Last week, I finished working at my regular online writing gig.
May, 2009:
Where Did It Go?
Good question.
You may remember there was a blog here called Fevered Mutterings (v3), packed to the rafters with wibblings. Well, yesterday I realised I hadn’t archived it properly. So I went into my webspace to do just that.
It involved moving files around into one folder, so I could export that folder onto my laptop for archiving. When I did so, WordPress seems to have automatically tried to “fix” my blog – which involved installing blank versions of my content files over the top of them. In other words: it’s all gone. Years of it.
There’ll be a lot of broken links out there. Blimey.
I know, yes, absolutely, I should have done this and I should have done that. There’s a way of exporting all your work as an .xml file. Yes, I’m aware. But I had no idea that this ‘live’ webspace would try to correct itself while I was working in it – otherwise I would have been around forty thousand times more careful. I would probably have left well alone until I had memory sticks bulging with every scrap of writing.
But I didn’t and I don’t, and now it’s all gone.
Contrary to what you might think…no, I’m not in the depths of a whisky bottle right now. I was archiving the site because I wanted to reboot it, so change were already in the air. And I’m not too precious about most of the writing I’ve done for fun. If I wrote it, it’s still in my head somewhere, so it’s a chance to write some of my favorite posts for the second time. And it’s a chance to start as I meant to go on from the start last time – if that’s not too tortuous a sentence.
So, welcome to Fevered Mutterings version 4: less bugs, more stuff, and far more stable. You’ll see.
Image: djking
Nafplio: Where Home Tracked Me Down
A story of how I went abroad, and how York followed me.
June 2007
Well, I’m not sitting indoors all day. I may have just arrived, I may be recovering from the double-whammy of the worst sunburn and the worst hotel breakfast I’ve ever experienced, but I’m not kicking my heels with this paperback all day. This is still Greece, and I’m still exploring. Michael Palin wouldn’t sit here reading Himalaya, he’d know the ending for a start but more than that, he’s an explorer. So go explore, matey.
There isn’t a single wrong colour in Nafplio.
Brisk
31st October 2006
Fevered Mutterings v.2
Swiping out of work at 5.45pm (can’t seem to shake off the habit of surfing the ‘Net for quarter of an hour – institutionalised by my lack of access at home until recently)…..
It’s the Big Bald Security Guard.
(At the back of my mind there’s a video clip of him trying to take a bead on Dolph Lundgren with some kind of plasma weapon, but it refuses to turn into an IMDB link). He’s more than a little odd. Once he tried to convince me that the Bible is pure invention using “well, it’s a book, isn’t it?” as the core of his argument. Sometimes he stares out through the plate-glass front doors with a look on his face that says Danger: Forming Unhealthily Countercultural Philosophy – Run Like Bloody Hell. He has a face of finely-drawn planes of cheekbone and jaw, like a Terminator. He leans in when he’s arguing with you, his eyes glowing slightly.
Today, as many evenings, he’s sat in his chair, facing possible tides of lanky drug-crazed teenage thieves, random nutters and armies of balaclava’d fringe militant anti-private-healthcare liberation movements, staring out (maybe willing them on). His brow is furrowed. It’s always furrowed – when he frowns, his eyebrows descend into his head, pulling his shoulders up. He is staring at the sky.
“It’s cold. It’ll be all that freezing of the ice-caps.”
He’s right. (The first part). Stepping out, from the warm, sterile atmosphere of work….it’s stepping into a freezer. You can feel your body blink, swear foully and start stoking its own fires furiously, as your first breath draws frigid gases deep inside you, a painful contrast of temperatures on the inside of your throat. Animal instinct: be small, be small. Zipper, hands jammed into pockets, pushing against the lining towards your legs as if the pressure will warm them, which it will, but nowhere near as much as you’d hope. Becoming aware of breathing through your nose.
An animated wind whips the bitter air around, particularly underfoot. It’s caught many people out, this very clearly defined First Day Of Winter. The most nithered-looking are, as always, young women in skirts, all ruddy knees, convulsive self-hugging and pinched expressions. Blokes, myself included, disappear into our upturned collars like we’re on the way to a Raymond Chandler convention. Today, I positively love my new light-grey dark-grey fleece – figurehuggingly warm, no flapping waist to pump cold air up and around.
There are leaves everywhere.
Grey clouds scud. (What else scuds, apart from, obviously, this?) Crossing the railway bridge, the wind makes a carriage of a passing train moan the moan of the profoundly indigested, a low sound that if I was nearer I’d probably feel most in my teeth. Doors bang. Inappropriate shoes clatter. Car lights look unnaturally sharp (perhaps my imagination, or a function of the cold against my contact lenses). Everything is faster – no tarrying, no wasted energy, no unnecessary exposure. But I’m still not home quick enough.
Photo: M. Sowden 2006.
