This Is This

Hello.

No? I thought I’d have you there.

Hi if this is your first time here. Hi if it’s not. But hi especially if it is.

It’s OK. Seriously, come closer. Can everyone here me at the back? We’ve got emergency exits and if you want to stop reading at any point and refresh yourself then please be my guest.

I say this because a couple of sites are linking here for the first time and you may not have been here before.

And that’s great, because:

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, “What! You too? I thought I was the only one!”

CS Lewis said that, and it’s safe to reply: “Hell no, you may be the only one somewhere, but hopefully here isn’t there.”

Feeling sheepishly guilty about loving Crowded House getting back together? Join the club.

Do you have an ambition to bake bread from scratch with your bare hands? It’s great - do it.

Worry about carbon emissions but keep flying? Then get skyward, come back safe and do what you can.

Here you are. Although you nearly weren’t.

Funny story actually, because yesterday my site went down. Like properly down. Not just a template fuck-up - like: down. Like “This Isn’t This”. Or “That Was That”.

I’d been waiting for a new credit card to arrive and the old one ran out. I knew it had run out, I just didn’t realise that Very Big Hosting Company had it on a standing order for the dubious honour of hosting this site and it failed. And like Arty Fufkin of Polymer Records, I fucked up the timing, so they took down the site and replaced it with a big alarming “Oops!” page where my site should have been.

Seriously, you went to thisisthis.org, you got a page that actually said “Oops!”

Aside from that, my web address was due to expire in April, so they were sending me notices that said “If you do no register the sitename and someone else takes it, your website and all data will expire from our servers. You will not be able to recover any of this loss, in accordance with our terms and conditions.”

I ignored these, so when I got “Oops!” I got worried. I started sweating like a bull and dialled the phone number on the page where MY FUCKING SITE SHOULD BE.

They explained that the payment didn’t go through and I said that my credit card had expired and I had a new shiny one which I was looking forward to using for the first time with Very Big Hosting Company.

“Well, we have a number of special offers for our loyal customers wishing to renew their hosting terms and domain name with Very Big Hosting Company.”

Fuck that, I paraphrased, I want to know why my site’s gone down like a cheap floozie.

“Oh, we’ll have that back up for you within the hour,” he said, much to the thank of my fuck.

I reached for my credit card and was shouting out numbers like it was bingo night at the Tourette’s Society.

I forked out nearly $200 on another two years’ worth of hosting and stuff, because I realised I’m not going anywhere. Here’s what I do, so stick around if you like the cut of my jib. I cut my jib myself, because I haven’t found anyone who does it just nice.

Sometimes I write about nothing, like today. Sometimes I write just enough about decent stuff and sometimes I write too much.

But every so often I’ll write something that will give us the feeling you get when you’re driving through tunnels and that’s when we know we’re doing it right.

Thanks for stopping by, and remember: if it doesn’t say This Is This in the title, it’s probably written by someone else.

Also on This Is This
BIG CAT DIARY. Monday - Went hunting. Caught a gazelle. Quite fancy trying that dried food. Shiva says a lot of cats in Europe eat it. Must write to cousin Tiddles.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 8:32 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.