Back and forth and back again

Des­pite the num­ber of years that I’ve been wear­ing this deep groove into the blog­ging tread­mill, I still don’t appear to have grasped the fun­da­mental point that us blog­gers are really not half as import­ant as they/we think they/we are. Nor the fun­da­mental point that the sum total of someone’s exist­ence is not greatly enhanced thanks to dis­cov­er­ing the minu­tiae of my life (or what I choose to reveal about my life). And espe­cially the fun­da­mental point that nobody should unduly care if I hap­pen to dis­ap­pear from my site for a few days and stop put­ting words together in a pre­tence at estab­lish­ing some coher­ent thoughts. There are more excit­ing things to do else­where, after all. That paint over there, for instance — I’m sure you need to watch it dry­ing, don’t you?

So what I would like to ask of you, my more real­istic and groun­ded read­ers, is that you should slap me repeatedly upside the head if you even catch me apo­lo­gising for not updat­ing these humble pages that reside in a dim and dis­tant corner of the inter­net some­where. Because I am just a blog­ger, and that is so unim­port­ant as to rank well below the fact that it rained yes­ter­day and it has been sunny today. Or that the world is facing cer­tain envir­on­mental dis­aster and we’re all going to die. Or, indeed, that the Pope is undeni­ably Catholic.

Two para­graphs in, and I’ve finally remembered the reason for this entry: I’m sorry I haven’t been updat­ing here recently and that it’s all gone rather quiet.

Oh. Oh damn and blast and damn again. Do you see what I did there? I barely man­aged to pause for breath before lapsing into self-important blog speak, before giv­ing voice to the apo­logy that is not needed because no one should really care that I haven’t been updat­ing. Because, well, maybe I went out and got a life, woke up and smelt the cof­fee and sniffed the flowers, lux­uri­ated in the fresh air and did excit­ing things that don’t involve sit­ting in front of a com­puter screen writ­ing mean­ing­less drivel for other people who should, like me, be get­ting out more.

I didn’t do any of the above, of course. But I could have done. Mmhmm. Yes. That’s right. The fact that I didn’t is entirely beside the point, and should be left beside the point and roundly ignored. See that point? Ignore it, please. Point? Con­sider your­self ignored.

My life, such as it is, cur­rently involves a great deal of walk­ing up and down between par­al­lel bars using, in place of my lower right leg, the clumsy rigid metal pole wel­ded to a heavy plastic socket that was so proudly dis­played in a pre­vi­ous post. The activ­ity goes some­thing like this. Walk up. Turn, whilst cling­ing to bars for dear life. Pause. Stare at blank wall. Con­cen­trate hard. Walk back. Turn, whilst cling­ing to bars for dear life. Pause. Stare at oppos­ite blank wall. Con­cen­trate hard. Walk up. Turn, whilst cling­ing to bars for dear life. Pause … well, you get the idea, I’m sure. It’s as excess­ively exhaust­ing as it sounds.

Passing my time in this way, whilst undoubtedly pos­it­ive as regards get­ting me back to my dan­cing days as a prima baller­ina, does not provide very much in the way of rich source mater­ial for blog­ging, par­tic­u­larly as I’m extremely determ­ined that this site must never turn into a prime example of the hitherto unknown genre of Legb­log­ging. A Legb­log, as I’m sure you’ll agree, has the poten­tial to be as fear­some and dis­taste­ful as the now almost ubi­quit­ous Sexb­log — minus the moist and sala­cious bits, but with even more breath­less huff­ing and puff­ing — but I do not want An Unre­li­able Wit­ness to degen­er­ate into such pre­dict­able laziness.

So repeat after me. This is not a Legb­log. This is not a Legb­log. This is not a Legb­log. This is not a Legb­log. This is not a Legb­log. A Legb­log this is not. Legb­log. Not. No. My life is about much more than the fact that I am cur­rently try­ing to learn how to use a piece of mech­an­ical tech­no­logy in place of the flesh and bone that used to be there. Yes, it is. This is not a Legb­log, then. Got that? Good.

Yet at the same time, I really am quite knackered from spend­ing my days engaged in clumsy but hope­fully highly ath­letic stag­ger­ing back and forth, and thus I can’t think of much else to write about.

For­tu­nately, though, you’ll never catch me apo­lo­gising for a dearth of posts or a run of gen­er­ally unin­spir­ing con­tent like all those other blog­gers do. Not me. I would never do that. I’m far too ori­ginal and invent­ive and cut­ting edge and pro­found and …

Oh. Oh damn and blast and damn again. Again.

Or to be even more pithy: bugger.