WE CELEBRATE OUR 400TH POST!!!
Hello beasties!
HAPPY 400TH!!
It's all birthday's around here, at the moment - 15 years since I wrote THE TRUE LIGHT only a week or two ago - this particular anniversary of our 400th post - my own birthday in a few week's time and then we'll be reaching our 15th anniversary in the Spring of 2017! Still, birthdays are meant to be celebrated - so celebrate we shall! That said, this one might be one of those more modest birthday parties - just a nice slice of cake and a glass of champagne, perhaps...
Anyway - let's focus on the here and now! So, this week we're celebrating our 400th post - it's not going to be a terribly long update, but I have written a little "400"-themed piece at the end of this post... I'm very proud that I've been able to make this blog a portal for my writing and if anything it's stronger than it's ever been. I think the advent of lulu.com over 10 years ago now and the ability to post photos around the same time pretty much spurred my enthusiasm in a way that has never ebbed.
Some projects like this start off good and go down-hill - but I think my blog is something that started off quite average and yet has definitely improved - especially in the last 5 or so years! As I was saying - being able to include photos has definitely made it a more colourful place to visit! I'm also pleased with how the site started off just as a place for my poetry - was somewhere I could talk about my poetry books, but has also, more recently, become a place to share photos, talk about other writing projects - promote videos and since May 2016 trumpet the arrival of a new podcast episode... In the last couple of years it has also become my go-to place for new prose and poetry that I write - more than ever before a first draft goes on the blog long before it ends up in a published book...
Some projects like this start off good and go down-hill - but I think my blog is something that started off quite average and yet has definitely improved - especially in the last 5 or so years! As I was saying - being able to include photos has definitely made it a more colourful place to visit! I'm also pleased with how the site started off just as a place for my poetry - was somewhere I could talk about my poetry books, but has also, more recently, become a place to share photos, talk about other writing projects - promote videos and since May 2016 trumpet the arrival of a new podcast episode... In the last couple of years it has also become my go-to place for new prose and poetry that I write - more than ever before a first draft goes on the blog long before it ends up in a published book...
Next up, before we go any further, we've got a couple of new podcast episodes to announce...
Here we are for episode TWENTY-EIGHT - and this time Mr Yeti has a couple of hospital appointments to attend - not to mention Mr Deeley, who has to go to the vet! To cheer matters up our returning special guest is Jo or Wifey #1 who first appeared in episode 12 - and Paul manages to only confuse her half-a-dozen times! Yay! We also have messages from our regulars, review a couple of recent appearances on podcasts and listen to some more of Mr Yeti's daft poems. Thank you to Jo for being our special guest and also thank you to Brenda Boo, Toppie Smellie and ThatPeterG for allowing me to use footage from our recent LOTSL episode, number 207. Our next episode, number 29 - will be our live episode that was broadcast around 4pm (EDT) / 9pm (GMT) on Sunday 16th October 2016. Episode 30 will be our Halloween episode. Please email me at shyyeti@yahoo.co.uk if you have any comments - you can even send me a sound-file and I'll include it on the show. The music is by Shy Yeti and Luca. This episode and all contents are Copyright Paul Chandler, 2016. Episode 28 was recorded between the 13th September and the 13th October 2016.
This episode can be downloaded on iTunes, Acast, Podbean and also from Soundcloud at the following link:
Here we are for episode TWENTY-NINE - and it is time for our very first live show on Pride48! Mr Yeti interacts with the chat room - reads some of his poems and we have guest appearances from all the regulars! The gods enjoy it so much that they show their pleasure by making thunder!! True!! Our next episode, number 30 - will be our Halloween episode - out in the next few days! Please email me at shyyeti@yahoo.co.uk if you have any comments - you can even send me a sound-file and I'll include it on the show. The music is by Shy Yeti and Luca. This episode and all contents are Copyright Paul Chandler, 2016. Episode 29 was recorded live on 16th October 2016, but with pre-recorded inserts prepared on the 13th October 2016.
This episode can be downloaded on iTunes, Acast, Podbean and also from Soundcloud at the following link:
Might I add that the live show on Sunday 16th October went very well and was great fun to record - special thanks to Tim From Alaska, Toppie Smellie and Crone for listening in and taking part. I am pleased to announce that I do have two more shows lined up:
Sunday 20th November and Sunday 18th December 2016 on Pride48 at 4pm (EDT / 9pm (GMT)
Basically I'm looking to do a show once a month on the 3rd Sunday of the month - although I may even consider doing a fortnightly show from 2017 - I'll just have to see how busy my weekends get. That said I'm pretty much always about on a Sunday evening as I'm usually due to go into work the following morning.
