On being the blogfather

More than a little while ago I used to write a not unsuccessful weblog. This was all very nice and froody and I had quite the following. Then something happened.

What happened, and I’m still not really sure how or why it happened, is that I became famous—or at least, small values of famous. And that changed things a bit. I was no longer able to write sarcastic, somewhat bitter posts about random happenings in the lab, because people knew who I was.

This was brought home to me very clearly once upon a time. I bitched about a perceived injustice. I felt that a reasonably senior person was unreasonably muscling in on a manuscript I’d written. So, naturally, I wrote, somewhat inadvisedly perhaps, about it on my blog at at time.

Ouch

The reasonably senior person recognized the situation, recognized himself maybe, and I got called in for a well-deserved ear-bashing—after my immediate boss had his own ears bashed.

Double ouch

As it turns out, this perceived injustice was just that—perceived—and we had a chat and a cup of cocoa and sorted it all out. Reasonably senior person was, in fact, a fan of my blog, which made things worse. At least, it made me think twice about what I could write.

Since then, as I say, I became small-values-of-famous, left the lab a little while after that, and started working in a real job. Those things are not necessarily related, although from certain angles they might be. Either way, this combination of events not only restricted my blogging material, but also restricted my freedom in what I could write about—not simply because I was afraid of getting the sack, but because the interesting things that happen in the lab simply don’t happen in industry. Or if they do, the protagonists are more readily identifiable.

Rock, hard place, me.

Also, I’m feeling guilty that I haven’t written a blog post since September. How the frig did that happen?

Now, however, having spent the evening waiting for Jenny to find her way home from Doncaster of all places, it strikes me that perhaps the time is right to (let’s not beat around the bush) recycle some old material. For, although small-values-of-famous as I might be, not all my war stories and anecdotes have been shared with all my different audiences. Ha ha, yes, I’ve been holding out on you. So, my stated intention is to go through my archives, dulled as they are by the fog of time, and bring them right up to date and make them shockingly relevant.

After all, although science and art may change with time, human nature (pace Heraclitus) is constant.

Dun dun DUNNNNN.