2 today

I came to the realisation when I was on the bus this morning that it's two years ago today that I started this blog. I tend to have many odd moments of realisation on the bus mind you, but this one felt like it was worth a mention at least.

Two years, indeed, since I wrote my first post here. It was a Saturday and I think I was ever so slightly hungover, about to get dressed to the nines for a wedding.

Sometimes I'm surprised I'm still blogging - at least under the same pseudonym - other times I can't imagine much time passing without getting drawn back into it. Therefore I'm not going to come out with a statement along the lines of I'm still blogging against all odds - more like, against some odds.

I'm still here anyway.

It feels a much quieter place round these parts of late, other people move onwards, sidewards and sometimes off the radar seemingly altogether, for all sorts of reasons. Various gadgets (the Followers facility for example) make it necessary no longer to pop over to others' sites to see if they've written a new post - it's all up there on the dashboard. As with certain others I follow who have done so, I sometimes wonder about disabling such facilities.

Useful as they (and stats and so on) are, they can also serve as a distraction, a numbers game, which is completely beside the point of why I continue to blog.

None of which is voiced as a complaint or a pointed comment of any kind - I'm happy to get as many or as few visitors as I get - just an observation (after all, there are blogs I used to frequent, and now visit rarely if ever). There are, all the same, some visitors who have been a constant more or less from the start.

You're all welcome, should you be reading this.

In Search of Borders (Journeys by Blog part 2)

I seem to be making it a habit to be getting up early on Saturday mornings these days - earlier in some cases than when I normally get up for work on weekdays.

Yesterday was no exception, and it was worth it even just for the walk to the bus stop. The streets were totally silent and the weak morning light diluted even further by the hovering mist, though ameliorated by the promise of warm and sunny weather later.

I was journeying up to Chester and then on to Cheshire Oaks, the latter being a big retail outlet village in the middle of I'm-not-quite-sure-where (don't bother trying to search for I'm-not-quite-sure-where on Google Earth: I'm not quite sure where to start looking, for one thing).

Chester is a lovely, historic town with many fine things to see and to savour. I arrived there mid-morning - roughly half past ten - though due to the early hour of my awakening and embarkment (I know that's not a word, but sod it) it felt more like early afternoon. I would like to take you on a journey through this town with its many sights, its hidden stories waiting to unfold: old and beautiful buildings from times past which stand proudly, the weight of history more than ably carried by their aged but resilient facades and interiors. I would like to, but there's bugger all for me to tell because I headed straight from the train station to the bus station, and eating a Kit-Kat Chunky was about as cultural as it got for me during this time.

Perhaps, you might think, this is beside the point. You'd be right. The point being, I was heading over to the aforementioned retail outlet whatsit - specifically Borders, the bookshop - in order to meet the very talented Caroline Smailes, author of Black Boxes (her second novel, following on from the wonderful In Search of Adam), since she was to be signing books instore.

As I sat down on the bus, keeping my eyes peeled and my wits about me, a rather chic lady leaned over and asked in an Italian-sounding accent, Do you know where is Cheshire Oaks?

I explained that that was where I was heading, but that I hadn't actually been there before: so if she wondered why my eyes were peeled and why there were wits about me, that was why. She nodded knowingly. We exchanged a few words here and there. As the journey progressed, it occurred to me that she might be a fellow blogger, heading over to meet the aforementioned author. I had to ask.

Are you a fellow blogger heading over to Borders to meet the aforementioned author?

She smiled knowingly.

No, she replied.

Oh.

I entertained the notion of telling her that she could bloody well find her own way to Cheshire Oaks then, but I resisted. We arrived there soon enough, in any case.

Cheshire Oaks is huge and slightly surreal. The mist had long since cleared and the place was positively sun-drenched - as such, it appeared before me as a big plantation of shops, or maybe a retail-opportunity version of one of those sprawling towns in the American Deep South with wide roads running through the middle of them (whether such towns exist is another matter entirely).

It took perhaps 15 minutes to walk from the point at which the bus dropped us (a bus stop, I believe it to be called) to where Borders was, looking every bit like a huge slab of bookshop which had been dropped there from a great height.

I walked in.

I felt a bit nervous, like I usually do when meeting someone for the first time, but there was no immediate evidence of book-signing-related activity at this point. Upon asking one of the store assistants, I was pointed in the direction of a table which had copies of Black Boxes stacked in neat little piles on it - Caroline would be here in a little while. Fair enough, I thought. It was midday by now, though it felt more like the tail-end of the afternoon. I headed over to the music books at the back of the store, picking up a copy of The Fallen by Dave Simpson to flick through whilst sitting on one of the all-too-comfortable settees nearby.

