November 2003.

Guest Month ends - with a "best of" round-up - as the weekly business trips expand from Paris to Cologne and (best of all!) Barcelona. Consequently, and after an extraordinarily prolific work-rate over the past 18 months (looking back at it all now, I'm actually quite astonished that I ever wrote so much) Blogger's Block begins to bite, and signs of work-related stress start to mount up. It's a tell-tale sign...

I Can Pick 'Em Department, Part Four: ahead of her victory in the second Guardian competition, an early link is made to Belle De Jour.

A good month for culture: Mariza in Birmingham (and I know for a fact that she has read my review), challenging installation art in Barcelona, DV8 Physical Dance Theatre in Paris (with ex-pat Parisian buddy Sarah, my regular dining companion of the time), the Turner Prize exhibition in London (we liked the Grayson Perrys)... and an audience with lovely Kevin McCloud (sigh!) at an interior design exhibition.

K leaves the company which he founded seven years earlier, and starts from scratch all over again with his canine cancer venture.

Guest blogger Zena turns up, with a series of posts detailing all the "w@nkers" she has ever slept with. As soon as the series is completed, the posts vanish into thin air. ("Think of it like a fascinating woman you met at a cocktail party who left before you got her phone-number.")

In parallel with Zena's posts, a new competition is launched: Who's The W@nker? ("Tell me the story of a relationship in which you were the w@nker.") The competition is won by Sarah, with this story.

December 2003.

I Can Pick 'Em Department, Part Five: an early link is made to PB Curtis: then at It's Funny Because It's Shit, now at Monkey With A Typewjkl;.

When satire falls flat: we still don't talk about the which recreational substance am I on? project. Some people thought I was doing it for real, you know...

"F**k off, I’m dead. Now go outside and look at the f**king flowers." During another wild weekend in London (actually, it was on the dancefloor of the Two Brewers in Clapham), and just ahead of yet another a business trip (this time to Zurich), a major decision is made. Troubled Diva is put on hold for an indefinite period, and an emotional farewell speech is made...

January 2004.

The weekly business trips continue. The blog remains closed.

February 2004.

An article about a trip to Barcelona is published in the Nottingham Evening Post, and re-printed on the blog.

On February 23rd, the silence is once again broken, with The Great Troubled Diva Shall I Or Shan't I Start Blogging Again? Potential Act Of Monumental Hubris Comprehension Test. Across the blogosphere, knowing eyeballs roll heavenwards.

March 2004.

The hiatus having lasted less for not much more than two months, full time blogging re-commences on March 8th.

In the meantime, I have become a regular on the I Love Music message board, and a tireless advocate of the Scissor Sisters, whom I go to see live at every opportunity.

The Nottingham house is taken off the market, and a decision is made to stay put for the forseeable future. Goodbye, architect-designed dream home! We were never worthy of you in the first place!

Midweek boozing sessions are back on the agenda, thanks to my new friend (and future blogger) Alan of Reluctant Nomad.

"I've been to paradise... but I've never been to Bulwell." Nottingham's tram service is opened, and a bunch of local dignatories board it for an inaugural ride. Finding myself in their midst, I record the experience. ("Do you think they'll have white wine in Hucknall?")

Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? returns, to cheers all round.

Simultaneously with this, an anonymous employee of News International attempts to "out" Belle De Jour in my comments box, ahead of a would-be exposé in The Times. (The comment is swiftly deleted, even though the "outing" subsequently turns out to be inaccurate.) The enusing intrigue and kerfuffle drags on for days, as I find myself thrust into the middle of all the fevered press speculation regarding Belle's identity. Why, I even come up with an amusing (if highly fanciful) conspiracy theory of my own. As a result, March 22nd becomes the busiest day ever on Troubled Diva, with nearly 2000 page views. Way to make a comeback!


K goes public for the first time about his new business venture.

April 2004.


A hand-drawn version of the front page appears on April Fool's Day; allegedly, I am testing a new handwriting recognition package. (But how did he do those links?)

Troubled Diva picks up a mention in Simon Garfield's feature on blogging in The Observer. In brackets. In the middle of a list. On the second page of the article. But still, eh!

The Which Decade project, which has been dragged out for a few weeks on account of all the Belle-related excitement, is won by the 1960s.

A reader-compiled "Songs you have to hear" track listing is assembled.

