peteashtondotcom

My mouse started to die over the weekend which, given that it was quite an old mouse that prior to my excessive usage had been used in an office-type environment, wasn’t too surprising but still rather annoying, so I popped into town to get a replacement. I decided to cycle in and, thanks to the shockingly useful Sustrans online cycle route map, took Route 5 of the National Cycle Network into town. It looked pretty good on the map, following the river Rea through Cannon Hill Park and then nipping through some back streets into the heart of the city.

And it started off so well - I felt I was in the countryside - until I realised it was a Bank Holiday Monday at the start of Half Term. One forgets these things when one doesn’t have a proper job. There was a massive “fun” fair in the park slap bang on the cycle path and people having “fun” can be so obstinate. And then, having passed by the flat in Balsall Heath I used to live in circa 1998, I discovered that the Pride festival that had so wonderfully enlivened our regular drinking haunt on Saturday night was still going on with Hurst St closed off and reasonably full of revelers and incredibly loud sound systems. But I refused to get off my bike. This is an official cycle route, dammit, and I will cycle along it.

All that paled into insignificance when confronted by the Bull Ring shopping “experience”. I’ve managed to avoid actually going into it until now but Apple had to put their lovely new boutique in there didn’t they. I was puzzling over why young people feel obliged to hang about in shopping centres of all places but then as a teenager I could always be found in the Whitgift centre of Croydon every Saturday afternoon.

And then home again. I can’t give an accurate time due to my figuring it out for the first time and excessive pedestrian interference, but it’s a certainly a more pleasant journey than the A34 from Perry Barr. Next I’ll be trying the canal paths - Dr Andy says there’s an interesting feature a few miles south - and I might even remember to take my camera this time.

I’m still not 100% what my point was in the last post, but I know for sure it wasn’t to try and get reassurance and sympathy from my readers. But that’s what I got in the comments and some quite long emails. And thank you for that, especially those new-to-me folk I had no idea were reading it.

For the record I really wouldn’t want to be hugely popular. There’s a distinct advantage to being lost in the mire of D-Z list blogs - you can write about what you like with no danger of becoming self-conscious. It doesn’t bother me that I’m not on those lists. It really doesn’t. I don’t care because I get more than enough satisfaction from what I do, as I’m sure does everyone on those lists. If we didn’t then we’d stop, popular or not.

I suppose the point was that these stats are not a reflection of the individual looking at them, and given that the internet is overwhelmingly experienced on an individual basis, that personal experience is way more important that an aggregation.

Everyone who comes here (or anywhere) takes something different from it, mixes it up with their other experiences on and offline and produces a unique reaction. If you want proof of this check out some of the more schizophrenic-seeming comments people leave.

And of course you can aggregate the stats and come up with generalisations about the character of the average blog poster or reader but I don’t find that very interesting. I’d be more interested in the individual case study, but that’s much harder to get hold of.

Okay, time to move on. I’m sure you’re all bursting to hear all about Bournville and South Birmingham generally, but before I do Matt Haughey commented on my blog! W00t! Oh. It was an accident. Now that was funny!

I’m writing this after a few beers mainly because I know I won’t write it when sober and that doesn’t mean it’s anything particularly soul exposing - I’ve been at this game long enough to know when not to blog when drunk. No, this is tedious meta stuff that my sober self would normally just let slide by like the easy going chap he is, but walking back from the taxi (always get out of the taxi with a fifteen minute walk ahead of you - it gives you a chance to think and not be quite so rowdy when you get in, plus you save a good 50p of so) it occurred to me that I need to address this. It also occurred to me that I wouldn’t address it tomorrow and that I’m not so drunk that my sober self will hate me in the morning. Although he’ll no doubt correct any obvious typos that occur.

Background first. A week or so ago the Blogebrity list appeared on the scene, attempting to give some substance to the “A-list” joke that has been going around blog-land since there were enough blogs to justify such a concept. I took a look and, after seeing I wasn’t on it (yes, of course I checked), gave it no more thought. Then the lovely Mike of Troubled Diva put together a list based on Technorati data detailing the most linked UK weblogs. Again, I wasn’t listed. About now you might be thinking I’m about to indulge in some sour grapes, given that I’ve been blogging now for five fucking years and have never even scraped one of these lists, but I’m not. Simply put I look at these lists and I don’t recognise a good half of the blogs on there, if that. And I’ve been paying attention. I’m interested in blogging and all that it can do, yet I’m not aware of a significant chunk of what are apparently the major forces in this scene.

And I’m putting my ego to one side here. Really. When I was walking back home tonight I looked at my silhouette on the pavement, a skinny bloke with his head misshaped by his hooded top, and was struck by my insignificance. And, since this might be taken out of context, I should add this wasn’t some major revelation that put me in my place. I’m just some guy, like every other blogger out there (guy in the non-gender-specific sense).

The fact is that these things are wonderfully relative. On the same day the Blogebrity list appeared Andy Luke posted this somewhat embarrassing endorsement of me. I was going to just let it go, but it illustrates a point really nicely. As far as Andy’s concerned I’m as A-list as it gets. While I might be looking to Andy Baio and Matt Haughey for inspiration, Andy’s looking to me. That doesn’t mean Andy is living in some closeted world where he doesn’t know what other great stuff is out there, no matter how much I might think so. As far as he’s concerned, I’m a major source for him online, and for him and, as far as I know a number of other folk, that’s a good thing.

