It’s Alive!
Those that regularly visited this site may have been under the impression that I died or became severely incapacitated on or around 16th of October 2011, since all activity stopped at that time. Apologies for the sudden cessation and for the lack of any explanation. But here I am back again.
The reason for the hiatus was ludicrously enough for a retiree, not enough time. My very dear parents reached the age of 90 in late October, and my DLW the age of *0 in November. both involving celebrations of (for our family and friends at least) some significance. That period and a very busy stay in Cape Town shunted into a trip to France followed by the urgent need to do my diabolically complicated tax return and then seamlessly lurched into Christmas.
Doing a decent post requires for me at least a couple of days – one to write it, and one to find and add imagery, and then format and post it. Amazingly, I have not had two successive days when there has been enough time free for either task. Actually, to be completely accurate, there were a few days when I could have done something, but they were sunny days in Cape Town, and I couldn’t bear to spend them indoors.
However, sitting as I am now on a plane for the next 10 hours or so, there should be enough time at least to explain myself, and to reassure readers that I will be taking up posting again, and have a few items stacked up to cover in the next weeks or so. The absence has made me understand a few things about web logging, and writing in general however.
One consequence of the interregnum was that after a while I felt guilty about not posting, and then got into the ‘bank statement’ mentality – where bank statements pile up unopened because you cannot bear to learn the very bad news they certainly contain. Putting up a message explaining the pause at the beginning seemed unnecessary, as I didn’t think the gap would be that long – and at the end I couldn’t even bring myself to look at the site.
Finally, in December, I did log in again, expecting the surprisingly high traffic which had graced it since it’s rebirth to have dropped off to close to zero. To my amazement, it had continued unabated. In fact traffic during the times I wasn’t posting frequently exceeded traffic when I was. I am not quite sure what to make of this. Are the same people repeatedly reading old articles, or are new people coming by and then moving on? I am sure that faithful readers will be checking the site now and again, but that can’t explain the pattern of viewing unless, ungrateful wretch that I am, I have underestimated just how faithful some of you are, and that you all check in every day, looking right through the site to see if any activity had by chance occurred in some remote corner. Unlikely I feel. But it’s a bit unnerving to find that my readership is apparently the same whether I write anything or not. Maybe, as at the end of Some like it Hot, there is a ‘nobody’s perfect’ indulgence that allows me to not write or write as I please.
The explanation still eludes me, but let me say here, many thanks to all those of you who tuned in to the same unchanging obelisk-like content, for your indulgence and for keeping stopping by in the face of such extended and egregious inaction on my part.