At a "swanky do" in a Nottingham hotel, I experience my first - and, to date, my last - panic attack.


Arboreal porn alert! A walk through the Manifold Valley leads us to a spot which we christen Harlot's Nook.

"F**k off, you vaseline-arsed fairy." A scathing review of one of the Scissor Sisters' support acts earns me my first (and hopefully my last) piece of hate-mail.

Easter is spent in Lisbon with Dymbel and Dymbellina, soaking up the fado.


Window Into My World: The Troubled Diva Pointlessly Detailed Journal Theme Week starts well, until midweek illness calls a swift halt to the venture.

A performance MP3 of the Boutique Hotel Casual Shag post is published. In many ways, this remains my favourite piece of work on the whole blog.

May 2004.

Blanket Eurovision coverage re-commences, with detailed song-by-song breakdowns of the finals and the inaugural semi-finals alike.


An attempt is made to live-blog the Eurovision semi-finals, in front of the telly, with a laptop. This proves to be tougher than it looks. The coverage starts well enough, before descending into drunken bitch-queen one-liners. ("State of 'er!")

The Eurovision finals are watched from the comfort of the cottage, with friends. Spookily, Zoe of My Boyfriend Is A Twat blogs the event before it takes place...

June 2004.

In the first of what would prove to be a spate of such ventures, I spend the week guest-blogging at Karen and Pete's Uborka. The week ends with the hosting of Krissa and Stuart's online engagement party. Not a dry eye in the house...

A camp-as-knickers Bollywood MP3 ("One Two Cha Cha Cha" by Usha Uthup) gets Troubled Diva linked by mega-blog BoingBoing. The enusing traffic spike is well lush. More exciting still is the revelation that Usha lives on the same street as one of my regular readers.

There is speculation as to the mysterious privately pressed acetates which my stepmother used to keep under the bed. Could they really be lost recordings by The Beatles?

Regular daily traffic to Troubled Diva peaks. It has stayed at more or less the same level ever since.

A nasty run-in with the Hosting Company From Hell sees www.troubleddiva.com become permanently unusable. While the site is down, I guest-blog over at Sashinka's place. A hyphen is added to the URL, which is re-launched under its new domain on June 29th.

I Can Pick 'Em Department, Part Six: Become one of the first bloggers to plug Joe. My. God.

July 2004.

K and I experiment with different hairdos. While my hair is re-styled for the first time since the late 1980s, K decides to dally with the dreaded TUFTS. After vocalising my loathing for the TUFTS, a hideous pact is made...

K attends his first rock gig for 18 years - Captain Beefheart's Magic Band at the Rescue Rooms - and survives the ordeal unscathed.

All of Nottingham mourn the passing of city centre busker Frank Robinson, better known as Xylophone Man. Over 3000 people petition Nottingham City Council (unsuccessfully) to erect a statue in his honour.

The foreign business trips are slowing down, but there is still the occasional jaunt to Paris to contend with. Annoyingly, my presence is required there only a couple of days before disappearing to Peru for two and a half weeks.

During my Peruvian absence, the blog is maintained by five guests, all of them local: Alan, Ben, Buni, MissMish and Nixon. Just as an earlier guest week had spurred the creation of Aprosexic, so does this fortnight eventually lead to the creation of Reluctant Nomad.

August 2004.


Directly upon returning from Peru, K and I crash the get-together that the guest bloggers have arranged during our absence. It is our first meeting with Ben, with Miss Mish - and with Nottingham's last outpost of true Bohemia, George's Bar on Broad Street. A new social era begins...

I Can Pick 'Em Department, Part Seven: Become one of the first bloggers to link to Petite Anglaise: specifically, to this post. Although I am not yet to know it, I have already made my last business trip to Paris.

As is hinted, the Peruvian trip turns out to be more of an endurance test than a relaxing break. I arrive back in poor health, and remain in poor health (and off work) for some time thereafter.

This period of ill-health provides the trigger for my worst period of depression since 1999. Posting on the blog is severely curtailed, with posts generally appearing once or twice a week, if at all.Less than six months after my last blogging "comeback", is it now curtains for Troubled Diva again?

September 2004.

A very quiet month - although I am secretly blogging elsewhere, deliberately in a very different style, under the assumed character of "Neil". The writing is stark, confessional, and fairly high on scandals and misdemeanours. Although the original host blog is still on hiatus, some of the main posts can be viewed here. (The stories are true, but the narrative voice is invented. Give a man a mask, etc.)

