5000/17920
A momentous day in the second longest running consecutive blog in the world. I have written an entry (presuming I get through this one) for the last 5000 days. Almost 14 years and over a quarter of my life.
What a waste of time.
I spent all day hoping something momentous or interesting would happen to make a worthy blog for this occasion. But a watched life never blogs. I might have squeezed all the abortion/Abraham Lincoln comedy out of Warsaw on day one. So if you're someone who only reads every 1000 blogs then my life is going to look rubbish (I haven't looked to see what 1000, 2000,3000 and 4000 were like, but at least one of you will work it out I am sure).
Getting to 5000 would be an excellent opportunity to stop doing this. But then again, 5000 is just a number and this is a meaningless and artificial milestone. In some ways it's a testament to my own self-regarding stupidity and it passes, like most things I do, without troubling the world in general. I can't work out if I should be triumphant or ashamed or like some kind of dumbass Rudyard Kipling acting like it's not a big deal either way.
But if I could get to 10,000. That would surely be something to write home about. No one could claim that that wasn't an amazing achievement. And I would probably be given my own TV show for being so amazing. And it's only 13 years and 9 months more work. Let's go for it. And then it's fucking over.
Thanks to you for reading, especially if you've made it through every entry. It's more words than the Chilcot Report (I believe). It's cool that people enjoy this and I am sure that if I didn't put it up online that I would never have kept it up, but it started as an exercise for myself and it pretty much remains that (if the goal posts have moved a little bit). To begin with I wanted to write something at the start of each day to get me in the mood for writing (hence Warming Up), but in truth it's more often been the only thing I've done in a day (work-wise) and certainly didn't encourage more work. It has become a way of generating material for stand-up and newspaper articles. Even when I've got nothing to write about (again more often than not, see today) I hope that I might chance across something funny (not happening yet today) and if I have an inkling that something might lead somewhere (see yesterday's blog) then it's great to try and have a first crack at working it into shape. It's been enormously useful for me. I have (I hope) become a better and certainly more fluid writer, but it's also led me to doing stand up or Metro articles about stuff that I would have almost certainly forgotten about and definitely not have examined in any detail.
So if you get something out of it too (and I still really have no idea how many people read this, but thanks to those of you who have let me know that it means something to them) then that's a nice bonus. And you know, even after all this time, it's still basically a secret thing. It's better that way. Not that I would have thought that 5000 days ago. But then a lot had changed since then.
Anyway, here's today's thoughts. In another 5000 days I will be a lot better at this, I promise. And entry 10,000 will be full of incident and funniness.
You can't really get around in Warsaw Indiana without a car. As I think I said yesterday it's a difficult walk even to get to Bibles and Books (which implies it's a religious place, though from the outside, I realised today, it resembles a sex shop - is the name ironic?). So we've hired a car and today had to use it to drive about 300 metres to a restaurant for breakfast. But there was no other option. The place we were going to was inaccessible on foot, due to being the other side of a very busy semi-motorway. Surely everyone in America can't have a car. It seems bizarre that not having one leaves you open to being killed as you try to walk down a busy road or disenfranchised from eating a plate of waffles. I sort of liked the convenience of just jumping in the car and there's parking everywhere, meaning all the restaurants and shops are like little islands in seas of tar macadam. Later we'd go to buy some shoes from one shop and then were going to the Taco Bell which was technically next door. But it was so far away that again I had to drive the car between the two. I asked my wife if it would even cross her mind to drive to the Westfield from our house for breakfast (possibly a little further in distance than we went this morning) and it would seem insane. But parking isn't free there and navigating the roads of Shepherd's Bush at 8am would take far longer than the 10 minute walk.
So far we've only had short hops. We have unlimited mileage on our car, but I suspect that we might return it in a week, without refilling it and not get charged anything for petrol (or gas as they call it here, which is actually ridiculous, as it is quite clearly a liquid and even if it was a gas you would have to be more specific about which one it was).
I was a bit cautious about driving in America, but apart from remembering to drive on the right (what's that about?) it's all pretty easy as it's nearly all straight lines and traffic lights. The only problem we had was when I messed up the air conditioning and warm air started pumping into the car. It's ridiculously hot here and I thought I might pass out, but we opened the windows until we could work out what I'd done wrong.
So far I have witnessed no mass shootings (either the OK home grown ones or the worrying terrorist ones) or indeed seen anyone (apart from policemen and women) with a gun, so that's disappointing. But people have been very friendly and welcoming due to our accents and our baby. Again that's probably because they can see we didn't abort her though, so that already puts us one step ahead of those suspiciously childless couples.
As we're visiting family we're getting to see stuff that any regular tourist to Warsaw Indiana (whoever that would be) wouldn't see. We had a hospital visit and then went to meet some of Catie's aunty's friends. One worked in an office which had quotes from the Bible painted on the wall. Plus another beautifully drawn statement saying, “Prayer: The World's Greatest Wifi Connection.†Which is a great way to tell you that they're not giving out any passwords. But also it's not that great if you're trying to get stuff from Amazon. And I reckon that most of the good sites will be blocked too. And if you're lost in an unfamiliar country and try to use prayer instead of google maps, then I think you might end up in a lot of trouble. Prayer is only the greatest wifi connection if you are religious and convinced that material goods are evil and there is no need to attempt to verify facts. And thus you don't need the internet. The Bible is the only internet that I need. It's all in there. Just swipe left to get to the next page.
It's just definitely not true. Prayer is in no way the greatest wifi connection. It's very patchy and unreliable and I suspect the people who say it's working for them when everyone else's network is down are just looking at a turned off phone and imagining the pictures themselves. To put it to the test I am going to attempt to load up today's blog through the medium of prayer. Just checked, it's not there.
Now I will try via the medium of my hotel's admittedly quite shit wifi (though not as shit as their breakfast which is why I chose to drive for two minutes to go somewhere else today). Oh look, here it is.
Or was that the prayer that did it and there was just a bit of buffering? I guess we'll never know.
But you know it was only when I got to writing this blog that I remembered about that quote. Which is why Warming Up is good for me. Not that that's the best riff in the world. Just it forces me to remember and examine and I just need one in ten to hit! Sorry this was one of the nine in ten. But like I say. It's not for you. Piss off.
A few more gigs added to The Best tour including Bath and a massive venue in Brighton. All details are here. Not all venues on sale yet, but loads are. Trying to sort out a Bristol date (and I am sure there will be a few others). And after being told yesterday that the Sheffield gig had fallen through I've just been told that it's back on! Hooray.
