Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

S'funny thing but I gave up blogging a while back and it felt as tho' quite a lot of the blogs I followed ran aground at about the same time. It's almost as tho' we were symbiotically related. Some announced their departure, or gradually petered out, but some ended for odd or dreadful reasons. Just today I read that Google has pulled the plug on one for unnamed 'crimes'. He's uncomprehending and upset about it.
Don't know why you stopped (or wrote drafts which you didn't post). Don't really know why I stopped. I paint much more which might be my reason.
The Asian contingent (including the very intellectual philosopher blogger in Pakistan whom I could never really keep up with, but thought very beautiful) don't stop, nor do the Hattats in Buda or Pest (who have a phenomenal 'comments' response running into hundreds). Their posts are mostly travelogue, with lovely photographs. I sometimes wonder if I gave up because I was piqued that my deathless prose and 'pomes' aroused such obvious apathy.
And where did that nice lawyer(?) who wrote Decade4 go? He was a bit into you ;) Perhaps he moved into Decade5 and is moping somewhere.
I'm wittering, sorry. I hope you are well. Hugs (which I read I only allowed you qualified versions of before) and love, Alec xxxx
 

I ran aground simply because there were things I ought blog about yet didn't, so felt guilty over that, things I didn't think I could blog about, and just the whole writing thing broke down. I didn't feel like I was writing well and that put me off doing it further.

I suppose because I knew it was something I've done when not functioning well—a last grasp at sanity—that I sort of decided it was causitive. Clearly it isn't, but I was worried that in not changing I was keeping myself stuck (whereas actually working through ideas can be cathartic, solidifying those worth refining, and logging events is good way to help remember the good bits and highlight the absences, or at least make it more obvious when I'm self-selecting the worst bits [but it's a blog, no one wants to hear everything went spiffingly]).

That and I just felt it, like much else, wasn't that worthwhile.

Except of course I like coming up with the cunning little phrases (well, when I do) and take... actually, I'll rephrase, I assign [too] much importance to how others react to the posts. And when those others are whittled down to a sweet, ever-generous guy who I don't quite get (but want to), and someone who uses words as mercurially as I do (which isn't to say he isn't sweet and ever generous too), so who shifts in my perception as my mood shifts (though he too I'll never get; he likes football), well, I just don't know what to take from it. Praise always debases itself and... I'm talking bollocks.

Apathy's the wrong word for your pomes. I'll admit I'm not always in the right mood to right them, but sometimes am.

I imagine the nice lawyer (he isn't, unless he's recently retrained) is still around somewhere, but he's also married (yep, that'll make him surface) now so maybe he spends his blogging time ring-polishing or whatever it is married people do. That or he got a new job and could no longer work part time in full time hours. I could email him, but what does one say? "Hello, I hope you're not dead, but can't do much if you are"?

Anyway, love, hugs and probably fruitcake.

Anyhoo,
 

Ring polishing, huh? Well I never! I was sure he was a lawyer. And what manner of beast did he get married to? And at least you've got a sweet, ever-generous guy. My friends didn't read my blog at least in the interested, appreciative, and sustained way you hope for (anyway they said that they'd heard it all before, mostly because I kept ringing them up and telling them). So I was dependent on the kindness of strangers, and as you know, the kindness of strangers can be strange. Not that you are strange. Well you are quite strange, but in a heroic way. Love, Alec xx
 

I thought he did boring stuff for people he isn't meant to talk about. I don't know who he married, I think it's the same guy he was with then wasn't then was again a while back, but it's been a while (meaning an uncounted number of years) since we emailed. I found out about the marriedness via his blog.

Blogs, in my experience, tend turn murky figures from the internet into real friends who you can tickle. Getting friends to read is harder because they were there, or you've already talked to them about it, or the post is actually cribbed from an email you sent them. But this blog was often a vent zone so rarely mentioned it to my friends (most of whom don't really see the point of blogs, or Twitter, of Tumblr, or whatever else is the new blog).

Heroically strange? You make me sound like a überquark.

