Long Time Gone

I’m afraid this blog has suffered another prolonged silence, which this time round I can’t blame on the mysterious power of cheese, or even on Sevenoaks (although it’s tempting). No, the truth is: I’ve been busy. And the plan is to continue being busy until I run out of train track, which by current estimations is going to be some time in August. So, from this point on, this pile of words is going to be intermittent at best; if I have a spare hour or two, I'll post a rant on something random (for instance, I had to watch Antonioni’s Blow Up again recently, and was sorely tempted to write something about the utterly crap commentary by the ‘academic’ Peter Brunette, but didn’t have the time).

So what have I been so busy doing?

I started this blog back in August 2007 as a bit of a diversion, something to keep ze little grey cells active during ‘down time’, i.e., the time spent between writing projects where I would stare out the window a lot, smoke more crack than was probably good for me, and mope about like an unemployed quiz show host. I never saw it as a ‘shop front’, where prospective paying customers could sidle up and squeeze my produce (so to speak). If anything, it was a bit of an exercise yard, a space where I could moan and bitch about all sorts of old nonsense. If anyone else other than me was reading, that was a bonus; if not, then hey – who cares? In any case, I've always had a (peculiarly English?) aversion to self-promotion, which I think can often tip the scales into self-congratulation; it's always been a lot easier (and far more entertaining for me) to talk about failure rather than success.

So to state that I’m being paid to write stuff seems a bit self-congratulatory. Weird, but there we are. And not just one thing, but two (and both features to boot). Zoiks!

That said, even writing that much in a public space such as this could jinx everything, so I’m going to shut up now.