August 2018 I was part of a good-humoured discussion at my brother’s blog (Conrad Walks). Others contributed and my brother announced that – at 34 comments – we’d broken the record for a single Conrad Walks post. Was 100 comments a possibility? I wondered.
Wondered aloud.
Not only a possibility, a reality. I’d forgotten this sportive project until recently. Dimly it came back; many dropped out, leaving it to me and Phreerunner (a retired accountant, but much more than that) to slug it out. The hundredth comment should have been his but he graciously ceded it, saying it was my idea.
What subjects, then?
At one point I suggested Blogger might intervene; "We'll never make it," I said. Brother (Sir Hugh) seemed relieved. But Phreerunner (PR) persisted.
So I resumed, dealing with my Austin Cambridge (My worst car), my BSA Bantam (Ditto motorbike), Wrynose Pass in the Lake District, why I wasn’t a backpacker, and the Col d'Iseran in summer.
Was I distracting PR from more serious stuff; should I write his comments and his answers? He laughed at that. Kitchen Utensils I Have Never Used led to talk of mandolins and colanders. Truthfulness and Politicians absorbed half a thousand words. Scruffiness of journalists. An aside about lobster racing. The artistic proportions of bronze winches used on yachts.
But was I running dry? – wedging in part of a short story and a sonnet about a ski-ing accident, both mine. Not at all. Welcome boots, singing and Mozart.
Also, why had Brits taken to drinking water from bottles in the streets?
I was astonished at the length of the comments. And at the sustained enthusiasm. At its quixotry. Ah, to be 82 again.
Well said. I note in my post there were observations and musings apart from any mechanical description of our walk and they at least got the saga off to a start.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: To do this one had to want to do it. It couldn't be a burden. Both Phreerunner and I broke off for various pre-arranged reasons but we resumed, still full of ideas. What started in August ended in October and - of course, I would say this, wouldn't I? - it was full of good stuff. I should add that Gimmer, one of my brother's pals, also stayed the course but not quite as feverishly.
ReplyDeleteInteresting RR. In these sparse blogging days we are lucky to make even 10 comments.
ReplyDeleteAs to being 82 again - "the past is gone, only today is yours, tomorrow may never come"
Avus: Ah, but would you have even considered the proposition? Referring to 82 was meant to be ironic; numerically, mentally and physiologically there is no great difference between 82 and 87.
ReplyDeleteQuoting others tends to fix you in amber. Bollix to the past being gone. It may be retrieved (Proust wrote a long novel about that), mulled over and re-shaped in one's mind. To accept that dull statement is to willingly ignore the possibilities of the imagination, a subject I return to time after time, mainly to rebut those who say: nothing happened to me today (or during the past week, or eternity) therefore I may not write. The act of saying that to oneself is a blog subject straight off. And here's a first sentence "Veritably, I am as one of the stones in my gravel path..."
Sit down and think about something you've never thought about before. If the answer is: such a subject doesn't exist, now consider the enormity (or paucity) of that conclusion. Never mind about two wheels, mount the imagino-bike and ride out into abstraction. Exercise what's keeping your ears apart.
There's an endless source of content. Time is the enemy, as mused by RR's oh to be 82 again comment. All good fun!
ReplyDelete