October 2004.

With the mental wobbles intensifying, I finally start to talk openly about the matter - although not on the blog - and pay a visit to my GP.

  
Some hand-drawn guest-blogging is accomplished at Guild Of Ghostwriters. This is the best one: a full page comic-strip, detailing my past as a child cartoonist.

K authors his first and last guest post: a guide to maintaining crisp lawn edges.

Compensation for mis-sold endowments is obtained, to the tune of over £8000.

Returning from a business trip in Amsterdam, news of John Peel's death reaches me. He has died in Cuzco (Peru), where my physical ailments were at their most debilitating over the summer.

The wobbles show their first signs of abating.

Jump To Part Four.

Labels: fiveinfive

November 2002.

Still with no actual work to do at work, I continue to amuse myself with Nottingham, My Nottingham and the never-ending Shirt Off My Back Project, with daily photos all the way through the month. Midweek boozeathons have become the norm, although I have formed an age-inappropriate attachment to the podium in the middle of the dancefloor at the local gay club.

There is much activity in connection with Chig's 50 Number Ones Project, with various MP3 medleys being made available.

A series of "defining vignettes of the 1980s" are posted, covering sanctimonious self-righteousness, greed, style fascism and dogma.

But really, November 2002 is basically about the shirts.


December 2002.

Horrified by the crap camera angles which I have been using during the Shirt Off My Back Project, my partner K breaks his silence on the blog.

A day later, as plans are announced for future legislation regarding same-sex civil partnerships, I go down on my knees in the bedroom.

K and I spend a day Doing Art in London, which causes me to post a major rant against Gunther Von Hagen's disgusting Bodyworlds exhibition.

Now that K has taken over photographic duties for the Shirt Off My Back Project, the images start getting much artier.


On December 15th, after 10 weeks, asta is declared the winner of the 68th and last shirt in the project.

This is immediately followed by So you think you're a Blogaholic?, a quiz designed to test my readers' knowledge of the 56 blogs in my sidebar. The quiz is won by Amanda, who receives a set of Old Curiosity Box CDs.

Some of my co-workers discover my weblog, as I learn at the office Christmas party. Gulp.

The Christmas holiday period is dominated by illness. Not one of our best.

January 2003.

I successfully give up alcohol for the month. This turns out to be a good move, as the protracted illnesses of the Christmas period trigger a period of mild depression - as discussed here, with reference to the unsuitability of happiness as an interesting subject matter for fiction.

My spoken word guide to the gay Nottingham dialect causes quite a stir. Shent fookin gerrin enneh! Get kokkart!


"F**k off, teal scum!" Those lovable little critters, the racist ducks make their debut.


The sidebar image changes, as does the strapline: "My fish always comes out wonky. It's a curse."

Troubled Diva is long-listed in three categories at the Bloggies: Best European/African, Best GLBT and Weblog of the Year.

In a rare brush with political blogging, I state my opposition to the imminent invasion of Iraq.

I Can Pick 'Em Department, Part One: Become the first blogger (outside of her own household, that is) ever - that's EVER! - to link to My Boyfriend Is A Twat. The honour!

February 2003.

Return to drinking alcohol, while vowing "The days of cracking open a shared bottle of wine in front of the telly, night after night after night, are gone." (Yeah, right.)


Receive a comment from a member of the Estonian girl band Vanilla Ninja, having just raved about their (sadly failed) Eurovision entry, Club "Kung-Fu". "Troubled Diva - the blog that the STARS read!"

Attend my first public London blogmeet, downstairs at the Green Man on Great Portland Street. You know: the famous one, where Pete met Karen. (Meg took a great photo of their historic meeting, in which I appeared either to be giving Pete dating tips, or else passing favourable judgement on his bride-to-be's cleavage.)

The weekend - which I refer to as "Apotheosis Of Blog" - ends with me dancing topless in public, for what was almost certainly the last time ever (barring the odd cartoon representation here and there).

The first of the fully interactive, MP3-enabled instalments of Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? is launched (causing a major intra-blog kerfuffle over the relative merits of Whitney Houston's and Dolly Parton's renditions of "I Will Always Love You".)

I earn my first sneery, snarky, who-the-hell-does-he-think-he-is reference on another (now defunct) blog. A year or so later, we're exchanging friendly e-mails and linking to each other.

