks in Beauty Like the Night" by Lord Byron; I've gently mocked some of our more ridiculous processes and made friendly fun of other teams.  I've pushed and I've strained at the boundaries of what might be considered acceptable in a business update email, trying to keep it interesting and daring the censors (the members of the leadership team) to amend my submission before they mail it out.... but they never have.  Each week, the report is issued with my entry entirely intact as I wrote it...

All, my friends, to a reception of deafening silence.

So this week, I included this:

It's a picture of a mug we found in the kitchen near our desks.  We were somewhat taken aback to discover a mug featuring an entirely naked man in the office, so I thought I'd make reference to it in a "Lost Property" section in my report.  Clearly, I couldn't send it out as it stood, so I edited the picture to insert a picture of my boss's head over the critical area.

I sent it out to the leadership team for collation, copying in my boss as always.  He was stony-faced. 
"You've gone too far this time, you've crossed the line"
"It's okay, I've censored the picture so it's decent"
*cue hilarious double-take as he realises what I've covered it with*
"Why me?"

Too much?  Well, if they didn't like it, the leadership team member putting together the update could simply take it out before issuing the report.  No one has ever really told me what is supposed to go in this report, and there aren't any guidelines on acceptable content, and as no one was offering up any alternatives, I've pleased myself.  I've always threatened my boss that the day I get censored is the day he can find someone else to write the damn thing for him... I was half hoping this might be my moment.

Nah.  They issued it untouched to pretty much no reaction.  Well, one guy asked me why I was quoting some obscure poet ("That's Byron, darling...."), but otherwise pretty much nothing.  My splendid act of career nihilism (publishing a picture of a naked man with my boss's head over his penis?) has barely caused a stir in an uncaring world.

Where on earth do I go from here in next week's update?

I can't help but think that the amount of effort and creativity I put into this bloody thing every week is like throwing pearls before uncaring swine....but then I remember that I'm a blogger too, and that's just what we do.

Lisa likes brandy and the way it hits her lips....

Now, look. I don’t do this sort of thing very often, but I’m going to make a recommendation of someone whose blog you should read. I should probably do it more often, really. I’m pretty sure I used to do it a bit more back in the day, when we were all a little bit more connected and comments were more free-flowing. Somewhere along the way we all got that little bit more self-absorbed and wrapped up in our own lives and a little less concerned with the lives of total strangers. I think maybe we’re all a little poorer for that.

Oh sure, I know that Twitter has picked up a lot of that slack. But really, how much can you really connect with someone in 140 characters? It’s better than nothing, but I’ve made some fantastic friends through blogging, many of whom I now share conversations with on Twitter… but I’m not sure that we would be in quite the same place if we had only met through Twitter.

Anyway. I digress.

I’d like to point you in the direction of Lisa Lynch and her blog Alright Tit. I’m pretty sure that as a successful author and journalist in her own right, it’s not that Lisa needs the hits… but I haven’t read a blog in a long time that I find so consistently touching.

Most of you will be familiar with Lisa, but she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 28 and began a blog in 2008 to work through the issues and emotions that the diagnosis raised, as well as to document for herself and her friends the many ridiculous things she experienced along the way – weird post-chemotherapy pubic hair regrowth to name but one. It’s been a bumpy ride: the cancer diagnosis, the treatment, the subsequent inability to have kids, the mastectomies, the new improved rack, the book, the broken back suffered on the Mexican holiday to celebrate the all-clear… and then we moved onto what we thought was going to be the next chapter of Lisa’s life. Her life post-cancer.

Something about Lisa’s writing struck a chord with me right from the start. A lot of this is because she’s a pretty damn good writer, but it’s also because of the lovely way that she finds comedy in the hand she was dealt and just gets on with her life, no matter how ridiculous and inconvenient it might have become. I don’t have cancer, but I have seen parallels with my own MS. It’s a shit business, but what can you do?  What can anyone do?

When I got back from Africa a couple of weeks ago, I logged onto Alright Tit, following a plug on Lisa’s twitter feed, to see what had been going on. I was horrified to read that Lisa had been diagnosed with a secondary cancer in her bones. This time it’s not curable. Apparently we’re talking years and not months, but even so…. It was an awful thudding shock to me as a reader and casual internet acquaintance. Imagine how it must have felt to Lisa and her family.

And yet, here’s Lisa in her update today, she’s busy being funny and moving and profound all at the same time. Reporting a long text conversation with a friend about the latest news on each other’s cancers:

[edited slightly. Go and read the post in full]

Lorna:… Oh Lisa Lisa. Why the fuck?
Lisa: …Why? Because we’re the best ones. If we weren’t so bloody brilliant in the first place, none of this shite would be a problem.
Lorna: Do you know what I think, Lisa? I think through all this we have stayed nice girls. We love our families, we love our work, we love our lives. Cancer won’t take that away from us. I really believe that everything happens for a reason – some of us pull the short straw health-wise, but the long straw life-wise. We are long straws.
Lisa: That, Lorna, is going on my blog, because it is absolutely spot on. I love you x

I read that, sat at my desk in the office at the end of a long day, and it moved me. You know what? That’s going on my blog too Lorna, because it absolutely is spot on and hits the nail on the head. We’re the long straws and no stupid fucking disease can change that unless we let it.

Definitely go and read that post though.  There's a scary legal statement at the bottom about copying without prior written permission, so you know.....

hello, hello

...are you all still with me?

Good, then let's carry on the same as always.  Same old guff, new premises.

Deal?