Contrary to popular reports, my thirtieth birthday in Norfolk was not a weekend retreat for a cabal of elite webloggers. Quite the opposite in fact – I invited Mo Morgan for god’s sake! But there were webloggers there because I have friends who are webloggers. So thank you to Mo above, Cal, Matt and Meg and Paul for trekking across country to keep me company. Paul has written up his side of Saturday evening here.
As a brief aside before I get all excited about my lovely birthday weekend again (which I’ve no doubt is boring the world to death), I should probably return to the issue of the Guardian ‘Best British Weblog’ award – which is currently being defended over at Onlineblog.com. I feel a bit sorry for Neil, actually, because clearly the intent behind the event is completely altruistic – but as anyone who has participated in things even vaguely like this in the UK knows, the only thing you can guarantee about throwing something large and full of implication before webloggers is that you’re going to get a fair amount of stick for it. Someone somewhere isn’t going to agree with it, or think it misses the point, or is prepared to fight about it. It’s just a shame that this time the person throwing a strop has to be me… Increasingly though I’m wondering if there is enough groundswell of support to make a sufficiently large statement by not entering. By itself a weblog is a tiny tiny thing, mostly incapable of generating any kind of change. But weblogs are jumping off points for memes, and memes in blogspace can be all powerful. But if the meme doesn’t travel… Perhaps a better idea would be to enter the competition on the understanding that there is the tiniest possibility that it might give you a platform to explain why you think the whole thing was a bad idea in the first place in the most public and outspoken way… Although that could just be an attempt at rationalisation…
Oh shit! I completely forgot to write about this, so I’m going to do it now, while I’m all full of blog-love. On Tuesday I came home after work to change for a dinner thing, except when I got home I couldn’t get in. The gas board had come around, broken into my flat, taken the gas meter, changed the locks and left! The last tenant hadn’t paid their bills and information about me hadn’t got to them yet. So for quite a lot of last week I was washing in kettle-boiled water out of a really big saucepan that I don’t think I’ll use for entertaining any more. Plus no heating or cooking facilities either. I really should get that sorted out!
I kind of can’t stop writing. Everything’s all smooshie. It’s all daze and blurry soft-focus. Not drunk soft-focus, but kind of happy internal trashy soft-focus. Like a bad novel’s cover. I’ve got all these little pictures in my head – sunsets, Pimms, cartwheeling friends, Cossacks, kebabs, candy floss, boating irishmen, big bearded men with scrambled egg, handfulls of goat-feed. And when I think about them everything just feels really kind of warm and wonderful. And I know it’s a feeling that’s not going to last, because I can feel some edges already. But god I had a wonderful time.
I got two e-mails about my birthday that were important to me this year. One from someone I didn’t expect to hear from, another from someone I really hoped I’d hear from. So one of them is really cheery – and you have to wonder why. And the other was really sober and you think, should it have been? I think maybe people are like songs. Some songs have a huge impact on you – they make you happy, they make you sad, they make you shake your head around so hard that I think maybe your brain gets all small like balled-up white bread bouncing around your skull. But you never know whether a song you used to love will make you dance or leave you cold – or just make you think of something dumb you once did which makes you smile. Some people only listen to dumb songs . I wonder – do you choose your taste in music or does it choose you?
I think my superpowers are my friends, who are lovely
and wonderful and make me able to do all kinds of cool
things that I couldn’t do by myself.
Awesome thanks to Denise for baking me this tiny pixel cake!
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I’m rather overwhelmed by what’s been happening over the weekend, so I’ll just start by saying how happy I am, what wonderful friends I have and link to Meg’s account of Saturday night.
Omigod, I’ve just turned thirty.
Do you think the weblogging competition is kind of tacky? Have you said so on your site? mail me and I’ll link to the post!