March 2003.

Following a nail-biting tie-break round, the first Which Decade? contest is won by the 1970s.

Threatened by possible redundancy, I hide out in my comments box until the all-clear is sounded. This morphs into the Let's Get More Comments Than Wil Wheaton Project (yeesh, me and my Projects), which sees me receiving over 235 comments in return for a £100 donation to Comic Relief - but without leaving my comments box for the duration, meaning that publicity for the stunt has to be raised by others on my behalf.

(Commemorative photo-doctoring by Zoe.)

As a reward for reaching the comments target, the ex-blogger most recently known as Somewhat Muchly gives me the domain name of www.troubleddiva.co.uk.

A poetry reading in Beeston is dissected at length. (One of my favourite posts, but it's a shame that I didn't give it a proper ending.)


The month ends with the first Troubled Diva Guest Week, in which I am joined by Anna (little.red.boat), D (Acerbia), noodle vague (The World, Backwards), Faustus M.D. (The Search For Love In Manhattan) and Mr.D. (whose experience during Guest Week inspired him to start his own blog, Aprosexic).

April 2003.

Passing quickly over the ear-bashing horrors of the Match The Intro competition...

...we arrive at Apotheosis of Blog (slight return), in which a secret cabal of bloggers steal the official A-list from the filing cabinet, and replace it with their own.

The Troubled Diva merchandising range is introduced.

The long period of professional activity draws to a close, as I fly off to Paris for the first of many, many business trips.

I Can Pick 'Em Department, Part Two: become one of the first bloggers to plug Call Centre Confidential - arguably one of the first examples of a new approach to personal blogging, which sees tightly themed and constructed writing come to the forefront, in place of the usual links-and-commentary paradigm.

My first audio-blog: a "performance art" recitation of... well, you'll see. (Remember audblogs? They were all the rage...)

An article on Troubled Diva appears in Web User magazine's regular Blog On column, based on this interview.


Installation Art Thursday takes place, as I stage The Perpetual Impossibility Of Sensory Gratification.

May 2003.

Hard house is danced to, on beer, for the last time ever. Farewell, hard house.

The Which Is The Best Madonna Album? Project gets underway, as I experiment with stepping the music criticism up a notch. (Music and Bedtime Stories end up tying for first position, in case you were wondering.)

Fye-ya! Diz-eye-ya!

Over at the cottage, the PDMG (Princess Diana Memorial Garden) is installed.

Discover that Troubled Diva is an anagram of Voidable Turd.A casual shag in a boutique hotel forms the basis for one of my absolute all-time favourite posts.

To Riga, for the second Troubled Diva Eurovision Takeover - including Latvian fireman, on the beach, in wet pants, rescuing a sopping wet beaver.

June 2003.


After mocking a US Care Bear blog for ripping off my site design, and dolling up the blog with Care Bears a-go-go, karmic retribrution strikes, as I find myself trapped inside a Care Bear for a whole week. Only the intervention of The Blessed Esther Rantzen saves me.



K and I flirt with the idea of buying a new house in Nottingham. It's an over-ambitious conceit, which comes to naught.

Blogspot is abandoned for good, as I migrate to my fourth URL: www.troubleddiva.com. Just to keep everyone on their toes.

July 2003.

A Blog Hiatus Of The Month competition is hosted.

The 100 x 100 project is launched: a series of 100 posts of exactly 100 words in length. Yes, I know... doomed. A project too far?

Ah yes, the Diva Rhyming Slang quiz. My, I was full of ideas back then.

The Old Curiosity Box series splutters to a close, as I belatedly realise that nobody is actually downloading my super-rare MP3s. Puh.

August 2003.

The ill-fated 100 x 100 Project - my first serious misfire - is put out of its mystery, via a marathon weekend Blogathon.

Ah, the Zbornak interview. What fun that was - especially the autobiographical musical.

"Will I be cooking lunch, or will I be cooking dinner? " A photo shoot takes place for Period Living magazine. Little did we realise that it would take another three years for the article to be published...

September 2003.

The Nottingham house is put up for sale. We don't sell, and opt to stay put instead.

I Can Pick 'Em Department, Part Three: The Rolling Stones at Wembley are followed by an extraordinary club gig by the then unknown Scissor Sisters. Nottingham Pride was fun, as well.


