STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

 

In August 2009, I had been in hospital, having suffered a collapsed lung  (spontaneous pneumothorax) which just wouldn’t uncollapse, spontaneously or otherwise.

Bloody thing!

So they sent me to Edinburgh Royal, where they operated and stuck me all back together again, actually with talcum powder… no really!

When I was released I was a bit incapacitated with holes here and there and told to rest, temporarily unable to resume my duties. I’m wasn’t good at rest, although I’m a lot better than I was all these years ago.

So I was a bit bored. To be honest, I was a LOT bored.

There was a fair number of pro-indy blogs publishing in these days of yore long before the SNP did the unthinkable and formed a majority government based on a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum, and I was an avid reader of so many of them (along with watching endless re-runs of “Murder She Wrote”. Go, Angela!)

The following isn’t an exclusive list (and you may want to add to it), but I have very fond memories of Scot Goes Pop (James); John Brownlie; Pseudepigrapha (Conan); Niko’s Bar; Dean the Tory; Subrosa. I looked forward to their articles and the discussions that inevitably followed.

Office Party.

I was a reader of, and a regular contributor to, a blog called Advanced Media Watch, which was run by “The Spook of Leith”, a university student whose real name was Omar, and he and I bantered a lot on his blog, then got to emailing each other and bantering some more.

Spooky suggested I write a blog as a way of passing the time while I recovered from my operation, but I was far from confident about it and kept saying no. But bit by bit he wore me down… and then this little fellow turned up in my life and took over.

Between them, Munguin and Omar convinced me that I should get started, and Munguin’s Republic was born, with Munguin at the helm, and Tris there as his dog’s body.

Omar advertised the Republic on his very popular blog, Munguin took the writing in hand (paw? flipper?) and off we went.

And 10 years later, here we still are.

With the passage of time, blogs have come and blogs have gone… and some go on forever, eh James!

It’s a long time, is 10 years, and we’ve all got older but not a lot wiser.

We’ve discussed some stuff over the years… a good deal more than politics. And we’ve developed traditions. I reckon I’d get lynched if “All our Yesterdays” or “Soppy Sunday” (John’s invention) were to fall by the wayside. So they won’t.

I’ve made friends on here. Some of whom I’ve met (sometimes just in passing on a march, sometimes on a more personal basis, in the pub! And of course, maybe most dramatically, my friend Abu, who came all the way from Malaysia because of his love for Scotland). Some more, I hope, I will meet sometime in the future… and some, I guess, I’ll never meet.

Munguin and I would like to thank all of you… those who’ve been around since the beginning and those who have joined in more recently, for your friendship and for sharing your thoughts over the months and years. The Republic would be nothing without the comments.

Some of you, I know, read the blog regularly and rarely if ever comment. That’s fine too. And grateful thanks go to people who send in contributions, whether that’s articles (Panda Paws, Abu, et al), jokes, or photos… well, there are far too many to mention, but we all know who you are and your input is appreciated.

So enough nostalgia, and let’s try to get through the mess that is Brexit, even though we didn’t vote for it and onward to Independence, hopefully in the very near future.

Actually, we’re incredulous that there are still those who think that a Boris Johnson/Dominic Cummings government (as Chris Patten described the current UK administration tonight on Radio Four) is preferable to an Independent Scotland.

REMINDER:

AUOB march tomorrow in Aberdeen.

Details here. and here.