BETTER LATE THAN NOVEMBER: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

I sat staring at published blog posts. These posts are published monthly by pixies under the stairs, usually within the first week of the month. Late-month blog posts are almost always extra blog posts.

   If I feel the need to scrawl an obituary, I’ll do so. Usually I wait until confirmation of the unliving nature of the supposedly-deceased. I had to wait a wee while for groper Harlan Ellison to drop dead, and he inconvenienced me by going out in the wrong week of the month.

   That obituary was ready to roll the moment he karked it. This was my Batman-style vow. So I published near the end of the month. I could’ve waited a few days and gathered more sources confirming the Old Fart’s death, but no.

   Life gets in the way, even of death. I have the strange sensation that someone died and I was meant to write an obituary of that uncertain someone. This is a regular sensation, and it soon passes.

   Y’know, I think it was Mark Twain. Others have covered the event in endless detail, and I must let this pass with little meaningful comment.

Mark Twain, who has died in a mountaineering accident at the tragic young age of 183, leaves a grieving widow and a vast CD collection of old-timey music. Twain, who was visiting Amsterdam on a fact-finding mission, found himself in an argument with the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions.

   Twain’s contention, that his recent discovery of a Dutch molehill should be classed as a mountain, upset the Board as a body – leaving the organisation no option but to redraw all the maps or face Twain in a duel to the death. The Board chose the latter path to posterity, and promptly shot at Twain to preserve the honour of the country.

   Only 99 members of the organisation could muster at short notice, and all of them missed. Twain died laughing. Coroner’s verdict: death via mountaineering dispute.

Occasionally, life really gets in the way and I publish late in the month. Last month’s blog post was last week: better late than November. What happens if I really can’t make the monthly quota?

   Nothing. Doesn’t mean I’ve died. Might mean I’ve died. It’s just as likely that my computer has died. If one machine died, I’d have to take it off life-support and unplug all the cables. (Shudder.)

   Yes, I shudder. After recently revamping the layout, I told myself I’d never need to climb back there and mess with the cables again. Until the computer karks it, of course. The double-task is remove latest dead computer from life-support and plug old barely-living computer into life-support…to be continued…

   Purchase brand-new computer. Unplug feeble reserve computer from life-support. Set up brand-new computer, hoping, wildly, that the very latest computer is so advanced that it no longer even needs cables.

   Life got in the way of my train of thought on life getting in the way. I wandered the country in rain, rain, and more rain. Autumn leaves provided the only brightness to the day. It was, to use a technical term, dreich.

   That is a bad word to use if you are describing someone’s cooking, given that it is almost always employed to explain the nature of the weather.

   I’d have published this blog post on the 1^st of November, explaining why some blog posts are delayed, but this blog post was delayed. Yes, late-month posts are usually extra posts, adding to the quota. Not always. Sometimes, being busy keeps you busy and makes you busier.

   After walking through a rain-filled world, down by swollen rivers, past leaf-filled landscapes, I reached that point. It’s the point at which you return home and know you’ll be struggling out of your outdoor gear for a million years before you can reach that coffee.

   I reached that coffee in record time. And then, thinking I wouldn’t be busy, I grew busy. There was the matter of relocating wiring in the loft without illuminating my skeleton. The wiring was never put in neatly. Neatly, in the case of wiring, is another way of hoping the wiring is put in safely.

   With this thing moved around and that thing ripped out and this bit of wood cut short and that nail removed to help shift that pipe away from there for a moment or two…

   The wiring went where it should have been all that time ago, when it was put in at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon…same as all the other slightly wonky things around the place. My good self most likely included, now I think on it.

   Yes, it is important to produce blog material regularly. In the earlier phase of the blog, I’d write at least once a week. Then, in the later phase of the blog I switched to at least once a month. But it’s fine if it isn’t possible to blog.

   My efforts are heading more and more into video production, and it is difficult to produce a video every week. Somehow, I manage. It’s just like blogging…I try to write 1,500 words for a video script.

   That stems from one of the main inspirations for the blog – listening to Alistair Cooke’s radio talks. He’d do a fifteen minute talk every week for a million years. I felt I could parcel a thought or two into 1,500 words of waffle. That’s how the blog went for a good while.

   Eventually, I felt that I’d get by on whatever I wrote. If I only wrote 1,000 words and said what I wanted to say, that’s what I did for that entry. I’m still here, typing nonsense. Now, though, I’m recording what I type and turning that into video nonsense.

   The world doesn’t end if I don’t blog for a wee while, or even for a big while. But what of the sudden end? I contemplated that as I used electrical tools to chew bits out of things in various parts of the house.

   Sudden internet silence might be down to sudden incapacitating injury. Don’t confuse a keyboard and a power tool of any kind. Keep your fingers off one. And keep your fingers off the other, too, if that’s how the mood flows. It’s moods that flow and blood that pumps…all over the rafters.

   Yes, my typing is that severe.

   I look around at a crowd of bloggers who no longer blog, and I wonder what it is that keeps me going. No, I don’t have anything meaningful to say. But I say it. Type it. Think it aloud as I hit the keys.

   If the blog stops, I’ve mistaken a keyboard for a power tool and written my thoughts in my own intestines. Always preferable to doing that in another person’s intestines. It’s considered rude not to ask first, and rude whether asking or not in any case.

   And that’s all I wrote. I was clambering around again, and making sure I didn’t fall into anything, that nothing fell into me, that I didn’t land on lumpy objects, that lumpy objects didn’t land on me, and that all sorts of dangerous things were safe. Shaky, but safe.

   I could’ve used that for the title of this blog post. SHAKY…BUT SAFE. A report from a clumsy author who didn’t need an ambulance, after all.

   Delays to blog posts are technical or non-technical. They may involve coffee and biscuits. Or cakes. Coffee and cakes. By law, delays to blog posts must involve coffee and biscuits. And cake. Cakes, preferably.

   I opened this blog post by contemplating published blog posts. But there are unpublished ones. I had obituaries ready to go for groper Harlan Ellison and Time Lord Terrance Dicks. Who would I do an obituary for, now? Three people…

   Me, myself, and I.

   This won’t work. I could write it up without difficulty. But publishing would be awkward. Set it up to auto-publish by a certain date, and then keep changing the date. That won’t work very well if I’m in a coffee coma.

   Is a coffee coma a coma from too much coffee or not enough coffee? I feel more non-scientific research is required in that sphere.

   Time for blogging advice. Write regularly. And write irregularly. Type with coffee. And type with coffee. There is no typing without coffee. Stay as safe as you can. There is a risk that you can never eliminate risk. Be vaguely aware of this. Avoid cables. Don’t trip over them, slice into them, or entangle yourself in their cabley entrails. Use machines that limit the number of cables. Or avoid machines entirely.

   I’m pausing to check for coffee, cables, and switches that are meant to be off. This is important stuff, and writing will see you through it. Blog when you can. If you blog to a routine, then that’s blogging when you can. Better late than November. That was true of my October post. I should say something about November 2019 and Los Angeles and replicants. But others are covering that, elsewhere.