8000/20941
Welcome to my 8000th consecutive blog post. It's very nearly 22 years of my life with something every day documented (though early on there are some very short posts)
I think I say this every time I hit a milestone, but I remember when I got to one year of blogging every day I thought, "Some journalist is going to write about this amazing achievement", but they didn't and they still haven't as far as I am aware. It sometimes gets mentioned in passing, but not with any sense of wonder. Perhaps because it's more tragic than admirable, perhaps because it's 8000 consecutive days of bilge or perhaps because in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter.
I quite like that it's this vast archive of millions of words and it's just not really a big deal at all.
And look I can understand it. 8000 days in a row, including holidays, heartbreak, illness, my wedding, the birth of my kids, cancer and more exceptionally the days when fuck all has happened and inspiration is sparse is nothing to write home about. When I get to 10,000 I suspect we'll get some kind of fanfare, so look out for that in just under five and a half years.
It's about the same time on top of that that (roughly, I am not going to do the exact maths) until I will have documented half my life. Will I even be here in eleven years time? Will I finally have faltered? Will something debilitate me or hurt me so badly that blogging will not seem appropriate? Will I just run out of ideas (to be fair that hasn't stopped me yet)?
At the back of my mind I think I've hoped that the blog will be lauded and appreciated by the people of the future (and hello there my fans in the year 2525), but the joke's on me because it seems increasingly likely that there won't be people in the future and even if they are all digital records will have been wiped out. I have very little chance of being our century's Pliny. Any of the three.
I realise that joke is unlikely to play with the people of 2525 (or most of them in 2024 to be fair) but there were two famous Roman Plinys (the volcano chasing elder and the more cautious younger) but also a puppet crow of the same name in the 1990s that took the world by storm and was super famous back then. Don't know what happened to the guy who did the voice, but I presume he realised he'd never be as funny again and retired.
Again people of 2525 might not get that joke too. I am going to gamble on the fact that by then, due to twists of fate I will finally be more famous than the forgotten Stewart Lee. Fingers crossed.
Anyway whether this is good or bad, useful or useless, you have to admit that 8000 consecutive blog posts in a row is fucking mental. But here we are. It's happened and if you want it to end you'll have to pry the laptop out of my cold, dead hands.
Chris Evans (not that one) was rather worried about appearing in today's blog. Unnecessarily as it turned out. He and his son Ben Evans (not that one) and friend Gerard had turned up to help me set up all the computer equipment in the new location and to take away the old snooker board to be cut up and turned into pieces of art for feckless self-playing snooker players to buy. We're going to make them nice keepsakes and ebay the bits and there's a good chance that it will cost us more to sort out than it will raise. But hopefully there's around 30 idiots out there who will want a bit of that historic board (no need to explain self-playing snooker to the people of 2525 as by then it will be the most popular and only sport in the world).
I had moved all the computer equipment over in the last month or so, but had not been able to get it working, I presumed because of my technical imcompetence (going to leave that typo in as it seems rather apt). But as Gerard rigged up the snooker cameras, Ben and Chris struggled to get anything to appear on the monitors.
I felt I had taken great care of this expensive bit of machinery, having boxed it up in its original box and polystyrene packaging, as much at that pained me due to my allergy to the sound that stuff makes as you squeeze it back into the tight container. And yet it looked like something had gone wrong and the creeping realisation came upon me that it was probably my fault.
As Chris bent under the desk to investigate there was a crack and a glass panel in the main computer unit shattered into a million pieces. Chris was not even touching it, but was worried that this was his fault and that he was also to blame for not getting the technical side of things up and running. I said it didn't matter at all but he said he would wait for today's blog to see how I really felt.
It was clear to me though that this was obviously entirely my fault. I was the one who had stored and transported the thing and though I felt I had been extremely careful it now seemed likely that I had bumped it somehow and maybe dislodged something from the motherboard and this shattering glass (apparently it served no real function) could only be my doing.
I wracked my brain to see if I recalled any accident, but I couldn't. I had already been so defensive about how well I'd looked after the thing that it seemed like I was getting my excuses in early. It's certainly the way my son behaves, to claim he had nothing to do with a broken item, sometimes even before anyone else knows it's broken.
I don't remember any accident, but I have to acknowledge that only I could have done this... unless Ernie had sneaked into the office and kicked it. He's responsible for everything else, so let's pin this on him. It was not, whatever he thought, Chris' fault. And the lads kindly worked long into the evening to get our old laptop set up and working so we can possibly do more podcasts whilst we're waiting for an expert to fix the damage.
Chris Evans is a only occasionally sung hero of all the podcasting I do and far from being angry about having to clear glass off my floor, I am extremely grateful that he is there to get things working and excuse my own expensive incompetence. Luckily he's quite incompetent too so we make a bad, but equal team.
We are the worst businessmen in the world, preferring to give away most of what we do and often make stuff that we know will lose tens of thousands of pounds just because we want it to exist. Remarkably we are more than keeping our heads above water.
Chris may not have written 8000 self-indulgent blogs in a row, but he is at least 50% responsible for keeping my career going and for this insane podcast empire and he's done it not for monetary reward, but for a desire to get the comedy he likes out into the world (not just with my. podcasts, but also the extraordinary range of recordings at
gofasterstripe.com).
Even though he doesn't seek monetary reward I am delighted that the podcasts (not the snooker to be fair) do provide him with cash (since we went with Acast at least), giving him tens of pounds a week and thus making him the richest man in Wales. He's an amazing man. And I am glad he gets some reward for his dedication.
That's what I really think Chris, so you were right, I didn't say what I really thought as you knelt in all that glass. That's what I was really thinking.
Sorry for breaking your expensive equipment.