Not that I really looked at it: I was too busy looking around in search of familiar faces, or at the very least, people who looked like they might be fellow bloggers. Here wasn't a particularly good vantage point in any case, so I wandered around for a little while: presently, I toddled back in the direction of the table, and there was Caroline, hurriedly putting the finishing touches to her book:



















A thought hit me, uncanny in its prescience :

If, say, I blog this tomorrow, it's possible it might get a bit rambly and long-winded...depending how it goes, I wonder if I might use this moment to have a break in the narrative and resume in a subsequent post?

Erik

I was really very pleased that one of the bloggers who has landed here in recent days found my post about a piece by Stars of the Lid, checked out the link to the piece mentioned and was, (and I quote) completely blown away.

That's just marvellous, and makes me smile. I did my best in that post in question to give a description of the music and the feelings it evoked, whilst aware that I don't exactly have an adequate grasp of vocabulary, at least as far as certain musical/technical terms are concerned. Not that I would let such things stop me.

Meanwhile, I've just been listening to Erik Satie: Danses de Travers, and Petite Ouverture a Danser (scuse the lack of little dots above the letter a and so on, I can't be bothered) amongst some choice others.

This is one such occasion where no amount of description would do justice to the music in question. But in terms of the impact - they've just stopped me in my tracks, once again. It's the kind of music which forces stillness and silence, and I'm left shaking my head in wonder.

I'm glad these things still serve to have such an impact upon me.

Update: here's a link to an interpretation of Petite Ouverture a Danser, which is along similar enough lines in pace and stuff (my descriptive powers really aren't with me today) to the one I have, which is on a cd entitled Piano Works by Reinbert de Leeuw.

Journeys by blog/ The last post ever

Well let me clear something up before we ("we?" Who's this "we" exactly?) get any further: the bit about "the last post ever" is bollocks. Complete and utter shite. I just wanted to inject a bit of pointless drama into the proceedings early on.

In a way though it does illustrate a point. I think. One reason I took a break from writing blog posts was that in some ways it all felt like using a lot of different words which could be summed up as elaborate ways of writing "me, me, ME!"

Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing in itself: it's in there amongst the reasons I actually started blogging in the first place - it was just that I stopped finding ways of writing "me, me, ME!", or at least, I stopped finding it interesting. So what does that have to do with including a stupidly melodramatic and mendacious line in the title? Well it just feels like another way of saying "me, me, ME!" but in a much more barefaced kind of way, and hence signalling a return to writing posts.

Hmm, not the most catchy way of resuming my blog activity is it?

The other thing is, I think it's only accurate to say that I was taking a break from writing posts. That break has done me good, but I realise that quite a lot of my activity during said break has been blog-related in some way. One such example was a good chat and Sunday lunch in rather genial company some weeks ago: a more than pleasant couple of hours spent in a pub out of town with good food and a couple of pints of Landlord.

Then recently I went to a blog party with an equally genial host and lovely guests. This too was a civilized affair, and was memorable not just for the food, fine wine and conversation, but for the incredible sound of torrential rain against the glass roof of the conservatory.

The thing about it is that I still find there to be an inescapable sense of weirdness (not in a bad way) about meeting up with people who I've previously - or primarily - known online. I'm not talking about it here in terms of the potential risks there might be - but just from the sense that meeting people who I only know through blogging is still something very novel, and...well, weird.

Put it this way, if two years ago you (whoever "you" are) suggested to me that I'd be heading up to Edinburgh for a couple of days on my own, and one of the focal points of that visit was to attend the book launch of someone I'd only communicated with online, I would have politely suggested that you were talking bollocks. Or I might have just said, no, you're talking bollocks. I wouldn't do such seemingly random stuff.

But then it's only just under two years ago that I had a conversation online with someone (no links to post here because the relevant blogs are now defunct) who happened to be in Berlin for a few days, a couple of weeks before I was due to head there myself. The result of that conversation was that the someone in question agreed to set me a challenge: she posted a photograph of a small piece of public art which I had to find and photograph for myself.

It's perhaps telling that I expected this challenge to be no more than an intriguing aside to my stay in Berlin: in the end, due to a number of factors, it ended up being tightly woven, if not utterly integral, to the whole fabric of my first stay there. It also seemed to carry a lot of meaning for me, amplified by the sense of headspace that you get (whoever "you" are, etc) when you're away from familiar sights, sounds, patterns of thought and so on.