How often does your partner read your weblog? An in-depth survey is conducted. (The answer? Not a lot.)

Troubled Diva - the blog that the STARS read! Babydaddy from the Scissor Sisters sends a "thanks for the gig review" e-mail.

Oh God, the Sambuca drinking game. How young we all were.

October 2003.


I appear in a local am-dram production, playing a camp stereotype in a reality TV show. To this end, I adopt a bleached blonde "Hoxton fin".


And then there were the costumes...


Directly following my thespian triumph, I am dispatched to Paris for the forseeable future. To cope with the absence, Guest Month is launched. Frankly, darlings... it was a triumph. Hands up, who remembers Aunt Cyn?

Down at our local gay club, K's drink is spiked with DRUGZ. Not big. Not clever.

Enter Danny, my sex-hungry "guest blogger". Except it was me all along, you fools! Hands up, who remembers The Spritzer? Ee, we've done some bonk-blogging in our time...

Jump To Part Three.

Labels: fiveinfive

October 2001.

On my second day of blogging, I "out" a nascent super-chef as a mardy, aggressive git, pushing my fledgling blog into the Google Top 10 for his smart Ludlow restaurant for several years to come. Indeed, I am still in the Google Top 10 for the chef in question. The story subsequently went all around town, as we were amused to discover. Sorry, Claude - but you were unacceptably rude to my partner in public, while remaining perfectly happy to take his money. Revenge is, indeed, a dish best served cold.

November 2001.

Following an e-mail from a "concerned" friend about my new venture ("Are you having a mid-life crisis?"), I adopt his withering summary ("Dermot O'Leary does the South Bank Show") as my first strapline.

Receive my first external link from a total stranger. Feel curiously validated.

December 2001.

Receive my first ever search engine referrals: for "biker gaydar", and (hah!) "cute bum".

After decades of self-repression, come out as a fan of prog-rock, following this admission with an ecstatic gig review of my favourite prog-rockers. The experience feels like coming in from the cold...

Coin the medical terms "The Fist", "The Screwdriver" and "The Spasm".


First appearance of my future avatar: James Gillray's "A Voluptuary under the horrors of Digestion". One of these days, I might get around to telling you more about our Gillray collection, which has been strangely under-represented over the years.


The first photo of myself appears (caught in the act of winning 200 quid on a Channel 4 game show), swiftly followed by the first of the legendary Christmas photos.

January 2002.

Discover, with some measure of dismay, the existence of blogging awards and the concept of "A-list bloggers".

Forty days shy of my fortieth birthday, embark on the autobiographical 40 In 40 Days Project.

Stop buying the NME, after 28 years as a loyal weekly reader. Discover, with some measure of surprise, that it is still possible to "keep up" without it.

Begin a period of involuntary work-related exile, stuck in a wind-lashed Portakabin in the middle of a car park in the industrial North East. The Project From Hell has commenced...

February 2002.


Attend my first blogmeet: a gathering of London gay bloggers, down at Pop Quiz night at the Retro Bar.

Clean up my act, and stop hot-linking to other people's images. (NAUGHTY! DON'T DO IT!) Start receiving over 100 visitors a day, and have a bit of a "Sally Field moment" about it (success being something of a novelty, after decades of mediocre underachievement).

After making one lengthy autobiographical posting every day, without fail, for forty days, I reach the end of the 40 In 40 Days Project. The next day, I turn 40. A party is held.


Abandon the basic Blogger template design (see above), in favour of the mauve-flavoured template which persists to this day. Farewell, fat opera singer in red dress!


March 2002.

A crude early prototype of the Which Decade Is Tops For Pops project makes its debut - without MP3s, and without reader participation. Actually, it's all rather half-baked and crap. But a milestone, none the less.

The underscore changes to a hyphen, as troubled_diva.blogspot.com moves to troubled-diva.blogspot.com.

A good eighteen months away from the birth of MP3 blogging as we now know it, the Troubled Diva Old Curiosity Box is opened for the first time, with a posting of Cristina's "Is That All There Is?" Over the next eighteen months or so, around 140 rare MP3s are posted, generally on a weekly basis.

"Electroclash" is suddenly all the rage, and I'm quick to jump on board the bandwagon.

My multiple personalities are introduced: Country Mike, Office Mike, Gay Mike, Rockin' Mike, Stylish Mike and Web Mike. Posh Mike, Scary Mike and Baby Mike are unaccountably absent from the list, Sporty Mike and Ginger Mike more understandably so.

