Interesting Times

I think that Terry Pratchett said it all.

It would help me if you could all pick a virtual seat and quietly shuffle a little closer. If you feel the urge to virtually join hands, then feel free. (Note 1) Now, let’s all take few deep breaths and when we have purged ourselves of negative thoughts and have reached a state of relaxed equilibrium, I’ll begin.

Hello, I’m Simon, although you can call me Red1hols if you wish. This, if you haven’t already guessed, is my blog. Now those of you who have been here before might like to go and do something useful like place a giant inflatable Santa on a detested neighbour’s chimney or see if Great Aunt Maud has finished with the paperboy who was foolish enough to ask for a Christmas present. You’ll probably know everything that will appear in this entry and I wouldn’t want you to get bored. (Note 2) You see, my fine yeomen, I am going to try and explain / justify / mitigate / litigate (Please delete where applicable) exactly what this is all about.

Position your cursor over the image now!

Any of you out there experiencing a touch of Déjà vu? Yes me too. In my particular reality, it is a common problem here in my blogs. Sometimes it is an over indulgence in Nigtswerve’s Velvet Cudgel, other times it is just to see if you are awake and concentrating in you own particular version of reality. (Note 3)

It seems that the Yahoo Editorial Team had an exceptional Christmas party. Young Nigel from accounts has woken up with a tattoo of the Yahoo logo on the inside of his right thigh and Gladys, the elderly cleaner, holding parts of his anatomy that have not been held by anyone else for many a year. What is probably far worse is that at one point during the party, the Yahoo Editorial team managed to sneak the ’Interesting’ label back into my underpants.

Again, this comes as a bit of a surprise and given that I have suffered that itchy, scratchy label before, I take it as a real honour and a privilege. I am humbled – or at least would be if I wasn’t on a higher dose of the dried frog pills as a result. Ah, yes, perhaps the time has come to explain these, you can find an explanation in this WIKIPEDIA entry, although you will need to scroll down a bit.

There are quite a few things that may require explanation in this blog. There are the strange characters that will crop up from time to time like Evar, Yvette Munsderpiedder, Mattress Madge, Padstow and Chief Inspector McCrindle Barleymow Honeydew-Fforbes and the gang from the ‘Rat and Ferret’. I wouldn’t worry about them; they are totally harmless and are a kind of running joke. Like any joke, the humor tends to evaporate during an explanation, so I’ll leave you to discover them on your own. You have noticed that there are these strange notes like the Note 4 over there. If you click on the note {Go on! Click on it!} -(Note 4) - you should be whisked back again. Apologies to any of my good yeoman who suffer motion sickness, but it needed a demonstration. Ah, yes, that’s another thing. While you are reading this blog, you enjoy temporary promotion from mere netizen to stout yeoman. Purely honorary you understand, but you deserve some credit for making it this far!

I do like to throw in various odd pictures along the way. The lady above is Grace Hopper – Commander Grace Hopper. If she wasn’t dead, she would have been a hundred years old on December 9th. Now, I shall introduce you to another feature of my blog. In order to try and convince you that I am actually providing an educational service, I sometimes set homework. (Note 5) Today’s homework, my livewire yeomen, is to discover what amazing contribution Grace Hopper has made to our lives.

One big lesson I have learned on this blogging lark is that it consumes your life (or at least it will until the end of next year when I assume something new will come along and eat into all our spare time). As much as I like to try and visit the blogs of all my friends and pass comments, time pressures are in play here. I already find I fail to do justice to all of my friends blogs. A huge friends list would mean that I just wouldn’t have the time to do this as I have a day job Without the day job, I wouldn’t be able to maintain my waist in the manner it has become accustomed. Anyone who appears on that list has a magnificent blog which is well worth reading, is a regular contributor of comments on my blog and / or has satisfied my inner voyeur. (Note 6)

I might not be particularly good at reciprocating visits and comments on my blog – but I do try my best (except in responding to those one sentence thingies on the top page which I detest with passion). So if you do leave a comment or drop me a message I promise to smile, feel warm inside and try to extend the same courtesy to you if time allows. If I don’t then I better say sorry up front.

So, that’s about it then. I have now shared with you the basics of this blog – it is up to you if you want to strain a synaptic in trying to make sense of it. It’s not really something I would recommend. It makes no sense to me and I wrote this stuff. You would be better served having a look see at some of my friends blogs and get in early on some of the soon to be interesting.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to check may mailbox to see if this new found fame has caused a flood of pictures that cater to my errm… specific tastes.

From 14th June, the industry standard Crozzy Standard has been applied to footnotes.

NOTE 1: Errr.. The girl in the back. You! The one with the neckline that hasn’t so much plunged as dived headlong from the Empire State Building. That is not his hand. Now we’ll all have to sit here and wait while you go and wash you hands. Then we’ll start again – Properly! Click to return

NOTE 2: I would hate you to get bored. Last time I let you lot get bored it took me a week to get the stains out of the Llama. Click to return

NOTE 3: For there is no single, absolute gold standard reality. We each have our own. Therefore there are billions of alternate realities all of which can be modified and controlled by dried frog pills. I will explain about the dried frog pills – just stick with it and trust me, I’m a professional. Click to return

NOTE 4: You will be whisked down to the appropriate foot note which gives you a whispered aside commentary on the main text. When you click on the text at the end {OK, Click on it} Click to return

NOTE 5: Sadly, my yeomen readers tend to treat me like that rather nice chubby social studies teacher they had when they first went to big school and totally ignore me. Click to return

NOTE 6: I’m too much of a gentleman to say who among my friends have satisfied my inner voyeur – they probably know who they are anyway and I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage the practice. There is not better pick me up then having a young lady displaying her truly stunning assets. – I better stress that last bit YOUNG LADY If you don’t fit that classification then it won’t work – that means you SET!. Click to return

TECHNORATI TAGS : Trivia ; Life ; Comedy; red1hols.