Well That’s Just Grand

It’s all fine reaching one thousand posts, but what do you actually say about it?

I’m glad I did the 999 post yesterday, because it’s a more interesting number, with its connotations of emergency services, its subliminal programming that you’d really love nine 99-ice creams right now and the fact that it’s the number of the beast upside down.

One thousand, though, lacks the same interest.

Look it up in Wikipedia and you are told that it is the number between 999 and 1001. This is impeccably factually correct, though unlikely to come as news to many people. In any case, anyone who has doesn’t know what 1000 is probably won’t know what 1001 is either, so the above information will be of little help. It’s a bit like telling you that an aardvark is “an aardvark with a hat on, but without the hat”.

The article goes somewhat downhill thereafter, difficult though that may seem, and in this way it does perform a service. If ever you are feeling down about your blog, or believe that your writing is dull and uninteresting, read Wikipedia’s article about One Thousand and gleefully tell yourself “well, what I write is more fun than that”.

The only thing of note in the article is that it reminds us that there is a phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”. If this is true then I’ve pretty well wasted the last four years when I should have taken up art instead , so I’ve decided to disprove it. I have counted and read (1000 posts written and still as thorough in my research as ever) the first one thousand words of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (up to the word “him” on the third page, in case you’re interested).

We meet Mr and Mrs Dursley, we learn that Mrs Dursley has a sister that she pretends she doesn’t have, we meet the delightful Dudley, and an owl flies past the window. Dudley throws cereal at the walls, Mr Dursley drives to work, passes a cat reading a map and thinks about drills (it’s because he works for a company that makes them, not because he’s mental). He sees a lot of people in cloaks, goes into work, yells at five people, makes phone calls and decides to buy a bun. He walks back to the office with his doughnut (they must have been sold out of buns), overhears a group of people mention the Potters and their son Harry, is flooded by fear (I’m hoping that’s not a euphemism), hurries back to his office and snaps at his secretary not to disturb the one-thousandth word, him.

Try getting a picture to paint all that.

Anyway, to mark the milestone:

(You can see why I didn’t take up art, can’t you?)

Dial 999

As I was approaching my 100th post I got the idea from Jo of using that post to list one hundred things that I like. I started work on it at about the 70-post mark, making my choices, deciding on a running order and (sorry SOPA) picking photos that I would use.

I’m not going to link to the list, but it includes things like cricket, Star Trek, Big Brother and (sigh) women’s bums (with a terrific photo of Yelena Isinbeyeva to show what I meant, in case any of the four readers I had at that time didn’t know what a woman’s bum was).

Eventually I decided that the post was finished and ready to go, but obviously it was number-specific, in that I could only use it for my 100th post or it was pointless. And I had only written 95 posts.

Oh, how I limped agonisingly towards the target. My 96th post was about cats or something, the 97th was as exciting as watching paint dry (it may well have been about watching paint dry), the 98th was written in Urdu.

For the next one I wrote a post called “Stuck on 99” in which I confessed that one of my first loves was Agent 99 from the original “Get Smart” TV series. I reported how as I got older I moved on to Emma Peel from the Avengers, then to Purdey from the New Avengers. I showed a photo of each of them, meaning that SOPA now have a file on me an inch thick (that’s true, I’d show you a picture of the file if they’d let me).

That was over three years ago, but each week I get three or four visitors here who arrive having typed “Agent 99” or something similar into Google Images. This is because, if you try it, the first picture of her brings you to my blog, so complete strangers hoping to read about her get instead  to read some bloke constantly writing about how he can’t think of anything to write about. I’d imagine few of them come back.

Thus my 99th post is more famous than my 100th, and that is why I have decided to make a bigger deal of today’s post, my 999th, than I will of tomorrow’s (yes, it will be tomorrow, anyone who has to skip a day because he can’t even think to write “today’s is my 1000th post” really does have Blogger’s Block).

It is possible that the title of this post may cause inconvenience to some people, but I doubt it.

Anyway, anyone who types “Dial 999” into Google instead of actually dialling 999 possibly deserves to have their house burn down.