April 2002.

Write and publish Chapter Three of Peter's collaborative fiction project, The Naked Novel. To this day, this remains the only fiction I have written since adolescence. To this day, I'm still rather proud of it. Hmm, there's a message in there somewhere.

Home broadband arrives in Nottingham. Goodbye, 56k dial-up! I only have to suffer you at weekends now!

My first international business trip takes me to Amsterdam for the night. Within a couple of hours of landing, my (straight) clients have unwittingly dragged me off to what turns out be a gay bar. Coming out at work was never easier.

Spend most of the rest of the month in the wind-lashed Portakabin, growing progressively more over-worked, miserable and lonely. The "Portakabin Diary" becomes a regular weekly feature for a while, as Troubled Diva briefly flirts with angst-blogging.

An unfairly bitchy early post is discovered by a friend of the people that I was unfairly bitching about, and is quickly removed. The blushes remain for the rest of the month, as an important lesson is learnt the hard way.

Make my first of many visits to the one-time spiritual home of the London gay blogger: Sundays at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, where The Dame Edna Experience ruled (and still rules) supreme.

Add a Tag Board to the site, for a short while. Does anyone still remember Tag Boards? Oh, they were quite the rage.

May 2002.

On May 4th, Troubled Diva welcomes its 10,000th visitor.

Ohmigod Kylie at the NEC YOU GO GIRL.

To Tallinn, where I attend the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest for the third time. To the horror of some of my more cultured regular readers, Eurovision-related content dominates the blog for a good couple of weeks - and not for the last time, either.

June 2002.

Install the YACCS commenting system - which remains in place to this day, with all 17,000+ comments still archived and available. Peter of Naked Blog is the first reader to leave a comment.

At the Royal Concert Hall, Brian Wilson delivers one of the most touching and memorable concerts that I have ever attended, including a complete run-through of the Pet Sounds album.

Portakabin-related angst reaches fever pitch - and then is no more, as I am finally released from the Project From Hell. In its place, a lengthy period of professional inactivity commences. With little else to do, blogging takes centre stage, as Troubled Diva enters what I have long considered to be its twelve-month Golden Age.

This gives me time to research and post the first ever list of the UK's most linked weblogs. Surprisingly, only four blogs from that first list (Plastic Bag, Blogjam, Rather Good and Interconnected) are still present in the most recently published Top 50.

July 2002.

The month starts with great excitement, as a technical fault with the then all-powerful Blogdex sees me sitting at Number Two on its listings for a day or so, earning myself my first major traffic spike. (Well, as major as traffic spikes ever got in those dim and distant pioneering days.) Oh, it was all about the Blogdex and the Daypop back then. Technorati? Wassthatthen?

(Traffic spikes? Popularity charts? How soon was that early innocence corrupted?)

The Stations Of The Diva series starts: another set of autobiographical posts, based around the various addresses I have lived in. Who knows, perhaps I'll finish it one of these days?

To London, to watch Madonna upon the West End stage... followed by a chance encounter which ushers in a most unexpected temporary return to London hedonism, mid-1990s style.

The Guardian's "Best British Weblog" competition is launched, with a deafening crash which splits the UK blogosphere in half. Honestly, you wouldn't believe the kerfuffle which this caused - indeed, it was all that anyone could talk about for a few weeks. Myself included. Oh dear. I still blush a bit over that one.

Over at the Nottingham Arena, Neil Diamond rocks my world. Of all the gig reviews that I have written over the years, this one is probably still my favourite.

"Daddy, what's sex?"

August 2002.

THAT London weekend. The one where I... where we... where they... nope, still can't blog about it. Maybe I'll blog about it in another five years' time.


The following weekend, K and I spend a disillusioning night in a past-it "boutique" hotel (OK, it was the Hempel, and here's my hatchet job), before heading off to Vietnam for two amazing, incredible, best-holiday-ever weeks. Troubled Diva duly takes its first hiatus, before returning with a detailed day-by-day diary of the Vietnamese experience.


The day before we depart, a chance meeting at a cricket match inspires K to start his next business venture. Nevertheless, it will still be over a year before he is in a position to make his move...

Post titles are introduced, in dinky little title boxes, thus bringing to an end the quickfire, hit-and-run, linky-love, one-or-two-line posts which used to be such a major feature of this, and of so many other blogs. The tide, it was a-turning...

