3,000

This is the three-thousandth post on this weblog, or possibly the three-thousand-and-first; Blogger's dashboard and post list pages diverge on the matter, and having no wish to provoke a Twitterstorm I've decided to take the cautious view. A number trailing zeroes is often the cue for introspection, reminiscence or a bit of a smug; and I have chosen the course you would expect, although I have mercifully refrained from commemorating this particular jubilee with three thousand supposedly interesting facts about my person.

When this weblog was set up, the Reverend Blair was prime minister and not as yet ascended unto his reward on the lecture circuit; the crusade in Iraq was only a year old; George W Bush had been legally inaugurated for the first and only time; the Liberal Democrats still pretended to some vague interest in liberalism and democracy; and Daveybloke was still a smooth, vacuous salesman showing barely a hint of the blundering purple-faced bully who would look so well in a tumbril. Thus far, I have got through two and a bit prime ministers of the United Kingdom, one and a half presidents of the United States and a brace of popes. A long time ago I even acquired a couple of trolls, but they grew bored with the length and structure of my sentences and disappeared even before Haloscan-that-was decided to wipe out all their comments along with everyone else's. Comments nowadays are few and far between, but that wasn't always the case; I still have the wiped ones saved, but the task of copying and pasting them one by one into Blogger's system can wait till desperation or dotage leaves me no alternative.

I began this humble wedge of the blogosphere almost nine years ago in March 2004, posting over the following couple of months a few bits of fiction written some time before. After a pause occasioned by a change of home, I started again in October with some news stories that happened to fall through a time warp; and since then I have inflicted upon a stoical internet posts in various forms and genres, including fiction, verse, Biercean fable and Satanic lexicography; book reviews and film reviews; essays and philosophical dialogues featuring Hitler, the end of the world and occasional amoebas; notes on fictitious pop-cultural phenomena; bad history, bad science, bad theology and bad cookery; and, of course, reams of dyspeptic commentary based mostly on stories in the Guardian. As achievements go, I know it is hardly Die Fackel (and it's the wrong colour, anyway), but from someone of my laziness the frequency of posting and sheer volume of words are really quite horrifying.

In between posts I have written a few books, made a small but hopefully not insignificant contribution to the appreciation of Robert Aickman and, if the page-view counts are anything to go by, acquired a select if taciturn following. Thanks to you all for your reading, commenting, linking, retweeting and reviewing; and onward in mudgeonry let us go.