Well hello there

 *clears throat*

Afternoon. Yes, I know, been a bit quiet of late round here, hasn't it? There are reasons for this, some of them pretty good ones. But the most overarching one would be that I simply fell out of the habit. Terribly sorry.

Long time observers of these pages (and believe it or not, they do exist) will be aware of the usual run of things with Coastalblog, radio silence in December as the day job takes over, followed by a burst of activity in the New Year as I promise myself that this this is the year I'll make time to write which then tails off disappointingly. Well, disappointingly for me at least. Possibly a profound relief for everybody else.

True to form, I managed the radio silence in December bit with aplomb, but the rest? Not so much. Part of the reason, I'm sort of pleased to say, is work; life at the pub has kept me surprisingly busy during January and February. Traditionally the quietest months of the year, they've taken us all aback with their liveliness. As to why this should be, I don't know, but I'm not complaining. The post Brexit sheer impossibility of finding half decent staff is also part of it, but that's probably a blog for another time.

So something had to give and, as is so often the case it was my various creative outlets. Between work, family life and various exciting future plans which I'm not about to go into here I have been up the wall. The will to write was still there, but the opportunities were sparse. At least, that's the excuse I'm going to lead with.

This is, however, not the whole truth. And unlike our current administration, I quite like being honest with people, so in the interests of full disclosure I......well, basically I had a fairly sizeable crisis of confidence. I did try, but everything that came out seemed hackneyed, old news, or basically rubbish.

The problem, I think, was encapsulated by the great satirist Tom Lehrer, who announced his retirement when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, with words to the effect of that, as gags go, there was no way he was topping that. And as partygate rumbled on through January and February, and Government denials became increasingly smirking, and brazen, I found that I simply couldn't face it, it was all too depressing, all too crazy. That we had arrived at a point where we had a PM that's a total liar, and everyone just shrugs and accepts it, a PM that's INTERVIEWED UNDER FUCKING CAUTION and no-one bats an eyelid....dear reader, I very much felt like I was taking crazy pills.

The sheer absurdity of existence got too much for me, I'm afraid. And while Samuel Beckett is one of the great literary touchstones of my life, I reckon even he might have said that things had gotten too much like the blackest of comedies.

And now, of course, we have Ukraine. I'm not going to write about Ukraine. You know all you need to know about Ukraine and I only know as much as you do. Probably less. It was mystifying to me how many people on the internet pivoted seamlessly from being immunology experts to foreign policy gurus seemingly overnight. Friends, I don't propose to be one of those guys, I know my limitations, which are manifold and crippling. I've got a position on Ukraine. It's the same one any sane person has. Killing people is wrong. Any spurious attempts to justify or whatabout Putin's abominable blot on history basically mark you out as an arsehole of the first water, and that's an end of it. That said, I'm not about to cheer the death of teenage Russian conscripts either, as various salivating self-appointed war experts seem to be doing. Really brings the dickheads out of the woodwork doesn't it, war?

The whole point being, the world's been a bit much of late, and I don't feel I have the capacity to comment on it in any meaningful or helpful way. So I've been keeping my gob shut. But that itch to write something, anything, hasn't yet gone away. So here I am again, crawling back like a penitent drunk swearing that this time he'll be better. Hiya.