As for the kindness of strangers Angels in America has a good line on that (which I can't find on Youtube). But we all tend to nonetheless.

And when did you change your profile from the little boy in black to your best Tom Daley?

Anyhoo,
 

Not much to say to all that, except don't mock my pic. I have problems with taking my clothes off. I don't mean I can't manage buttons and zips just I'm a bit tube shaped and not Daleyesque. Can you detect the rabbity headlight thing in my manic grin? A nice guy I met in Spain took the picture last year and I've only just unveiled it. When I saw the Philip Hale portrait of Thomas Ades recently I recognised his embarrassment. His body is the same as mine in its nervousness and Hale has realised it. Ades and I share the same contortion. The guy on the lounger is Spanish me, as unsure of his body as Cambridge me, but with the difference that he's laid it out on display. It won't take much to make him run again. It's pretty obvious also that I'm going to run to fat. This 'comment' is highly narcissistic for which I blame you.

And you haven't emailed. Ben1 has this round robin going. Actually it isn't. I've just looked round robin up. That a single author piece circulated to the many. I'm getting mired in origins and I wasn't interested in round robin's origin. It's a compulsive need to finish things: dot and cross.

My turn to bollockate. Love, Alec xx
 

Fleetingly I thought you were referring to the seascape currently on your blog when you told me not to mock.

I have problems with taking my clothes off
You mean you don't have a man who does that for you?/I'm sure you can find someone to help you/ Oh Leckums, you only have to ask/Any other sarky answer.

Tube-shaped is skin-efficient (well, spheres are most efficient, but, you know, bones).

Embarrassment? Oh, I was reading it as still drunk yet hungover.

As for the manic grin, I saw grin and that's all (ok, so grin, then wondering how one gets to be brave enough to wear those swimming trunks [though I like them], then the arms best described as in a similar state to mine, then the sunglasses from pre-me photographs, then the navel-sized nipples, then wondering what your nose is like and if you hair is at its fullest extent or just cut and what the significance of the necklace is and... whoa, you've got your back to the sea: I don't understand you).

Emailed? Huh? Above I used 'you' when I meant 'one'. Ben Mark I is doing circulars for his inner core of fans? Oh. Fine, I'll just go and form my own clique over here (it's so cool even the founder is only rarely allowed in).

You know bollockate sounds like it could be one of many other things, albeit mostly on the same theme, right?

Love and other many splendoured things,

Anyhoo,
 

Cripes! Not sure what to sort out of all that for comment. I'm ignoring the insults so it doesn't leave much. You're probably right about it being a hangover, not embarrassment, and perhaps I meant he was displaying the awkwardness of those who are uncomfortable with their bodies.
I'm completely foxed (which was drunk in Heyer's Regency speak, but I'm thinking bamboozled) by the Ben Mk I and II business. I thought you were part of the threeway e-way conversation we were having and you are the other Ben (not as monolithic as a Gaelic mountain, but with all of the frivolousness). I had not thought that the fact you haven't actually contributed to the conversation was a sign you're not the third person! I thought, because it's early days, you were biding your time and polishing your mots juste. Are you sure you've not listed us as spam? Don't quite know what to do now. It's the outside of enough (Heyer again). Love, Alec xx
p.s. I haven't got an undresser. Wonder why theatrical types didn't opt for that rather than the other? Presumably the amount of dressing was exactly matched by the amount of undressing.
 

They don't start off being insults, it's just it's hard to describe anything to do with you without being insulting (warning: two tongues are needed to accurately convey this sentence, one for holding in the cheek and the other for sticking out).

Were having a email conversation but are not now? Still don't think it's me (we did somewhere in someone's comments ages ago, but I don't think this is what you mean). And you're not in spam.

I know someone who works as a dresser; somehow I've never made a pun about furniture near him. This foxes me.

And I think it's sweet that you think I polish my bons mots (and that I have them) when the only polishing is like that of stones in a river, bashed into sleekness by the unceasing torrent.

Lamentably I know little enough of Heyer to be able to ape her style (I thought they were Mills & Boon does Austen; am I wrong?).

Anyhoo,