Day 14 of the bid to write a blog post every day during May and the schedule’s gone out of the window again.
THE plan for this post originally had it inked in for a travel piece, but that went out of the window when the schedule got ripped up a few days ago.
Since then, this space has been occupied by another piece on overlanding and the old fallback, the A-Z romp through my iPod.
Instead, you will have to make do with this, purely because of time, an aching back and malfunctioning, ageing technology.
Put simply, the biggest obstacle to this whole daily blogging challenge has been time – something has to give and when it comes down to work, food, sleep, the gym, assorted events which can’t be moved and the blog, it has had to be the blog. And a bit of the gym.
Not all the time, got a week off next week so once the final deadline before then is out of the way, that’s the biggest call on my time out of the way (although the to-do list is starting to look pretty full).
The aching back is nothing new but fed up with the attention being showered on my calf, it has decided to make a bid for its fair share and the one thing which seems to aggravate it at the moment is sitting at the desk in my flat and typing.
The osteopath was appalled when informed of this whole daily blog idea.
So with the back and lack of time meaning shorter periods spent tapping away and longer generally needed to compose pieces on overlanding and travel (believe it or not, there’s actually some thinking and fact checking going on here), the easy option would be to return to the A-Z.
That, after all, can generally be pieced together off the top of my head and a list of the recent appearances on the iPod.
Right up to the point when the iPod stops working.
It would appear my ageing iPod Classic does not like being plugged in to car stereos and seems to get stuck in that mode, refusing to do anything else or respond to being plugged back into the car.
Which all rather ruined plans to rattle through the remaining H tracks with a hire car for the weekend and pretty much answered the question of whether it was going to last through seven months in South America. It is not.
It is fixed – once allowed to run flat and recharged, the iPod equivalent of turning if off and back on again – but its days are numbered.
The alternatives, given the need for a decent-sized memory to house my library and the fact Apple don’t make that model any more, appear to be trying to find a second-hand one or go for a new iPod touch. Will get back to you on that one.
Which all goes to explain why this post is slightly shorter than normal – although not why it is still far longer than intended, given the bad back and lack of time.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, until then throwing in a bit of what has been soundtracking this post (and the current leaders in album of the year stakes).
Can’t really see these guys as the musical guests on say Graham Norton or Jonathan Ross.