It is a significant anniversary today, dear reader.
For on this day, TEN YEARS AGO, I started this frippery that is my blog!
It was, of course (as anyone who has followed my ramblings for any length of time will know) not here on Blogger that it all began, but - in those primitive early days of "social networking" [long before any US president was allowed near such stuff!] - it was to the "big thing" of the day MySpace that I first began publishing these vaguely random jottings.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, of course...
I enjoyed MySpace. It wasn't "in-yer-face", it was slightly classier than the alternatives of the day (anyone remember Bebo?), and it was certainly a step up from the days of AOL chatrooms. [It was definitely better than bloody F***book, even if that was the site that was eventually to steal its crown.] But by 2010, the gnomes in charge had begun to tinker with the way their site worked, which pissed me and many others off [and ultimately killed the "golden goose"]. So I transferred everything that I had done up to that moment - one blog at a time, a punishing exercise to say the least - over here.
In the process, however, a few blogs (including the very first) were lost in the ether [understandable in the circumstances, and given the tortuous way the navigation of that now-benighted site had been changed]. So this Blogger blog physically began with a (rather muted, in hindsight) tribute to Liza on her 61st birthday when, in fact, it should have started with a total eclipse of the moon.
Thanks to the new owners of MySpace [who, last time I looked, included dear Justin Trousersnake] however, I have now recovered the "missing six blogs" - and (for what they're worth) you can read them here!
Since those early days, there have been a few "hits" (my blog about the mysterious death of Mind Your Language actor Barry Evans back in 2011 has had the highest number of readers of anything, ever; currently at 75383 views and counting...), and many misses (inevitably). I even diversified out to a second blog - the Museum of Camp.
But more, much more than this... a decade on from the almost-mythical world of MySpace - the world of choosing your "top eight friends", of WordArt headings, of playlists, of the flashing "online now" graphic, and of "Tom"; a world that was largely coloured pale blue and orange - I'm still here!
And, as the weekend looms into view, let us raise a toast to those TEN YEARS [where did they go?] in the company of the subject of one of those early blogs - and thus, our earliest Patron Saint (and seventh most-blogged-about artiste since I began, after Kylie, Madonna, David Bowie, Sondheim, Dame Shirl and Pet Shop Boys) - Miss Liza Minnelli!
Here she is (in our traditional fashion as a weekend looms) performing a dance classic (in tribute to another great diva, Donna Summer) - it's Bad Girls!
Thank Disco It's Friday - and here's to the next ten years!
Have a good one, peeps.
p>
...for tonight I have finally completed the transfer - manually I might add! - of (just about) every single one of the blogs I had posted on the benighted former social network known nowadays as My_______ [sic] to Blogger.