Calendars and Counters

Not much to add at this point on January 3rd, apart from remembering my dear Dad, who would have been 79 today. It was always our custom to keep the decorations up til today, and so it remains, though of course they have to come down eventually. I'll probably take the bulk of them down tomorrow, before heading back to Eastbourne and returning to the tricky business of finding a decent job.
Dad's birthday was also the day that the Christmas cake usually got sliced and gleefully eaten! This year has been such a disordered strangeness, that we have yet to eat our own pudding which I made back in November- it should be well matured for now so maybe ought to come out later. As in Britain we finally end our long Christmas hols (though I believe if you are in Scotland there's another holiday tomorrow in lieu of the 2nd of Hogmanay/January), I hope you are all rested and feasted-though don't forget Twelfth Night of which more anon.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a new feature has appeared at the bottom of the page. This is a site meter, which enables me to have at least a rough idea of who is reading the page, where they come from and how long they are reading for. Because it comes free, I'm required to keep it visible on the page so if you are into statistics, just roll your mouse over the counter and read on. It doesn't however give the full e-mail addresses of readers, so if you prefer to read anonymously, you're quite OK!

The other feature which I enabled on this blog way back when is the "allow new comments" feature. As I mention in my profile on the left, please feel free to add your own thoughts and opinions to anything I've written. Just click on the comments section at the bottom of each page and I'll get to read them. They can also be published on this blogspot for a wider audience, though if you prefer me not to, no problem- just let me know.

I guess the blog is the 21st Century answer to the pocket diary. These always provided a very convenient present for Dad each January and I always relished each year's schoolboy diary in my own Christmas stocking, with its assemblage of fascinating facts and the blank pages of a year ahead. Mind you, I often used to count down the days til next Christmas at the same time: talk about wishing your life away during your teens! Though I've always been a wannabe writer and left school aiming to get into journalism, the entries in those days were hardly up to Adrian Mole's standard, let alone Samuel Pepys. More often than not, they tended to be along the lines of "had dinner. Fish fingers and chips. Watched TV: Crossroads. Visited Grandma" - a fictionalised example. Space and time seemed to post limits on self-expression through the small space of a printed page and my lousy handwriting, and yet they still bring a smile of recognition as I look back at my entries three decades later.
Who knows what the blogs of 2004 and 2005 will mean to a future generation of historians? Is someone virtually preserving them somewhere? It would be nice to think they are, as they provide a fascinating glimpse into the ordinary lives of extraordinary people far beyond the scope of National Archives and even the Mass Observation project, which I toyed with the idea of getting involved with some years ago after looking after the project co-ordinator on a BBC interview. Or will blogs fade away in the manner of the sweets and toys of yesteryear- the Aztec bars and the Slinkies: a craze for a time and then abandoned in favour of the next new thing. I certainly hope not. If you discover any other interesting blogs in your surfing, or you're a blogger yourself, please let me know the details and I'll try to include a link here.

Now, it being a peak time phone day even though a Bank Holiday in Britain, I must really hang up. A visiting cat called William is causing a delightful distraction in our garden!