I don’t quite know how to bring this. I normally announce the death of celebrities with a large amount of dry, almost uncalled-for humour.

Today, I won’t. It is with great sadness and regret that I announce the death of Humphrey Lyttleton. Typing those words sends a cold shiver up my spine.

For many years, I have been a fan of “I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue”. The Radio 4 Show, in which he chaired for decades. In fact, I happened to be listening to a random episode which appeared in my playlist earlier today, Humph’s dry wit and impeccable timing had me in fits all the way through it.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a recording of ISIHAC back in November 2006. For whatever reason, I failed to document it clearly on this blog, but it was without doubt one of the best nights I’d had in my entire life.

I can’t possibly begin to put into words what I’m feeling at the minute.

RIP Humph.

Technorati Tags: chairman, Death, humph, humphrey lyttleton, isihac, radio 4

Yesterday was just one of those days which I just want to forget, but I’ll blog about it anyway

The day before yesterday, I’d been in Asda, and noticed they’d had a special on their curries. 2 for £4. I bought two, one to take to work with me, and one for Daddykins to take home, which I’d have later. My last words to him before I closed the car door were “Don’t forget to put that in the fridge”.

After 12 hours of mind-numbing “work”, I return home and enter the kitchen. In front of me, on the table, was the curry, still in its plastic bag, sitting quietly at room temperature. Grrrr.

Daddykins, was naturally still in bed at this point. I go up to see him and tell him I’m in, like I do every morning. On my way out of the room, I turn, and knock a glass onto the floor, which subsequently smashes everywhere. Oh, that’s really great. I’d been in the house three minutes, and everything’s gone tits up. I enter my bedroom, and notice that they’ve erected (huh, huh, he said erected) another crane on the building site this one is either much taller than the other ones, or much closer. I couldn’t really tell as it’s been desperately foggy for the past few days.

Anyway, I take photos, as usualand publish them on here. As stated before, writers’ block had set in, so I didn’t have much to say.

By that time, it was approaching 11am, so I was about to go to bed. But then, the phone rings, and Daddykins answers. One of my (and my dad’s) friends, who I see almost every Thursday has had a heart attack. Could this day possibly get any worse?

I go to bed, and lie there until about 7PM. I get up, and decide it’s far too late to do anything at all. Too late to get ready and go out, and too late to do anything of any merit whatsoever. So, I switch on my computer and enter #speccy. Yes, it’s almost 7 years now, but I still frequent that very same chat room. Someone who was kicked out of there a year or two back showed up again, and killed the conversation for the entire night. Oh, goody. So, not only was I in the house on my own, I had nobody to “talk” to.

I spent the night writing DVD’s, as the hard drive on my main machine was starting to get full.

Daddykins returned at about 11PM and ordered a chinese. He was the bearer of even more bad news. Another one of my friends, who I used to drink in the Queens with (but hadn’t spoken to for a couple of years now) had died on Tuesday. I couldn’t wait for this shitty day to end. So, after being awake for no more than 7 hours, I ended up falling asleep on the couch. I awoke at 5AM, which is now exactly three hours ago. And, if you want to know what I’ve been doing since then, check the posting below.

I can’t wait to see what fun and games will be waiting for me in the next 16 hours.

Technorati Tags: bad day, Death, died, queens

Xmas. It’s the time of giving! So, I’m giving you a blog entry. There hasn’t been one for a while. I’m sorry. That’s as much my fault as it is anyone’s.

There’s been so much happening, I’ve neither had the time nor the inclination to sit and write for any period of time. It’s now Saturday morning, and I think I can finally squeeze 17 minutes of typing.

I shall briefly touch on some of the subjects that have ruled the last few weeks.

1. My birthday. I was 26 on the 2nd. Thanks for all of the email. Note the lack of plural there. Sob.

2. Polly died. I know I wrote a post about that, but thought I’d mention it again It’s strange without her

3. My aunt claiming “He’ll never get married”, referring to me…. 26 and over the hill. Great!

4. Chess. Versed Tetlow (aka Dropkick) at chess. Fucked it up majorly. Awaiting the inevitable. Speaking of which, I was going to join a chess club not so long back. Unfortunately I didn’t have my credit card with me, so I said to the doorman, “Will you take a cheque, mate?”

5. Ebay. Bought lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff. Far too much.

6. My camera is knackered. Not completely, but it’s getting hot pixel syndrome, where the elements of the CCD stick high, so a black image has little white dots all over it. Bugger.

8. It’s very cold. I might bring Snow Watch back.

9. Um.

10. I might have a new mobile number shortly. Got an Orange sim card this morning

11. There is no number 7. There was, but I deleted it.

Technorati Tags: bird, camera, chess, cold, Death, red hot pawn

Despite the jokey title, I’m really upset right about now. Polly, my imaginatively named cockatiel has died.