Following this episode - as long as nothing goes wrong - we have these little shows for you:
30 - HALLOWEEN EPISODE
31 - THE BUSY WEEKEND...
32 - BIRTHDAY EPISODE
33 - THE RETURN OF MR GOODMAN
34 - JAY THE HAUNTCUB EPISODE
35 - SHY YETI IN VENICE...
36 - BITS AND PIECES EPISODE...
I don't want to say too much what each episode entails - and it may be that some of these will be juggled or that possibly there might be another live episode slotted in there somewhere. I also have one or two other episodes squirrelled away and a number of other interviews lined up to record over the next few weeks. At this rate I'll have all my 2016 episodes in the can before very long!!
Before we go - here's a little link - I searched for any posts on the blog that included the number "400" and found one or two of them; although mostly it's just the number of pages in a book that I've written or some such... Anyway - there are one or two poems in this lot too; check it out!
As promised at the start, I'm going to leave you with a new prose piece - it's on the theme of "400"...
Next time we'll probably be thinking about Halloween and hopefully I'll have my podcast episode ready for your enjoyment ...
Take care - more soon!
Yeti hugs,
Paul xx
P.S. This piece was written between Tuesday 27th and Friday 30th September 2016, with some re-writes and tweaking down up until posting. Thanks to Toby for the photos of Deeley...
IF I COULD LIVE TO BE FOUR HUNDRED...
If I could live to be four hundred...
How would I feel about it?
Okay... Let me think about this...
What do you mean you want me to decide now!?
I can't do that... You have to give me a little more information...
I mean, I'm presuming that this is four hundred with a good quality of life -
With health and energy and a curiosity that propels us ever onward...
With good hair and fabulous fashion-sense and nice cake...
There's no point being four hundred having still been shoved into a care home at eighty...
I'm presuming that life as a four hundred year old would mean life running at a different pace...
Although I'd still be happy only to spend eighteen years in education...
Don't tell me you expect me to be sitting exams until I'm fifty two;
I don't think I could do it...
Let me take a set of encyclopaedia home and I shall report back forthwith!
For that matter neither do I want to suffer the agonies of teenager-hood well into my forties -
Or suffer the stupidities of my twenties until I'm seventy-five...
Living with the bad choices of my thirties until well after I'm one hundred...
Still tripping over the mistakes of my sixties until I'm almost a century and a half...
Let's look at things more positively...
Let me consider how much more I could get done...
How many more books I could read and films I could see...
How many more places that I could travel to...
I'd have to get me a bigger house, that's for sure -
Just to fit all the tat from an extra couple of hundred years of life -
The kind of treasures that I'll be picking up along the way...
Ticket stubs, theatre programmes, birthday cards, favourite shirts...
Of course - there's a good chance that even if we're able to hang around a little longer -
That time will age and wither these trinkets even if we do try to preserve them...
Do you think that'll just be us who live on -
Or will our pets also be able to live extended lives...
Because, that would be awesome and if we're honest -
These are the people who truly matter to us the most...
So, anyway - all of this is a nice idea - but increasingly...
I realise that maybe there is also quite a lot of admin involved...
All the developments in technology; it's simply wearying...
All the family squabbles that used to drag on for decades...
Now they could drag on, literally, for centuries...
There are a lot of questions here that I am only now beginning to consider...
Would I still go bald at thirty-five or might I have hair into my nineties?
Three hundred is the new sixty - or something...
I can already see the greetings cards and the car bumper stickers with that on it...
Not that anyone with probably send cards or drive cars in the future!
You'll be expected to work until you're well into your third century...
You know that, right!? It doesn't bear thinking about...
None of this is seeming like a very good option...
I mean, how can this be? How could living to be 400 be a bad thing?
I'm sure with a bit of thought we can turn this around...
I just need to know all the rules first - and then we can work from there...
So, if I could live to be four hundred...
How would I feel about it?
Just let me know the details and I'll get back to you...
But don't take too long about it - because I'm a way off being young...
Although, of course - if I do live to be four hundred -
I'm still in my prime...
