Bloody Blog's Birthday...

Happy birthday blog,
this bloody blog, one year old of blog today.

Well, what a journey we’ve been on together you and I - you pushing me along from behind, I sometimes, often, reluctant to go where you want to take me - and why do you take me to the places that you do?

When I set out on this lark that’s exactly what I thought you would be, a lark, a bit of fun – something that I could take or leave and pick-up or put-down as I chose. How wrong a man, particularly a compulsive one can be. You’ve dug into my fibre and you feed on me, eating and nourishing. Parasitical? Not you… more symbiotic, I feed you, you feed me and we both grow.

Remember back then, a year ago, it started with - ‘Gosh! I'm in e-space! Here I am with my very own blog and the future opens up in front of me in ways that I could only have dreamt of just seconds ago.’ My very own blog? Not quite, I hadn’t reckoned on you. Perhaps I should have left you well alone, and sometimes looking back on all these posts, a year of posts, I really question if it was wise to start this journey with you – and you me?

I’ve left myself open you see. You know me too well and you are playing on it, me - manipulating me.

Let’s go back. I’ve (sorry, we’ve) been to some strange places. Learning to whistle with our uncle Charlie, caught in that recurring nightmare we share, holding hands together with Titania on Midsummer’s Eve on Chinnor Hill, back in school with the feathers, and rags, and hats, and robes – yes, I really must tell them what that’s about some day. We’ve waited side by side on the cricket pitch as German shells explode around our Uncle Alf, and you waited silently with me as I sat crying in the forest by the side of my best friend as he died in his cold and running car.

Too much information? Some would say yes - but not you. You want more. Much, and always, more - you want essence, the and my.

We’ve travelled far and wide together - hot, aromatic, India in a bubble. Toured a wet weekend in the Lakes, we rowed across currents on Bardsey Sound towards the magic isle of Avalon, drove fast along the road to Scarborough, then fell back to my home town with all the pubs, our recollections. And we’ve weaved some tales along the way, our parents - ‘The flying Fellini’s’, a Halloween ghost, we’ve walked and wished on sea nymphs…‘success leading us up a narrow road to a remote farm house and a dead end’.

A dead end… who knows? Oh, I forgot, you know don’t you. You know it all, all starts and every ending.

And all of our tales are true; at least a truth runs through them - woven from threads of gold to make this somehow grey world shine and shimmer with the reality of what might and should have been.

What’s that you say? ‘I should live in the real world’. Well, so my Father says...

Surely better a world where cats talk and we find pictures in the clouds, where rubber duck vicars are murdered in their own churches and strange creatures are encountered on the wet Welsh beaches, a world where the dead can talk and comment on the present…surely better than that other? The real.

And surreal? Not as much as it could, should, would - not surreal at all compared to our subliminal, sub-surface, sub-text. Yes I know. You see - I see your secret and you see mine. Shhhhh… keep it close - just for you and me, and for now.

Maybe some, one, day.

We’ve played conkers, cooked Barbados lamb, made cider, obsessed over manhole covers and door knockers, discussed art, raised ducks, pondered and wept over road-kill and seen the flowers of summer come and go to be replaced by tiny artificial glowing Christmas trees.

To date. One year today. Three hundred and thirty-three posts. A whole lot of me…about us.

‘Read the blog - you’ll find out loads.’
Did you?
We did.

Happy birthday blog.