Too Much Pressure!

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Thanks to Pseu for bringing me the news that I was named by WordPress as one of their ten most prolific bloggers.

Thanks for nothing, Pseu.

Now I have to:

1. Be funny, immediately, in anticipation of the tens of people who might come take a look.
2. Stop poking fun at WordPress prompts: I’m on their radar now.
3. Put up with cracks from the Hub that being noticed for talking too much is not really a compliment.

I can do Point 3 because I never listen to the Hub anyway; and here’s an old joke for Point 1 that you regular readers will just have to pretend not to remember because it’s all I can think of at the moment:

A man walks into a bar and says, ‘Ouch.’

But stop poking fun at WordPress prompts…?   I think I’d rather give up Maltesers.

Gasp.  Did I write that out loud?

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Blog And The World Laughs With You; If You’re Lucky, They’ll Help You Write It, Too

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What have you feared that turned out to be much easier than you expected?

When Tory Boy nagged me to start a blog, I feared it was not for me.  I feared it so much it took me about eighteen months to put – I was going to say ‘pen to paper’ but I suppose it’s ‘finger to keyboard’; doesn’t have the same poetic ring to it, does it? – finger to keyboard and now, here I am, two years later, celebrating my blogaversary.

Yes, on this day in 2009, I dared to write my first post.  Here’s an extract:

I’ve just had my teenage son sort me out with my own blog; now I have to hope
1. I can think of something interesting to write and
2. I can get some people to read it.

Mission Statement: to be amusing (mission: impossible)

I don’t remember intending to be funny and yet there it is in black & white (pale grey, actually: I hadn’t learned to use the colour button then).  I guess I should have known because the blog name (which I chose) is a bit of a giveaway.

In those days, Tory Boy and Spud Bud were ‘Hur’ and ‘Spur’; I changed their names after protests from the family.  An extract from my second post:

A word of explanation: like Princess Diana I, too, have two sons, an heir and spare.  I am a Scouser, however, and although it was in another life, I still have Cilla Black Disease and can’t pronounce the ‘air’ sound in English.  To avoid embarrassing my sons more than the usual, I am going to refer to them in this blog as ‘Hur’ (first fruit of my womb, 19) and ‘Spur’ (last product of my now dried out loin, 13).

You won’t be surprised to learn that the main topic of that post was food; Maltesers were soon to follow, I’m sure; a poem appeared on Day One.

I am surprised to see how far I have come in the way of presentation: the font was pale grey and unjustified; paragraphs were long; photographs were rare.  By July 1st, however – my second day – I was already posting twice in twenty-four hours.  A warning of what was to come.

I couldn’t know then, and didn’t expect (though I did dream), that I would have so many returning visitors, as eager to laugh at the world, me, and my family, as I am; that I would have a fledgling poetry blog because I get the best audience for funny and the poems were getting in the way; that I would be posting up to four times a day and not driving visitors off; and that I would just have so much fun.  I couldn’t know, either, that you are brilliant: I say, I can’t find jokes, and you send them; I can’t think of anything to write about, and you give me prompts, topics, subjects; I can’t find enough tasks for my 101 challenge, and you tell me what to do.

So, thank you, dear readers, for sticking with me through thin and thin; and for writing half my stuff.  I can honestly say I couldn’t have done it without you.

Happy Blogaversary!

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Joke 98

A woman who died found herself standing outside the Pearly Gates, being greeted by St. Peter.

She asked him, “Oh, is this place what I really think it is? It’s so beautiful.  Did I really make it to heaven?”

To which St. Peter replied, “Yes, my dear, these are the Gates to Heaven. But you must do one more thing before you can enter: spell a word.”

“What word?” she asked.

“Any word,” answered St. Peter. “It’s your choice.”  The woman promptly replied, “Then the word I will spell is love. L-o-v-e.”

St. Peter congratulated her and asked her if she would mind taking his place at the gates for a few minutes while he went to the bathroom.

“I’d be honoured,” she said, “but what should I do if someone comes while you are gone?”

St. Peter instructed the woman to simply have any newcomers to the Pearly Gates spell a word, as she had done.

As the woman watched the beautiful angels soaring around her, a man approached. She realized it was her loser husband.

“What happened?” she cried, “Why are you here?”

Her husband stared at her for a moment, then said, “I was so drunk when I left your funeral, I was in an accident. And now I am here?  Did I really make it to Heaven?”

To which the woman replied, “Not yet. You must spell a word first.”

“What word?” he asked.

“Czechoslovakia.”