Bloghop Blobberous Sergeant Itchy Memoirism

I WENT OUT BLOGHOPPING FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS LAST NIGHT and got such lovely comments back today. To "blog-hop" can mean different things to different people so let me say what I do. You CAN just press "next blog" and see what comes up but it's so very random and most of the 70,000,000 blogs have only one post or are in South American languages or nobody reads them at all so that's usually a dead loss for finding something interesting. There used to be a thing called Random Blog Button you could "press" and a blog would come up out of the ether to entertain you - and it usually WAS entertaining. No more, however. They've improved the life out of the Random Blog website so thoroughly the random feature has gone! (How typical is THAT of the modern world?? Hmmm.) The best way of bloghopping is easy: you go to someone's blog you know and click on a commentator you don't know. And you take it from there, clicking on comments upon comments friends of friends of friends and every time I see something interesting I leave my electronic calling card at least to say "hello - I coasted through, wahey!!" and on you go. (If you don't leave the callingcard you get no comments back - duh!)

I used to do that a lot. A lady called Annelisa who wears a glittery wig laughed because she'd seen me like a rash one night over every blog she knew. I DO miss the Random Blog Button... were it not for that I'd never have discovered the joys of Daniel Thompson, Microtonal Composer among many blogs of microminority interest ... nor Amazing Gracie, who seemed to pop up every seventh click!!

In answer to the queries I got last night, yes I AM a writer - as one who daily writes can call oneself but I'm not getting paid until I submit an entire manuscript to a literary agent and get my $1,000,000 advance, so until that time I remain poor and undiscovered and living (literally, yeah!) in a garett - haha! What was the other question? Oh yeah how do I find the time? Well, blogging takes an average half hour per day including replying to comments and spreading myself around a bit like herpes (you know, over the internet) not to mention posting. I always post EVERY day even though I usually have nothing to say (inherent factor of this blog, I'm afraid.) The book DOES take time... because in 4 hours I might write 2 pages. And by that I mean 2 pages in handwritten scribble on A4 33 lines per page "ruled, feint". Hmmm.

I found Clarissa Dickson Wright's memoirs (she is a former TV cook in this country, famous for the BBC show Two Fat Ladies) - in the bookshop today. Appropriately enough they are entitled, Spilling the Beans. She doesn't novelize her memories: just raconteurs them on paper the way a letter writer (or a blogger, for that matter) might do so. But Clarissa Dickson Wright is a known personality (who used to drink like a fish incidentally) who I got the strong impression really did write every word herself. She probably produced a manuscript so strong the publishers took it on as it was. I'm not known, but I still feel a bit spurious about bowing to convention and adorning my memories with novelistic dialogue that I don't REMEMBER strictly being spoken like that ...

My neighbours think I am mad. What else would YOU think if you stood at the door to hear 4am cooing, "Come out you old gremlin! Come out you swine!" (Me talking to Bashful.) Boy is she looking blobberous today, she's like a furry globe with a face racing about... Then Sergeant Itchy emerges to investigate. I'm sure Itchy really is a dwarf dwarf hamster, she hasn't grown at all since I got her - how long ago was it? Surely 2 months ago by now... Because she is smallest she still gets most washed - looks like a baby cow with wet back all prickled up. Hence title "Itchy" I thought at first she had the prickles literally...

On that note I must go. I've written no memoirs at all today and Valium Marilyn's threatening to come bellowing down my street if I don't come and shut her up first...

Wahey! Till tomorrow...

Video of the day:
REM - Losing My Religion

PS Remember I said Clarissa Dickson Wright gave great interview? Click here for her this year's Desert Island Disks transcript. Fascinating.