So what’s my point? Ah, I dunno. Am I trying to strike some kind of balance on the whole blog popularity thing while also being a teeny bit pissed off that after five fucking years I still don’t get to play with the big boys, even though I’ve never bothered to even audition for that league? Yes, there is an element of that - I am human after all - but there’s something else, something that’s beyond the A-list bollocks and the linky-lurve stuff.

Remember that I look at these lists and don’t recognise most of the blogs on them. I’ve always been of the belief that there isn’t a single “blogosphere”. There are as many blogsopheres as there are bloggers, all overlapping and changing every time someone logs on and sticks a link on their site. You can aggregate them and come up with statistics and yes, some will be more influential than others, but for each individual those stats don’t mean shit. It’s not an isolationist thing, more an illustration of how wonderful this whole bloggernet environment is. A good blogger is someone who points you to things you hadn’t considered before, not just links but ideas, notions and experiences. And that blogger does not function alone. By the very nature of the medium they are getting links, idea, notions and experiences from others who in turn are doing the same thing, and those others can be on or off line.

Yes, I do get a lot of my stuff from the usual places, but I suspect what I consider “the usual places” might not apply to others who are looking in different directions. And that, as I start to sober up and think it might be a good idea to get to bed before I start to regret writing this and delete it before posting, is probably my point. Everyone I link to is, at that moment, “A-list” in my book. That individual link is, at that time, more important than anything else. It will fade, probably quite quickly, but when I saw it it was the most important thing, something that I felt the need to share with others.

And that’s possibly why I keep hacking away at this even though I know I’ll never reach the glory heights of blog stardom. If I can give one or five or ten or fifty or a hundred people something interesting to read or some neat link to follow then my job is done. The fact that I’m not alone in doing this makes it all worthwhile.

Right, time for bed. If this has turned out to be just a drunken rant of stupidity them my apologies.

(I couldn’t squeeze it in relevantly but Meg’s recent post Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be is worth a read since she did used to be the Queen of the UK blog scene back in the day. Like I say, not strictly relevant but it did get me thinking…)

[Update: A sober reflection]

The Podcast Radio Station (which still needs a decent name, dammit!) continues to grow with another addition. Welcome, if you will, Garen Ewing with his first show. I came across Garen’s comics when I first discovered the small press and fanzine scene and have known him on and off now for at least 15 years. As well as an accomplished cartoonist (his Rainbow Orchid was a serious contender for book of the year last year) he’s a musician, currently teaching himself the mandolin and theramin, and martial artist. He also, according to his online bio, has no belly button. Here’s Garen’s blog and the RSS feed for his podcast. Enjoy!

I seem to be doing things of little real consequence but that are adding up to a greater whole. You can probably chalk a lot of this down to the novelty of a new environment plus the acclimatisation to being a self employed sacker for nearly two months, but those little things, they do so please me.

Got up today at a civilized 10am. Popped down to the bakery (I live 30 seconds from a real bakery! It’s next to the real butchers! (no greengrocer though…)) and bought a loaf of fresh bread. Did some work for a bit with plenty of tea before popping out on the bike to buy a fan (the downside to living in the attic - it gets a bit warm…). Some more work and then a 90 minute distraction in the form of the final episode of Lost via the lovely BitTorrent protocol, which was triffic. Yeah, no conclusive ending but at least two, count ‘em, major cliffhangers - one was expected, the other was not - and a shedload of minor ones, as expected. Can’t wait for the rest of the UK to develop their own love-hate relationship with this program.

That over I had a quite long phone call with Her Majesties Revenue and Customs to register myself as self employed which was all very painless. In fact it was kinda fun. The guy at the end of the phone was really keen and helpful and made sure I understood everything. He’s even signed me up for a free training course. In my limited experience the Tax Office folks have always been helpful but there’s something about being a business that gets them all excited, like you’re doing something important for the good of the national economy. Which is kinda amusing as I’m doing this so I don’t have to get a proper job. At least I think that’s why I’m doing it. I guess I haven’t fully acclimatised after all.

Then dinner during which Jez phoned to request help with a sofabed they’d just had delivered which needed to be lugged to the attic. Since I was also due to pop to the pub in Moseley with Matt and Marv it seemed sensible to combine the two. So a 20 minute bike ride later I was hufting up the stairs of chez Higgins before strolling over to the Bull’s Head for the fortnightly Bohemian Jukebox event - basically an singer-songwriter open mike night only it’s curated by Ben Calvert. Quality is variable and sometimes quite high indeed but it’s a nice and informal way to check out local music such as Waldo Jeffers who were fun even if they did sound like The Smiths. Good Bongo action too.

And then, after being called “Keith” by Marv’s friend Natasha (at least I think that was her name), a nice ride home in the dark to be greeted by the final episode of Alias which was also triffic in its battier than batshit way. This now leaves me with Doctor Who as my only TV-related fix, which is no bad thing. My inner geek could do with some down time.

And so to bed. If all my days can be the lovely I’ll be a happy man.