The Dog Ate My Blog

Two days this week my blogging oath to post daily from Monday to Friday has been visibly trashed. I have lapsed.

I haven't typed a word to my flock; they turned up at the chapel of the holy blogdom in their suits and best hats, took their customary pews, sat obediently and reverently in silence and NOTHING issued from the pulpit. Their disappointment is palpable. They are wandering aimlessly, directionless, rudderless and leaderless. All for the lack of The Word. Or some words. Something. Anything. Please.

Or, to stretch out another analogy, the audience showed up at the comedy club, bought a drink at the bar, settled at their tables for a good hour or two's guffawing and the stand-up stood there and said nothing. Didn't even bate a barracker. Took up precious room and time in the spotlight and uttered not a word. Not a pun, not a gag nor a single quip. Then walked off.

Goldenoldenlady has left the building.

Well, SHE'S useless, her handful of loyal followers think, and click that option at the top of the page that says NEXT BLOG. To trawl though the pages of mid-western christian housewives who thank god for everything including their parking space at the mall. Or the grad students at colleges all over the US who still have that shiny-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears conviction that one day they will be published. Flick through blog after blog for something they can believe in and hold close to their hearts, some new voice that resonates through their being, some sense of fellowship that bears any resemblance to that which they believed they had found when first they chose to follow Goldenoldenlady.

All eight of them, including Goldenoldenlady herself, are just so many Lost Sheep.

Oh yes, I follow my own blog (I had to check the system worked) and I have logged on. And looked at the thing to click on that says NEW BLOG. But found it has started to hold that incapacitating malign influence over me that a blank sheet of A4 used to have when there was an essay due in next day (oh yes, she is SO old that word processors were an unimaginable luxury when she was a student, even amongst the lecturers). I have to fill the aching space and I haven't even got a title ("Browning's poetry is a blah di blah di blah blah of dum di flim flam. Discuss") to stare at until something gives.

So I beg you to pity me, Dear Readers. She who hates chores and started this blog to while away time and avoid them has turned the writing itself into a chore. An obligation. A responsibility. She has an avoidant streak in her personality as wide as a Parisian boulevard, so plain to see it's like the white line that runs along a badger's back, the shameful sign of funk. Of the sciver. You have found me out to be all I said I was when I started to write this. A procrastinator, a taker of un-earned days off, a blagger, a ligger and a let-down.

I have been weighed in the balance of bloggers and found wanting. Several ounces short of being truly wedded to my craft as a typer of inconsequential tripe. In my (very weak) defence I will admit I had got a bit discouraged at the 0 Comments, the lack of an amen to my sermon, the titter at the close of a gag. The silence of an audience sitting on its hands had got to me a bit, so I mooched off to find something more immediately rewarding to do.

If you were the old school friend of The Daughter who's in pod to a New Year baby you might be pleased I'd stopped faffing about at the pooter for a while, pretending anything I typed had any relevance to any bugger else. Because I am seven exquisite squares of heather-hued crocheted yarns towards a baby blanket, a dainty cot coverlet, for the First Born Infant.

If instead you are one of the seven followers that isn't Goldenoldenlady her narcissistic self, give me A Sign, Dear Reader. A sign that you have read, and care and looked for me and missed me whilst I was away. If it's not too much trouble.

Injured sniff. Slight jutting of bottom lip. Exit stage left scuffing toe of shoe.