This blog is closing. It’s the end of the line. There will be no more. Not here. This is the last post. Feel free to pause reading for a moment while you open up Apple Music or Spotify to play the lonesome bugler doing his thing. Ok, you back? Let’s continue. Why has it come to this, you ask? It’s the cost of living that’s done it. Or the cost of reading. Do internet providers charge by the bit and byte these days?
Maybe it’s Trump’s tariffs. Folk in the US have to read this 25% more slowly than everyone else. Or Russian sanctions. I’d love to be able to tell you that it’s a decision from high up after Larry Ellison bought me out for big bucks to stop saying mean things about Donnie. But no such luck. Have I just tired of blogging? I have been here before. I quit blogging midway through 2019. But at the start of 2020, I unexpectedly found myself with a lot of spare time on my hands.
It’s actually the price of publishing wot done it. I got the notification pop up yesterday from Amex to tell me WordPress have lifted £43 from my account. That’s the annual charge for my plan. Yes, they do free plans, but you only get 1gb of storage space and my blog is currently stuffed with almost 6gb of photos, thoughts, rants, links, memes and other assorted literary junk. Almost 6gb, but not quite 6gb. When it hits 6gb, I will need to upgrade to their Premium plan which is more than double the current deal. And you know what? It’s too steep for me.
One should also stop to pause and ask oneself what the point is. Blogging had its heyday nearly two decades ago. People read other stuff. I am to social media what the Beeb has, apparently, become to YouTube. And yet. I quite enjoy writing. More to the point, I quite enjoy reading back old posts. And it’s a habit, isn’t it. Do you know how many blogs from 2003 are still active? I didn’t but I guessed well under 1%. I asked Google Gemini. It didn’t know either, but also guessed at well under 1%, and provided quite a bit of extra info.
It was comforting to know that AI doesn’t seem to know much more than me. So I still have a future as a blogger. Hurrah. So I’ll carry on. Just not here. I’ll go back to Blogger. It’s free and I can adjust the settings of my domain and have it point there, for free. Maybe I’ll import some old posts over. Maybe I won’t. But I’ll carry on writing. Mostly for myself. There’s a hardy bunch of others who comment now and again. Do I still have silent lurkers? I used to have lurkers. Has lurking also gone the way of the BBC?
As for this blog. I’ll have it downgraded to the free plan and get my £43 refunded. I spoke to support. They told me that nothing will be deleted, but I’ll be unable to post anything new until I delete stuff and get it down below 1gb. Which I won’t. So it’ll sit here in the ether. Dormant, like the other 99.99% of blogs in existence. A relic. I do have a couple of posts written and scheduled for my 100th birthday and whatnot. Will they publish? I’ll just need to stay alive long enough to find out. Until then….
The Mexile 
Your photographs will be greatly missed.
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As I read this post, I thought, why don’t you just go back to “blogspot”? I know that you don’t particularly like it, but it’s free. I’ve been blogging since 2013, have a ton of photos on my posts, and I’ve never been charged a cent.
So, I was glad when you ended with a link to your new location on “blogspot”. I will update the link on my blog list. You enjoy writing, so you should keep doing it, even if there are only a few of us who look forward to seeing the latest post from you.
Saludos,
Bill
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