IS IT OVER?

It's the oddest thing about blogging, but I always manage to convince myself that there won't ever be any more page views. I look at the numbers and persuade myself that this really must be it and there couldn't possibly be any more readings... The total number it has reached is surely enough, and there simply couldn't be anyone else who'd want to come here and look at whatever nonsenses I'm spewing out. One day those numbers must just peak and freeze and the universe will move inexorably onwards towards whatever oblivion awaits it...

Quite often, as you will know if you've been following this saga of doubts and worries, I can also feel as if I've come to the end of what is possible for me to do with these pages, and think that I'm not going to be able to carry on with them any more.

The brain often seems completely emptied of all inspiration and I wonder really where the next post is coming from and whether, perhaps, the last post has actually been reached... We then get so close to the edge that the "buffer" of already available material becomes wafer-thin and tomorrow suddenly looks desperate empty, and I fear that, horror of horrors, I may have to miss a day or three...

And, after everso nearly reaching three years of this ridiculous waste of time, I persuade myself, that might be a shame...

Still, something usually turns up, and I realise that I do sometimes just go through these phases. Days can pass and it seems as if nothing inspirational happens and the daily grind seems so utterly predictable and flat that there seems to be nothing worthy of further comment.

Take last weekend, for example. The beloved had to work on Saturday and, whilst this can sometimes lead to me kicking my heels and wondering what I'm going to find to do to fill up the intervening hours, there was a certain amount of "stuff to do" which was not helped by starting the day off with another back spasm...

After delivering the Beloved safely to her train, I decided to take the opportunity to watch the new "Star Trek" movie that I'd bought and sat myself down to watch that for a couple of hours before I knew that I had to go out, but it annoyed me so much that I switched it off after less than an hour and switched on the radio for some one-day cricket instead.

Must be getting old.

Then I battled my way through Saturday traffic to get to mum's flat to pick up her paperback book and fail to find her notebooks, went over to John Lewis in search of a gift for the Beloved's father's birthday, indulged myself in buying some surprise lamps for the bedroom, sped around Sainsbury's, ate a sandwich in the car park, scrabbled around under the seats of the car looking for that tiny bit of beef I'd dropped, headed over to the hospital for an unsuccessful visit which seared some unfortunate imagery into my mind like having to see mum being cleaned up, and scrabbling on the floor of the ward being shouted at, and moaning endlessly on at mum's other visitor, before heading home leaving them to chat, and arriving there only to head out again and meet another train.

The cricket, at least, went well, although that won't last...

Sunday involved a ridiculous amount of time being spent trying to put up a curtain pole, a job which would have taken someone with any competence less than half an hour, but for which I had to turn the house over twice; Once to dig out the tools to do the job, and once to try and track down the extension lead for the drill.

In the end I had to borrow one from a neighbour, although I did find my own in the shed later when I was no longer looking for it and was in the middle of trying to sort out the rubbish for Monday's collection...

I'm sure I had already looked in the shed for it.

Once upon a time, somewhere in the middle of those last three or four paragraphs, there might have been half a dozen or more blog ideas to be mined, nurtured, polished up and presented to the world, but I've just squandered them all in one little rant...

No wonder I'm struggling for inspiration...