The University of No Girlfriend was one of my better ideas.
The theory went like this: there were far too many posts on the other page in which I whined pitifully about how girls hated me, so why not hive them off so that I could give full range to my fascinating anecdotes about tube trains and park the teen-angst nonsense to one side. Do it anonymously to avoid feeling self-conscious (because, even though I've never met most of people who've read my internet pages, I'd still feel embarrassed about people reading some things; eventually I included a link to it hidden under 'Google News', which Blogger had decided that everyone who wanted to include links on their pages would want to include). Hope that girls would find it and maybe write me sexy emails and that. It couldn't fail.
The problem, as I found out fairly rapidly, is that there wasn't really an awful lot to write about not having a girlfriend. In over two and a half years I didn't quite get to 50 posts. The archive, such as it is, only has 40 posts as some of them were too crap to include. You can read what you like into what this means for the entries that I have re-posted.
(The page pre-dated me having read a blog in which someone exhaustively documents their sex life. I've never really got into these - I've always found that no matter how well written they might be, after reading a few entries I feel like I'm being repeatedly beaten over the head, and try as I might I can't help but think of Ballboy. Which is, I suppose, why I'm not really qualified to write an internet page on a vaguely related subject.)
I did receive some emails about the page, a couple from sympathetic young women and a couple from empathetic young men. One email featured the glowing testimony "I have found your writings interesting and occasionally witty"; if the praise was any fainter, you'd need a microscope to be able to see it.
I'm not sure why I've decided to put it back up now; partly current circumstances, I suppose, partly because I've been having a bit of a spring clean and thus in a mood to get things tidy and sorted out, partly because the other archive-y project I've been meaning to return to is rather daunting and I needed something to ease myself in with, and partly because when I was using my old computer to play Championship Manager 1999/00 the other day (as it was the last football management game that I liked) I came across the files and decided that some of it was quite good. Either way, here it is. There will be no more, if only because I have even less to say about the subject now than I did then.
Monday, 24 March 2008
It's not like you are going to save me
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4 comments:
I'd never seen that before, and a good thing given I'd have worked it out from the style in no time at all. As you know, your blowing up of minor mental indignities made in front of girls on tube trains have always been a personal highlight of your work.
Glad you mentioned Ballboy, as I was wondering if you'd seen the details of Indietracks (Ballboy, Wedding Present, Darren Hayman, Comet Gain and others - but in a working railway museum!)
I was dimly aware of Indietracks from your various mentions of it, but I hadn't looked that closely at the details. It looks intriguing; I shall give some thought to attending. Ballboy in particular are always worth it, particularly as it seems as if they've been away forever.
Comet Gain are fabulous, and i shall be attempting a cross-London, back-across-London, out-to-Brighton dash in an attempt to see them next week.
This Top Secret Page-O-Thing is excellent, sir.
I saw Comet Gain many years (and, I would think, all sorts of line-up changes) ago supporting Bis. They didn't make much of an impression on me at the time, but the bass player did look like Josh the friendly paramedic off of Casualty.
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