Sentences and line breaks...

I often ponder what this blog is all about. While I think I write it for me, I despair when the stats suggest that nobody but me is reading.

I dislike new bloggers who instantly garner a big audience but three months later cease to blog.

I occasionally hover over the Delete Blog button and wonder how I'd feel if I went ahead and finally brought it to an end.

I used to back the blog up to text files on my hard drive but haven't done that for around 18 months.

If I did Delete, would I then spend the next few weeks copying and pasting the Google cached version by way of a salvage operation?

I occasionally wonder how ITV will treat the television adaptation of the blog and whether Billie Piper will star.

I am disappointed that there aren't more Hull bloggers. But I am also quite pleased that there aren't.

Myspace and Facebook are a waste of time. So why can't I keep away from them?

I wonder what I'd've done with the time that I've spent writing all these posts.

Yes. That kind of thing.

Slave to the rhythm...

Time was when I slavishly posted a blog entry every day. If I missed a day, I'd retrospectively go back and fill in the gaps. Those days will return one day. What went wrong? Perhaps it's the people of Beverley, where I spend much of the daylight hours, who are letting me down and not behaving in a manner that could be transformed into a glittering entry. Them and their glut of old churches and markets and public houses and limited parking. Or maybe its me. My head is fugged.

That said...I will be starting next year's blockbuster play at the weekend. Tentative moves akin to the beginning of a karate bout. Writer's foreplay. I'll tug at the bastard's Gi but, no doubt, I may as well just be tickling the thing or taking it down the dry cleaners. I've done a fair bit of planning but anything could blurt out via my soft, poncy fingertips. I hope the pages start to mount up thick and fast. I won't be worrying about the quality. Not yet. At this stage quantity is a good thing.

Max Gogarty...

Max Gogarty's blog isn't as bad as everyone is saying. But the comments are way, way better than Max's first entry. I especially like "I'll give it a miss, yeah? I've already got Nathan Barley on DVD. Totally coincimental" and "a great lesson in 'how travel journalism works'. in other words, via sperm and eggs". Despite the jealous bile from the travel writer wannabes I reckon loads of Skins fans will happily read every entry.

Reading: Philip K Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Is anyone out there?

East Hull's most lauded playwright to me: "So, are you still writing your blog every day?"
"Oh yeah, can't get enough of it."
"Really? I can't even be bothered to read them anymore."

Why?

Theatre director turns to me in London and asks, "Why do you blog? Why do you Facebook? Why do you Myspace? Why do you do all of these things?" It's a good question. I have no idea what the answer is. A couple of actors announced in the audition that they read the blog, although I think they are referring to the "official" blog over at the theatre's website. At least I hope they are. Blogging paranoia has set in.

Tags: blogs

Shameless self-promotion #2,389...

Another "official" blog by me is now up on the Hull Truck website here. No prizes awarded to the first person that notices how adept I am at recycling words.

Go, Lewis Hamilton, go! No! No! What am I saying? Motorsports are even more tedious than rugby union!

Tags: On A Shout, blogs, Hull Truck

Salty sea dogs...

I am in Leeds, staring at the screen and looking forward to tonight's Hell's Kitchen finale. I have just penned my "official" On A Shout blog, which was a joy and kept me entertained in between manipulating images in Photoshop. In Hull I note that we have some new blogging competition - the HDM's Jane Harper is on-board a clipper (which is, to all intents and purposes, a yacht in all-but name, that name being a clipper) sailing from somewhere to somewhere else. Jane is, apparently, going to post lots of blog entries whilst hanging on to the clipper as if her life depended on it which, in many if not all ways, it does. No comment facility, which is rather disappointing for a blog, but Jane does chat away in a very pleasant conversational tone: "Whatever happens, at least it’ll give me a fresh batch of stories to tell in the pub. So it’s here where we start all the good bits, and bad bits, and bits we hadn’t even thought to expect.The clock is ticking and it’s time to set out into the unknown. Bring it on." Bring it on, of course, being street slang for needing the toilet and can I please get off the clipper now, please? I shuddered when I read that they are setting out into the unknown. Hasn't anyone thought to take a map and charts? Is there no radar equipment on board? Are there lands as yet uncharted that Jane plans to discover? The unknown? Does she mean Bransholme? No doubt, like me old sensible mucker David Clensy, Jane will turn her antics into a riveting book with pictures courtesy of the newspaper at the earliest opportunity and make herself a few quid to compensate for the sea-sickness (and here's me thinking I was hard done by the time they tried to ship me off to a district office on the east coast!).
Do excuse me, I have a train to catch. More tomorrow in the aftermath of Barry's victory!

Omnipresence...

As if all these tedious ramblings aren't enough, I now have yet more web presence and more blog space, over on the Hull Truck website, where I am, rather retrospectively in the first instance, harping on about where the idea for On A Shout materialised. In a hasty decision mumbled across a green room, I have pledged to write an entry at least once a month for the venue between now and the first night and I anticipate a huge response from the public!

Met eldest son in town. He's 15 tomorrow so I handed over the necessary in exchange for five minutes of his valuable time. We ate hot dogs, which are touted at Hull's major shopping mall as 'the taste of Europe', although, of course, we now associate hot dogs with ball parks and obese Americans, rather than the more svelt European. My hot dog was topped with chopped dried onions, an addition that quickly dropped off as soon as I started eating. In the mall I also managed to catch sight of a pair of trainers that my daughter is insisting we buy for the baby, as she's keen to indoctrinate unborn children with her personal brand preferences. Daughter reckons that if she had size 1.5 feet she would wear these herself, although I think that's the kind of behaviour that would probably get a 17-year-old girl laughed at (velcro? at your age?) and, if she did have size 1.5 feet, I'd've made her join the circus and she wouldn't be able to afford such luxurious footwear.