We acquired her from a family in Owton Manor back in the early/mid nineties. I can’t remember the exact year, it was that long ago. At that point, I was growing up. My nanna decided it was time to get me a pet. After flicking through the adverts in the local paper, there was one advertising a bird*cage*, and the plan was to get a bird to put in it at a later date.

So, I went over there, with my Aunt, and picked up the birdcage. Complete with resident cockatiel. Awww. She was a bit straggled when we got her. The family had dogs who kept jumping on top of the birdcage and scaring the shit out of the poor little bugger.

And, she remained with us until this morning.

I’d noticed she’d been a bit quiet the last few days. Not quiet as in dead quiet, but she’d spend most of her time at the bottom of the cage. It became apparent on Sunday, that the reason she was down there, was that she was nesting, with her tail feathers stuck in the air. And, this assumption was quite correct. On Sunday, there were three white, lovely, unfertilised eggs in the bottom of the cage. So, it was natural for her to protect them.

I can’t wait until 31st December. I can finally place a firm boot in the testicles of 2005, because, quite frankly, it’s been a shit year.

Technorati Tags: bird, birdseed, Death, polly

Bugger. No sooner do I activate comments, I accidentally reject the first genuine one. That was in response to the hastily written post about the dogs, a few weeks ago, written purely to see how many hits I got for the word “lesbian”. Anyway, as I abandoned the experiment at 0 hits , I’m going to have to google what the word “banal” means. I’m sure it’s something really good.

*tappity*

Oh.

I do, however, like this statement from Wordsmith’s “Word of The Day”…

“How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?”
–Joyce Carol Oates, “Speaking of Books: The Formidable W.B. Yeats,” New York Times, September 7, 1969

It’s always been a bit of a strange thing, writing this blog. You’re either loved, or you’re hated. No middle ground. Nobody says “It’s OK”, or “not bad”. It’s either marriage proposals, or death threats. And, I’ve had both of them!

I discussed this in an unpublished entry I wrote just before the 5th anniversary. It’s how much this blog has changed.

Going back to the earlier days, I was pretty much fearless on what I put on this blog. After all, it was hosted on something like freeservers.com…. nobody knew about it except me, and maybe a couple of friends. I could say what I liked. The blog was some sort of therapy to me. If I didn’t like somebody, I’d write things about them in here. And it was great. The early entries (mostly now deleted) involved around an ex, who shall remain nameless, for reasons explained later.

The site grew, it got linked to, search engines inevitably picked up on the content, and it wasn’t really anonymous anymore. So, I moved. To “TonOfSpace” some time in 2001. They promised 100Mb of free web space. And I enjoyed it. Until they completely vanished overnight.

This didn’t set me back. After a couple of moves to other temporary hosts, I’d somehow started to get a following. Links appeared in other blogs. Back in 2001, I had the world at my feet. My eye operation set me up for the first full time job I’d had.

it was time to lay bricks, and set up a foundation for me to build from. In 2002, mercuryvapour.co.uk was born.

God, enough of the history. I’m boring myself now.

So, banality is what it’s came down to. Meh, I agree entirely, and have done for the past few months. It’s not possible for me to word this in a way that’s not going to sound like a strop, and an old time “Jamie storms out of whatever he’s doing because there was a comment made”. The comment, naturally means nothing, but I can understand why it’s made.

Over the past few months, I’ve not put the effort into the site I used to. There are too many reasons to list. I’ve tried to pinpoint it to one reason. It’s not possible. So let’s list them.

1. Too popular. Every segment of this site is published by search engines. By the time you’ve read this, Google’s indexed it.

2. I’m too secretive. I respect people’s privacy, and these days, if I talk about them in here, I don’t mention them by name.

3. It’s too easy to upset people when you don’t intend to. Coatesy, one of the few people I do name in this blog, commented on Sunday, “I see you slagged me off in your blog again”. No. Never my intention. I do not say anything in here I would not say to someone’s face.

4. My dad reads it. Let’s face it, I’m in a spiralling pit of depression. Back in the old days, before he knew about it, I wrote about everything. How I felt. Whether it was good or bad, I’d write it, and publish it. I don’t like doing it with him reading it.

5. The rest of my family reads it. See above. I wanted to talk, in detail, about the recent death of my great uncle, which hurt me deeply. I can’t.

6. I want to talk about things I’ve been told, but can’t. Things which I literally shed tears over this morning. But can’t. There is no longer the veil of secrecy and anonymity I relied upon in the earlier days. This is no therapy for me. I’m simply bottling it up more and more. Thinking about it to the point of exploding.

7. I have never ONCE mentioned current girlfriends relevant to the time of posting. Secrecy thing again.

8. There are only so many times you can talk about having a really big poo.

It’s official. Blogging is no longer a hobby, it’s a chore.

And, back to the original comment. That’s why my life seems banal. It’s because the non-banal stuff is kept off the site.

I’m going to publish this unedited. And then edit it later on.

(P.S. I knew what Banal meant. I just wanted an interesting opening)

Technorati Tags: banal, blogging, Death, girlfriends, giving up