new site hu dis?

Hello everyone!

For those of you who read my old blog - shit it’s been a while, hasn't it. It’s good to see you! How are the kids? Are you still with whats-his-face? Oh thank goodness, I never liked him. Weird nose. Can’t trust a man with a weird nos- hey have you always worn your hair like that? No, no, it really suits you. You're looking great.

For those of you who are New Here, welcome! Please make yourself at home.
Yuck, not that much at home. Were you born in a barn? Get your feet off the dog and put your pants back on right this minute.

There is so much to cover in this, the mother of all updates, and it is tricky to know where to start (also even if I am actually starting, because this is the first time I've used this blog editor and I can't see where the button is to save it).

For previous readers I imagine there might be some questions; I have laid out the three main questions I expect you might have below, just like Parliament's Question Time except hopefully without all the shouting and painful transportation chat.

If your question is not covered here, please feel free to leave it in the comments, and I may or may not answer it depending on how embarrassing the answer is.

“did you ever fall over eating bread?”
- now look here buddy that is not the sort of question i was meaning

Side note for those of you who may not be aware, and for my large international following*:

Question Time is a thing our Parliament does for a couple of hours a day, presumably when they have done all the running of the country one can do before one gets bored. During this special inquisitive period MPs can ask questions of Ministers, and not only do the Ministers have to answer these questions, they have to answer truthfully. 

I'm not kidding, that is one of the rules.  Of course it has rules!  You can't just put a bunch of publicly elected officials in a room and expect them to behave like adults.

Sometimes I wonder why Parliament has not thought to rename Question Time to something a little less reminiscent of a kindergarten activity, but then -

Member of Parliament Ron Mark, behaving himself during Question Time back in 2006.

To be fair Mr Mark is not the only example of poor behaviour but he is my favourite and this excerpt from a news article about this historic Parliamentary bird-flipping scandal explains exactly why:

"Mr Mark had given the one-fingered salute three times in quick succession: twice when sitting down and once when he had the speaking call but he put a sheet of paper in front of him."

Who hasn't been overcome by the desire to give somebody the finger, but out of prudence has put a sheet of paper in front of them? No wonder we made him Minister of Defence.

Anyway, we have gone very far off topic.  Here are some common questions you may have about my glorious resurgence, and some brief answers.

I see you have a new website. Why? Also was the vanity URL really necessary? Are you one of those people now? Is this some kind of appallingly-thought-out money making venture that clearly never wishes to have Ron Mark among its client base?  

• The new website is because I got tired of the old Blogger template and thought that it really was about time that the quality of my website matched the quality of the writing held within, which is why I made this website myself and don't know what most of the buttons do.
  

• The vanity URL was entirely unnecessary but I am not going to lie, I love it very much and recommend you get your own.
  

• This is not a money-making venture (although if you wish to pay me to write a thing that's your own highly questionable decision and you can send me an email about it). This is just the same old burbling content in a slightly nicer setting, like when you get drunk at the fancy restaurant instead of getting drunk in your living room.

also the new website allows me to showcase my photography. peck peck motherfuckers

Why did you abandon us for so long?  Also why are you back.  It was so peaceful before.

There are a lot of reasons!  Mostly I got lazy and busy, and then after a while of not posting I also got underconfident, and spent a lot of time going “wah wah, my blog has no value in this woke modern world, everyone else is producing amazing content and I am spouting meaningless tripe”.

I think this is because I read too many personal essays about important and serious and socially progressive topics** and I thought "all of these people are writing important things and I am yapping on about daily minutiae, spiced up with the odd fart joke, how very dare I."

But then I realised that most of the time a Deep Personal Essay is just a long blog post that stays on topic, and it's probably ok to have some bullshit to balance out all the 'My Week in a Tashkent Soup Kitchen Turned Me Into A Hula Advocate', and I can write about serious things too if I want (spoiler alert: I do not want), and also I told all this to Andrea and she said "the world needs your burbling, the internet has gone so far up its own butt," and that was really all I needed to hear, and so here we are.

I am back because writing this burble makes me happy, and if reading it makes YOU happy, then that is the coolest shit I could ever hope to do.

look! it’s butterflies fuckin’. the top quality content you come here for. photography. showcase.

It's been three years.  What have you been up to? Did you get married?  Did you have CHILDREN?  Is this a mommy blog now?  If it isn't, can it be? I feel like that would be an improvement.

Another great question from me to me.  I have done a whole bunch of things, some of which have been difficult and some of which have been fantastic and all of which have been interesting, but I'm very aware that this post has grown to a preposterous length, and you probably need to go to the supermarket or something.  I will tell you all about them next time. 

Things That Are The Same: marital status, number of children, car
Things That Are Different: city of residence, job, hair (longer).

It is nice to be back.

 *hello Lucy! You are my large international following. (By which I do not mean at all that you, personally, are large. You are very slender.)

**The current How X Made Me Y titling style of personal essays does my head in with its pretentious ways.
‘How Meeting My Estranged Father Made Me Re-examine My Faith In Post-Trump Ornithology’ is the new ‘Top 10 Ways Your Dog Thinks Like You (Number 8 will Shock You!)’ and I can’t wait for the internet to move on.