Hello! I kept forgetting to blog.

All sorts of exciting things have been happening. You know how last month we went for a day in the Lake District, and found a shop selling cards by a nice man who I’ve done some card designs for, but they didn’t have any of mine in the shop? Well we had such a nice time on that occasion that we went again, this time staying overnight in a Travelodge. Travelodges, it turns out, are greatly inferior to Travel Inns, and I should know, having spent six months living in the latter. Travel Inns have all sorts of things that Travelodges don’t have, and if you stay at a Travelodge you’ll find a little card in your room explaining why they don’t have each of the things, but the answer always boils down to “It’s cheaper this way, and we pass the saving on to you“. Which is all fine and dandy, except that it isn’t any cheaper to stay at a Travelodge than it is to stay at a Travel Inn.

While we were there we went back to the shop selling cards made by a nice man who etc, and discovered that the reason they hadn’t got any of the cards I’d designed for him was that the ones I’d done were fridge magnets and bookmarks, which they did have. Jess persuaded me to buy one of these, so now I’ve spent £1.99 on a picture I drew myself, which doesn’t seem like the wisest use of my finances, but there we are.

Meanwhile, next weekend we’ll be moving to York, and the estate agent from whom we’re renting our new place wanted some form of evidence that I have an income. They said a tax return would do nicely, but at that point the only one I had was for the financial year ‘05-’06, which is the period during which I commenced self-employment, and consequently my income from illustrating was very much less than in the following year. So I decided to fill in my tax return for ‘06-’07 and show them that instead. On that topic, I have two comments. Firstly, it feels very good to get your tax return filled in several months before it’s due. Secondly, oh dear. As those of you who don’t have to do tax returns may be unaware, in January you have to pay 50% of your tax for the following year - based on the dubious assumption that you’ll earn the same next year as you earned this year - the other 50% in July, and then, if it turns out you actually earn more than the year before, you have to pay the remainder the following January along with the first 50% of the next year’s tax. Well, as I mentioned earlier, the amount I earned from self-employment in ‘05-’06 was not very much, so the contribution I’ve already paid towards my ‘06-’07 tax is negligible. In contract, the amount I earned in ‘06-’07 is quite high - much to my surprise, substantially more than I earned per annum when I had a proper job - which in itself is nice, but it does mean that, come January, I’ve got to pay the best part of eighteen months’ worth of tax. That’s quite a lot of money, and more than I currently have in the bank by several thousand - I forgot to do anything sensible like, say, remember that I have to pay tax and therefore spend less - so I’ve now got to save up quite a lot of money quite quickly. I’m currently pinning my hopes on the pope commissioning me to redo the Sistine Chapel in time for Christmas.

And The Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists is the best book ever.

That’s all my news for now. I’ll try to start blogging more regularly.

See, my original idea was to have the American entries appearing on schedule quietly in the archives, but I decided that would involve too much hacking, so instead I hacked it to make them appear in the present day with the dates suitably adjusted. The trouble with that was that it meant I couldn’t do any real new entries without the dates being wrong, and then I realised that actually I could do what I had wanted to do originally with no hacking whatsoever. So that’s what I’ve done now and in the unlikely event that you want to keep up with my transatlantic exploits as they happen with a ten year delay, they will continue to appear over here. Meanwhile I can reclaim my blog without having to worry about crazy dates confusing people any more than I already have.

So I suppose I should update you on all the exciting things that have been happening, but there haven’t been many. We’ve got our relocation situation all sorted out now, we’ll be moving into a cottage in the middle of nowhere during the first weekend of October, which will probably involve hiring a van and possibly me driving it. I’ve never driven a van before. I’m scared.

And, um, apart from that nothing has happened whatsoever. So I’ll let you go and get on with your lives.

Well the nice lady who owns the cottage we wanted to rent agreed to meet us in the middle and let us have an eight month tenancy, which suits us just fine. We’ll be moving in on the fifth of October, and Jess starts at university on the eighth.

But let us turn from her university days to mine. In 1997, between the end of my second year at my alma mater and the beginning of my third, my chum Colin and I spent a merry three and a bit weeks travelling across the USA. You may have read the journal I kept of our adventures - there used to be a link to it over there on the sidebar. Until about two minutes ago, in fact.

The reason I’ve removed it is that it’s about to become redundant. Because 1997 was precisely a decade ago, and I’ve been toying with the idea of having the entries from that diary appear on this blog at exactly the times I wrote them, plus ten years, allowing anyone who cared - should such a person exist - to relive my travels in real time. I quite liked this idea, and busied myself with the necessary legwork to make it happen. All that remained was to press a big red button to kick things off, and my reports from America would display themselves here as and when.

I was going to press the big red button this evening, in the belief that my adventure had begun on the 5th of September - tomorrow’s date. Unfortunately it turned out that I was under a misapprehension, and we actually set off on the 3rd. Which was a pity, because that’s already happened.

Well, having the entries appear here exactly ten years after I wrote them had seemed like quite a neat scheme, but having them turn up ten years and two days after I wrote them didn’t have quite the same magic to it, so I thought I was going to have to abandon the plan altogether. Luckily, I’ve hit on a loophole.

Because in 1997, the 3rd of September was a Wednesday. This year, the nearest Wednesday is the 5th, so one could kind of sort of argue that a 48 hour delay is justified in order that the days of the week match up. One might not be able to argue it very convincingly, but a feeble argument is better than none. And since I don’t fancy waiting until 2017, it will have to do.

So for the next few weeks, by the wonders of Time, you will be transported back to the swinging 90s and witness my exciting exploits as I try to travel two and a half thousand miles from New York to Los Angeles on public transport. Will I survive the journey? Well, clearly I did, contrary to all reasonable expectations, but it will probably be more entertaining if you pretend the outcome isn’t preordained and that there’s a real possibility I might die.