A friend was berating me the other day for revealing too much of my personal situation at The Slog, thus (as he put it) “leaving yourself open to c**ts like that Sir Henry Wood to work out his own serious mental problems by sticking the ice-pick in whenever he posts”. I didn’t agree.
In the first place, the word ‘blog’ is an abbreviation of ‘weblog’ – ie, a personal diary on the web. My own view of those who use it primarily for describing in graphic detail everything they’ve done all day is that they do indeed have serious mental problems, although in my case the personal stuff has been largely about dental problems. Most readers find these pieces funny, schadenfreude being an essential part of the human condition.
Secondly, whatever any of us choose to write about – fact or fiction – it is an obvious truth that our personal experience and current circumstances will come out in the prose. They may inform it or deform it, but it’s no bad thing if the audience can note such factors, and take them into account.
But third and most important, personal frustrations are the perfect overture to fascist business-bureaucrat-legal-banking criminality on a more macro scale. Like most bloggers, whenever I stumble across something unbelievable (a rarity in these dark days) it inevitably leads me to do research…if only to answer the eternal question of everyone beyond the sixth decade: ‘Is it me or wot?’
While you’re chewing on all that, however, I just thought I’d mention that my back is sore, both thumbs are pulsating unpleasantly, I have itchy grass up my bum-crack, my right bicep yells at my brain each time it is lifted above my shoulder, I have plasters on two fingers, my right knee is almost incapable of further involvement in the pressing of an accelerator pedal, and my right wrist is still grumbling about its disgraceful over-use while working a Mercedes Voyageur gear-stick for fifteen days recently.
There is no mystery to any of this: it merely reflects the major dimensions of my life here at the Slogger’s Roost Multifunctional Rubbish Tip and Half-Finished Hovel . These are, in no particular order, going away in a motorhome to escape from the Slogger’s Roost Multifunctional Rubbish Tip and Half-Finished Hovel, making garden furniture, building a shed, cutting 2.5 acres of grass, cooking in a galley kitchen, lugging dirty great oak beams around to be re-used elsewhere, filling skips, chopping firewood, sawing oak, and drinking perhaps a little too much beer than is good for a person. (On balance, I’d say the last of these is implicated in several of the others, but let’s not go there).
Why am I doing all this?
Well, I’d say ego has a lot to do with it. I’m fascinated by the idea of an unconventional lifestyle, and how that might translate in a home. Equally, I like the idea of kissing goodbye to the comfort zone while being told several times a day that something “isn’t going to work”.
But there’s also a legacy thing poking into my life now. I should very much like to will this place to my kids and grandchildren, as a place where – whatever the horrors of the future have to offer – they can enjoy a nice climate, good neighbours, and a cost of living largely free of the State inserting its shovel into their bank accounts.
If the last of these seems a little dramatically survivalist, well, yes – you might be right. But as I always say to James Delingpole, may his name be praised, I think you may be right Jimbo, but if you’re wrong, where’s the insurance policy?
There is an old Japanese saying, “Insurance company give you umbrella when sun shining”. This sums up contemporary service provision to perfection. And so my mantra remains the same: assume you’re on your own…and if you’re not, then it’ll be a nice bonus.
The Slog 