22

Well, for good or ill, the 22nd of September has rolled around again and, whilst it is rather a table wine of a date rather than a rare vintage, it does have the slightest of significance as it marks one year to the very day since I first poked my tentative nose into the dark trough that we like to call bloggery, without, I might add, the faintest idea of what it might lead to.

With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that it mostly represents a kind of madness that is hard to quantify, although I do my best with these occasional numerically titled pieces. Over the course of this past 12 months, the great big scary old world has been offered 352 individual pieces of nonsense (372 if you count the other bits and pieces lurking in the other lesser known blogs… but then, who does?) which have not exactly set the world alight with their sparkling prose, but have kept my mind more-or-less focused instead of strolling off into the realms of madness.

At least I hope so.

Sometimes Mr Wibble and I can never be sure, can we Mr Wibble?

A year ago, despite being aware of the strange world of bloggery in the abstract sense, I was drawn into its web by reading those of A.N. Other and, more happily, realising that there were blogsites out there that wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg (but just my soul and sanity) to sign up to, and lo, it came to pass that accounts were opened and those first hesitant taps were made upon this very keyboard and a little piece of my madness calved off and slipped tentatively out into the big, wide, scary old world.

Since then, these regular postings have evolved through obsession, despair and a sense of utter loathing into a massive stick to beat myself with and then into a more tolerant sense of mutual existence. Personal goals have been set that will lead to massive disappointments when I inevitably fail to reach them, but those things are my problem, and I like to think we’ve come a long way since a rather pointless report into a night out, full of hopes yet to be smashed into the proverbial smithereens, was first “shared” this time last year.

September 22 is, however, not really the most memorable date of the year. I doubt, for example, that it will be celebrated by future generations as the day I joined the fetid ranks of the blogerati, although a quick trawl around the internet does tell me that it could inspire any number of things to talk about, being the anniversary as it is of the launch of ITV and the last time anyone was hanged for witchcraft in any of the British North American colonies (in 1692 if you must know… but it seems that the habit of state execution rather sadly still persists over there even today) but I don’t really feel I have much to say about witchcraft (or indeed capital punishment per se) today, and my thoughts upon ITV are probably best left for another time and place.

Had he lived, Arthur Lowe would have been 96 years old today and Scott Baio, the “lovable scamp” Chachi from “Happy Days” and our very own “Bugsy Malone” reaches an almost unbelievable fifty one years old, and on this very same day, one-time teen pop idol Chesney Hawkes hits forty.

Suddenly, I feel very old.

Flibble.

The school once took our entire year across the road to watch “Bugsy Malone” in the Davenport Cinema, the very same cinema where certain scenes from “Yanks” were filmed. Presumably the powers that be, either in the cinema or the school, deemed it suitable viewing for a large group of teenaged boys, and hoped that it perhaps offered the possibility of drumming into us some kind of ambition to enter the creative or performing arts. Or maybe they just saw a hideous group of spotty teenagers who were destined to grow up and be gangsters and they thought it might give us a bit of a head start. A few hints and tips into climbing up the Wiseguy equivalent of the corporate ladder. Who knows? Nowadays, even that cinema is a long lost memory as it was torn down itself years ago.

Flibble-wibble.

September 22 is the also the date on which we once bid farewell to George C Scott and Irving Berlin (amongst millions of others) and it remains American Business women’s day and Car-free day in Europe (and Montreal). None of these things are going to be expanded and remarked further upon by me in my humble offering today, because I still have other pointless goals to aim for, other posts to pass with my posts, and you never really know what material you might need to fall back upon when the next blank page is booted up.

Happy anniversary, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

Two little ducks