Remember when "compact" mattered?

Or TIWHBALYIIHBOS (Things I Would Have Blogged About Last Year If I Hadn't Been On Sabbatical) #1

I had to get a new phone last year, unfortunately. And it seems that if you want a decent spec, compact phones are no longer an option. My new phone is a full 20mm longer than the one it replaced - so much for progress. Add on the new protective case I also had to buy and it all adds up to a ridiculous slab. I may or may not be pleased to see you, but it really is a phone in my pocket.

Anyway, it's time to belatedly update the mobile timeline:

Because these photographs are inexplicably popular (in web searches, at least) they have their own label so, for completists (!), here are the previous posts in the series.

Simplification (or, time for it all to go)

It's time to accept the Internet is never going to make me rich.

Likewise, I'm never going to win the world snooker championships, lead the Tour de France, or write an international bestselling novel. But back to the Internet and, more specifically, this blog.

For the past two years of so, I've ended every post with this, a kind of Patreon-esque way of letting readers tip me any amount, big or small, for something I've written.

In all that time, no-one has ever tipped me anything, which is fair enough. Patreon and the like are clearly best left for high-volume, mass-market, original content creators. None of those adjectives apply to me, or my "content". Besides, if you wanted to pay to read something, newspapers are available (for now).

Never mind, eh? For the past eighteen months I've also had this in my sidebar, allowing readers to buy me a cuppa.

In all that time, no-one has ever bought me a coffee, much less a notional cup of tea that I would actually enjoy. And that's fair enough too - I'm probably over-caffeinated anyway.

So it's all going, from today. New Amusements is eschewing third-party advertising wherever possible, and becoming a public service broadcaster. With apologies to the actual BBC, whose sign I've photoshopped...

All of which is my tenuous double-link to a song, Go by Public Service Broadcasting.

I especially love the very enthusisastic "Go!" from Steve Bales on Guidance. He was only 26 at the time, can you believe?

Anyway, in the unlikely event that you do want to somehow make me pence richer, you can always buy my book. Or a t-shirt! What a time to be alive.

I can't help myself...

...so I'm back, for one more lap of the sun at least. Sabbatical over, and mostly adhered to (except when RIPs and elections prompted a few posts), I regret to say that I haven't achieved much of anything in the way of new creative writing in the last year, as I'd hoped. I'm not sure that I missed blogging that much either - make of that what you will. Maybe I'm only in it for the comments, but there's the catch-22.

Regardless, here we go again because, as we have established, I can't help myself. Will you share every sorrow?

And happy new year.