He’s gone awfully quiet, hasn’t he?

As long-standing regulars will already know, I do occasionally go through phases of getting a bit fed up with blogging. It’s probably all part of that mercurial temperament which marks me out as a True Artist, or something. Or maybe it’s just that I can be a right precious little prima donna at times.

Anyway, when these phases come upon me, then I find that it’s best to ride them out, ditch the ridiculous “but my public NEEDS me!” guilt trip thing, and wait for the muse to return of her own free will, when she’s good and ready.

However, while I’m here: for those of you who used to read The World, Backwards, or who remember his guest spot on this blog from a couple of years ago, our old friend noodle vague (a.k.a Ferlin Husky, for ILMers) will be appearing, along with his missus, on BBC1’s National Lottery Come and Have a Go tomorrow (Saturday) evening from 19:45 to 20:35. No, I’ve never watched it either, but it appears to be an interactive quiz show (hosted by Julian Clary) where viewers at home can win the chance to be studio contestants the following week. I’m therefore assuming that noodle must fall into that category. Given the style and subject matter of his old blog, I am quite massively tickled by the incongruity, and shall therefore be glued to the set tomorrow, straight after Doctor Who.

Oh, hang on: K and I are out to dinner tomorrow evening with five-sheds “Bob”, Mrs “Bob”, Our Journalist Friend OldEngland and NewEngland (their old nicknames got such a high approval rating that I have decided to reinstate them). Well in that case, I shall be glued to the video at some hideously late hour of the evening after everyone else has gone to bed, a glass of malt whiskey in my hand, trying to drown out the sounds of K’s snoring in the room upstairs (it’s a lovely old cottage, but some of the sound-proofing is frankly crap).

Stuff which I would have blogged about this week, had I been minded to do so (and might still, so consider this an aide memoire):

• An unfortunate encounter at the clinic.
• The holistic versus the sequential mind, and why can’t I have a bit of both?
• A 45 minute round trip for this?
• A Freudian Slurp on the local news. (Actually, I have been expressly forbidden from writing about this.)
• Ian McEwan’s Saturday: classic or dud?
• Where did I get “that hat”?
• In which a Selfridges employee thinks on her feet.
• That twentieth anniversary in full.
• That Bebo & Cigala concert in full.
• That Rufus Wainwright concert in full. (Look, it’s in draft, okay?)
• The two most recent Parallel Universe Top Twenties. (There’s a new Number One.)
• New album purchases: that’s proper serious grown-up stuff, not trivial Pop Top 40 nonsense.

Tell you what. I know that far greater bloggers than I do this on a regular basis, but then I’ve never claimed to be an original thinker, so… if you want to vote for which one(s) of the above you’d like to read, then please leave a comment accordingly, and I’ll write up the most popular choice(s). That might be a good way of kick-starting the muse.

Actually, a quick copy and paste job wouldn’t kill me, would it? OK, so here’s this week’s Parallel Universe Top Twenty. (You’ll have to calculate last week’s missing chart by hand, I’m afraid.)

Yay, it’s a Bank Holiday! School’s out! Let’s all run wild and free! For three whole days! The sun is shining, there’s beer in the fridge and a song in my heart!

Bis bald, mes copains.