Today is a day of sampling many ales, too numerous to remember. These, though they look identical, are not. They are Sierra Nevada Blindfold and Camden Ink. Or was it Camden Ink and Sierra Nevada Blindfold. Ah well.
Photo taken with a Nexus 4.
Despite what Karen would have you believe, I have not spent the entire day playing Terraria. Admittedly I’ve had an hour of Minecraft, but for the most part I have been getting useful things done with my Sunday.
Firstly, I’ve spent a decent amount of time gardening. A little in the front garden, a little in the back. I’ve mowed the lawn, done some weeding, some pruning, some tidying. I’ve even washed the garage door for the first time in the last 7 years. To be honest, I probably could have done a bit more in the garden, but I was so overcome by the novelty of just being able to get on with it, that I had to have a sit down and a cup of tea.
It took about five hours to get here, including a lunch break at Loughborough Services, where the staff of Burger King displayed a woeful lack of understanding of the point of fast food, and spectacularly failed to provide any of my part of the meal. After lunch, as promised, we got the audiobooks out, and I was subjected to the deeply macabre Jacqueline Wilson book The Cat Mummy for the nineteenth time. At the point in the story where putrefaction sets in, Bernard requested a change to The Muppet Show, with which I happily complied.
Armpit is having its annual bath in sunshine. I would show you a photo but mum’s wifi isn’t up to syncing dropbox; maybe if you’re really lucky I’ll post it tomorrow. Bernard finds it all awesome. We went to the beach, he made friends, got his jeans wet, walked home with sand in his shoes. Granny gave him lego and showed him the tadpoles in the pond. He is on his absolutely very best behaviour.
Mum has broken her toe, but is waiting on Stepdad hand and foot, as normal. She has osteoporosis as a result of radiation therapy. He is in terrible pain from various ailments. They are both quite chirpy and I haven’t mentioned my sprained ankle. I should probably put the child to bed now.
In other words, it’s all downhill from here.
Bernard and I are all packed, nearly ready to go. I have a bag full of snacks, anticipating four hours in the car with “I’m soooooo hungry.” I have a bag full of knitting, for long evenings in the stuffy sitting room with the interrogation lamp (they haven’t come across the concept of mood lighting). I have a bag full of laptop, so I can pretend I have to work. Bernard has a bag full of toys, so that I can resist his demands to go to the beach for longer.
My ankle has put in a few extra twinges to remind me of the potential misery of a four hour drive, and I have started sneezing, because we never go to Armpit without at least one of us having a cold, which might finish my frail stepdad off. I have packed my winter clothes, although the sun is out here in Commuterville. Bernard was up at the crack of dawn, AND DRESSED. He is looking forward to going to the seaside and seeing his granny. Ah to wear the rose tinted spectacles of childhood.
You may have noticed a sudden gap in the almost daily posting we’ve had around here. In our initial burst of enthusiasm, we both wrote a load of stuff and saved it in draft. The drafts have at last run out, and we’re now feeling that “oh no, I must write a post” pressure. And then, as you see, we sensibly ignored it.
Over the next week I’m taking Bernard up north to stay with my mum for a few days, as it’s half term. So I’ll be bored witless and moaning about it here; isn’t that something to look forward to? Meanwhile Pete will be playing Terraria, drinking whisky, and doing whatever it is he does when he has the house to himself. Hopefully that will include writing a few more drafts. We also have your interview with Lyle coming up on Tuesday; Uborka Running Club on Wednesday; the launch on Thursday of Uborka Lifestyle Week, which will take place from Monday 3rd June, featuring Auntie Lori, Auntie Mike and Auntie K as your lifestyle gurus, available to answer all your questions. And on Friday, extra special super duper wedding cocktails, with actual real live drinking taking place at Clair’s wedding.
So it’s going to pick up again soon, I promise.
Are you living in the same place as in 2004/05?Absolutely. All that’s changed is the place where I’m living. In 2004 Bow was just an overlooked neighbourhood in East London, and then in 2005 a Frenchman opened an envelope and dropped an Olympics on my doorstep. My flat hasn’t changed, and most of the streets close by haven’t altered much either, but the area just across the river has changed utterly. It’ll be a while yet before I stop living on the edge of a building site, but the ripple effect of that Olympic summer will last for a very long time.
I hope not. I’d still rather be a playing card than a person.
Twitter’s ace, isn’t it? I don’t use it much, but as a way of keeping up with what everybody else is thinking it can’t be beaten. However I do suspect that Twitter is also to blame for the fact that so many Uborka-generation bloggers have given up writing in long form. Why go to the effort of joined-up paragraphs when you can make your point in 140 characters or less, and get an instant response into the bargain. Please continue talking between yourselves, and I’ll carry on spouting paragraphs in the corner.
Do I still have one? Of course I do, I’m not some internet lightweight.
Still being here. Seven years is about 2500 days, and I’ve posted something on almost all of those. The series of posts that best sums up this madness must be my Random Boroughs feature. Four Saturdays a year, for eight years, I picked a London borough from a set of folded slips of paper in a jamjar, researched the place in an hour flat, went out and toured its most interesting sights and then came back and wrote about it in depth for three consecutive nights. You have to be proper bonkers to do that, without once thinking “ah stuff it, Hillingdon’s actually quite boring”. The entire 33-part series was inherently pointless, but I’m still well chuffed to have got to the end, and I know I have a hugely better understanding of the entirety of London as a result.
I have a sense of blinkered persistence, an inner urge which forces me to write stuff even when it might be more sensible to slouch on the sofa and do nothing, or to go out for the evening, or to go to sleep. And I have the time. Unlike you, dearest Anna, I don’t have another half to cosy up to, or a young toddler occupying my every waking hour, or another house move to organise. My evenings and weekends are a blank canvas, so either I fill them with blogging or else I’d have to get a social life.
Through necessity, rather than choice, it has to be last year’s Olympic summer. For a couple of fortnights my hyperlocal blog had global relevance, and the readership figures have never been higher. Even better I somehow managed to combine going along and attending tons of events with squeezing in the time to write about it, and what I’m left with is a first-hand account of an unrepeatable event.
I know I know. I have to make up for this deficit by visiting the seaside at regular intervals, often the Kent or Sussex coast, for a good maritime blowout. I do live about a mile from the Thames estuary, which is technically the sea according to some definitions, but in reality I’m entirely landlocked until the Thames Barrier fails.
I’d like to invite Lyle, thanks. I’d like to know how he copes with moving around the country so often, and whether he was secretly glad to escape from Norfolk. I’d like to ask how he’s feeling about 80 days time, if that’s not too impertinent. And I’d like to know if anyone’s ever bought anything off his Amazon wishlist.
Photo taken with a Nexus 4.