Surely, If You Wallop Someone... Eugh.

I am more than aware that the once ubiquitous blogs have dwindled during a period of time when one would expect me to be at my most prolific – the summer; but, you know, starting up a publishing house tends to take its toll on your time and I’ve actually been doing so much I’ve barely had the time to sit down and write anything that resembles a blog. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing though… and, of course, that means at some point you’ll be exposed to some proper dodgy writing rather than the usual dodgy stuff.

The demands of starting a business aside, I’ve been trying to write and edit the Robotz story and my artist partner seems happy with the route I‘m going. I have never felt more alive than on deadlines – I realised this a few years ago when I gave myself a deadline to complete a task, it added a frisson of constraint.

I remember a number of occasions where the guy who replaced me as news editor at Comics International failed to deliver a page at the 13^th hour and I would, literally, knock one together in 15 minutes. Of course the downside of this was my boss was intelligent enough to realise that if I could knock up a perfectly adequate page design and fill it in less time than it took him to drink a cup of coffee, why on Earth was he paying us so much money (for, some would say, old rope)? If only starting this business was so easy…

Once, not so long ago, I would have devoted an entire blog over to the fact that I have now passed the one year point in my no smoking campaign. As an addict, I know that there can’t be any slip ups because I’m in a stressy period and I could easily succumb. However, the wife and I have been watching Breaking Bad for the last couple of weeks and this crystal meth stuff that Walter White manufactures looks far more interesting than other more legal drugs… J

I look a little like Walter at the moment – shaved head, heavy stubble, and when I was in the opticians last week sorting out my eyes, I put on a pair of frames that made me look just like Walt did when he first shaved his head. I’m sort of glad I flunked chemistry.

See? (If you’ll pardon the impending pun) I’ve been to the optician and that would normally have probably required a biographical illumination and probably a long descriptive passage about some fuckwit who I argued with. Instead, I was seen by a pretty little petite thing and a very amiable eye doctor. There was a woman there with level 3 COPD. This was the only thing I needed to see and hear to make me realise that I made a very sound decision stopping smoking. I haven’t got my new glasses yet because I want the wife to accompany me as the ones I‘m currently wearing she would not have let me buy had she had her way.

There is below this somewhere a photo just taken on the webcam of me sitting on the patio writing this with said glasses on. Here’s modern technology for you? Next there’ll be things like mobile phones and looms…

Actually taken over a week ago, that's how behind I am!
Oh and yes that is an old man's vest

Obviously the Moby look went out years ago. I got these glasses as a kind of homage to my dad who wore glasses that I didn’t think suited him… That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I need new glasses because all of this close up work is giving me monster headaches – like the one brewing at this moment. But that might just be down to the fact that Fishwife can’t get out of his back door at the moment and is having to use the alley to take his dog up and down to the loo. Whenever he uses the alley, Lexy takes personal umbrage at this and causes merry hell. Seriously, if you saw this meek and mild dog behave when someone is in the back alley, you would deter burglars from even contemplating doing either house.

I could bang on about how you all need to discover the truth about welfare figures and don’t go believing everything the right wing press and UKP tells you. I could also recommend you go and read the Guardian’s excellent piece on whether or not fracking is environmentally dangerous – and it leaves you to make up your on mind. Or I could take photos of massive beetroot and show you how piss poor my potatoes look like they’re  going to be. But I won’t. I don't want to talk about football either, or cricket, or the weather (but hasn't the weather since May, on the whole, been a blessed relief?)