I hope that this serves, though, to illustrate the weirdness that I'm talking about - the fact that I could spend so much of my time engaged in something which arose from a chance conversation with someone I only knew through words on a screen.

But really, therein lay the appeal. I may yet edit and post my writings about that whole experience, though I'll first have the courtesy to get the okay from the person in question.

Such was on my mind though as I headed up to Edinburgh earlier in the week. I wasn't going solely for nmj's book launch - but that served as the catalyst for me travelling up there in the first place and also giving me the chance of doing a few other things I wanted to do.

So I've had a couple of days with some much-needed headspace and the chance to explore somewhere new (but somewhere I've long since wanted to visit). With the main focal point, in terms of social activity, being an evening with people I've never met before - but some of whom I've had varying degrees of contact with online. The aforementioned blog connections.

As I noted either to bobo or maybe to nmj herself (or probably both and everyone else in the room besides, since I found myself chatting away like I was on commission, and also said hello to hullabaloo, though I can't seem to link to her), it's like a kind of celebrity status: you might recognise faces, you have a certain amount of prior knowledge, perhaps some sense of expectation.

The difference is that these same people are likely to know a certain amount about yourself too, and there results a delightful mix of familiarity and sheer newness: talking over territory you (whoever "you"...etc) may have covered many times - but now with the addition of tone of voice, gestures, eye contact and so on. I realise that's quite an obvious point, but the fact of it can still be just a little startling. Which again serves to emphasise that quite delicious weirdness.

So I've been away in terms of writing my own posts: but I've had a hell of a lot of overlap between Real Life and Blogging.

The other thing which has to be said about each time that I've experienced this overlap so far (most definitely including the previous examples above), is that it's been a fantastic, enjoyable, positive experience.

Last night's book launch was no exception. I was happy to have been asked by nmj to take some photographs at the launch - it was nice to have a bit of a role (perhaps analogous, albeit distantly, to having a challenge set for me as mentioned earlier), which might also serve perhaps as a barrier in case my social skills (of which I have plenty) decided to desert me (which happens aplenty).

But it was great, and I'm glad that it went so well for nmj. She displayed great wit, personality, eloquence and energy as she talked about the book and then gave a reading. (I use the word "energy" whilst being aware that crippling exhaustion is something that those who have ME have to face so much of the time.) It was also great fun: a relaxed and informal atmosphere, good people to meet and talk to, and wine there for the drinking. I haven't read her book yet - haven't had the chance to start it - but I'm looking forward to it.

Time flew. I'm back home already, full of good memories of the launch and the rest of my stay, and these reflections on that intriguing oddness of the overlap between real life and blogging.

I realise too that I'm rambling: I'll stop now.

I hope that this final comment won't detract from or diminish the value and the enjoyment of the interactions mentioned above, since they've been very much shared experiences and, in nmj's case the evening was, as it should be, all about her.

But I have to say, it does seem as though I've found some new ways to say "me, me, ME!"

Receive an award, award an ASBO

The kindly dj kirkby has presented me with another award to add to the virtual mantelpiece, this one prompted by a shameless display of my tattoo - with accessories - on Caroline's blog (no I'm NOT providing a direct link to the post: I've already indulged in enough shameless self-promotion!). Thanks dj (and Caroline too), greatly appreciated!

Whilst this is graciously accepted, I'm going to do my usual thing of ignoring the conditions for passing it on to others, but I do think it would be appropriate of me to bestow it upon one particular blogger. His comments and his posts often puzzle me to say the least, but they are often punctuated by flashes of sheer brilliance; I recently suggested that he has the knack of expressing completely the opposite understanding of the point of many of my posts; he's also been consistently making cryptic (what else?) references to darts on my recent comment threads.

So I'm awarding zola this particular badge of (dis)honour, in light of the fact that not only did he finally answer my pleas to actually write a post about darts, but I also found it to be a cracking read (From Football To Darts, posted yesterday). Blogging above and beyond the call of duty, as far as I'm concerned. The only thing is, I don't think he'll accept this award unless I manage to convince him that it's actually an ASBO.

ZOLA, I'VE AWARDED YOU AN ASBO

(I wonder if that'll do the trick)

Well it's there for him if he so wishes: zola take a bow.

A belated tribute (slight return)

Dammit twice over.

Although I had popped over to his site more than once this week, the penny failed to drop until this evening that it was his birthday the other day. Merkin, that is.

Then I published a post about this, and managed to delete it. It was witty and everything and everybody would have loved it.

I'll settle instead for repeating the main message in it rather than trying to recreate such a lost classic.

Belatedly, happy birthday Merkin. Cheers!