The site acquires its first RSS feed, making it a relative early adopter - and the Mozilla browser is tinkered with for the first time (we hadn't yet started calling it Firefox).

September 2002.

The long-defunct Isabella's Teddy blog points out my alarming facial similarity to... erm, yes.

  
Oh God, Stylistic Tic Eradication Week. The era of the scary-bonkers blog stunt had just commenced...

The mammoth 100 things about 100 bloggers which also apply to this blogger series gets underway.

In the name of experimentation, I write a lengthy gig review whilst four pints the worse for wear. It turns out to be really rather articulate.


The Guardian "Best British Weblog" competition conspicuously fails to shower me with glory.

October 2002.

  
The infamous - and bafflingly popular, considering a) how much it makes me cringe to this day and b) how often people still refer to it, in strangely wistful "ah, them were the days" tones - Shirt Off My Back Project gets underway...


(I'm wearing this one today, as it happens.)
...and as if this wasn't enough, the Nottingham, My Nottingham series is launched. Wow, I really did have a LOT of spare time on my hands back then...

First mobile phone purchase, unwillingly made. Four years later, and I'm still using the same handset. Well, if it works, right?


My first full year of blogging ends with a wild, wild, wild (but also rather upsetting) weekend in London. In the midst of the maelstrom, I sneak off for a couple of hours' relative normality, at Sashinka's party...

Jump To Part Two.

Labels: fiveinfive

Last night, in a semi-advanced state of picklement following our respective "early doors" assignations on opposite sides of town (he was talking business in a no-smoking "boutique" bar, while I was a-chatting and a-chuffing with Miss Mish in an agreeably fuggy boozer), my fragrant civil partner and I - with chuckle bones duly limbered - sat ourselves down to judge the Trodicast™ caption competition.

It was, as they say, a difficult decision. Nevertheless, the jury is unanimous. The prize of one Troubled Diva coffee mug (oooh!) goes to...

...

...

...

...

Paul of 1000 Shades of Grey, for the following entry, which combines razor-sharp observation, a sound knowledge of Cluedo, and that all-important "I seem to have got a big fat cock stuck up my arse!" reference (albeit tastefully veiled):

Professor Plum, in the study, with the candlestick.

Congratulations, Paul. Please e-mail me with your details, and your mug design of choice:

• The classic range – featuring the site logo.
• The novelty range – starring those irrepressible little critters, the racist ducks.
• NEW! The personality range – in which Mike dances topless in his disco hat, just for YOU.

---

At K's noisy and repeated insistence, a Special Commendation Award also goes to Gordon, for his not-entirely-original (but-we-tip-our-hats-to-his-chutzpah-anyway):

Ooh, I seem to have got a big fat cock stuck up my arse!

Gordon: you win a voucher for half a mug, to be upgraded to a full mug on production of...

...a spoken word MP3, containing the above entry, recited in your own fair tones. (All publication rights to be signed over to me in perpetuity, natch.) Are you man enough to meet the challenge? K thinks you are!

My thanks to all who participated. As ever, consolation mugs are available for purchase from the usual outlets. And don't forget that new "personality" range!

Update: He's done it! Gordon's gone and done it! K's in stitches in the kitchen, and dinner's probably ruined, but we don't care!

Never was a mug more richly deserved. Well done, sir.

Labels: competition, merchandise

...but I need to archive these reviews somewhere, and here's as good a place as any. These all appeared in t'local paper in the last couple of weeks - but either they never made it to the website, or else they were only published in a heavily edited state. Coming soon: New album releases from Isobel Campbell (a respectful shrug) and George Michael's latest "greatest hits" collection (a well-deserved kicking).

Not coming in a month of Sundays: My wince-makingly corny David Essex gig review. There's "respecting your target readership" by not being a sneery snobby show-off... and then there's stepping over the line, into full-blooded Light Entertainment cheese. ("The enduringly fantastic Gonna Make You A Star sent us home smiling." Aaargh! My soul, my soul!)

Labels: albums, eveningpost, gigs, popmusic

A busy week. A very, very busy week. The sort of week where you frequently find yourself thinking "Must blog!" - and then you don't, because there's too much to say and not enough time/energy with which to say it.

Not a dramatic, hold-the-front-page week. Just a busy week.

But enough about me. How are you?