(79) Blog biz

As POWcityblog closes onto its 100th posting we decided to convene a reader’s panel. (“User” connoting drug abuse rather than psychogeographic enquiry we prefer our chosen term) It seems that the readership is enjoying the blog. This is good. We thank our readers for being our readers. We were a little taken aback by a clamour for more on Grandfather. We had no idea our modest anecdotes about our honoured ancestor’s day had been so welcome. Perhaps Grandfather’s mixture of ferocity and Zen-like understanding of the pointlessness of human endeavour strikes a note in our own era of unhealthy mixed signals.

While we did not create the POWcityblog to be self-indulgent we understand the value of family history within history in general. Knowing Poorkdale’s once-upon-a-times reinforces the contextualization of its present. “You can get much further with a smile, a kind word and a gun than you can with a smile and a kind word,” Grandfather always said. Particularly fond of his Webley .32 was Grandfather and his proposition has never been truer than it is today.

Other readers have enquired as to our downstairs maid Miranda. We remain at something of a quandary regarding Miranda. Her near-manic admixture of moods continued through the spring, worsening in fact. Certainly we have lost an intern or two here and there over the years but we have never fired a domestic before. This may change with Miranda regardless of the beautiful outlines of her eyes which we used to be able only to describe as Persian but which now fill with hysterical tears without apparent reason virtually all the time.

Additionally, Miranda abandoned her pre-noon duties some time ago and appears rarely before 11:00, usually looking the worse for wear. We reluctantly must conclude she is a drinker as we have heard wretching from her quarters near the POWcityblog bunker kitchen on several occasions whilst having to attempt to make our own breakfast. Her normal sunny disposition has been usurped too often now by a puffy-faced irritability.

The other day, for example, we offered a constructive criticism of the consistency of a pasta sauce. We have never seen an expensive cast-iron frying pan move at such speed. If we were not so busy bleeding all over the medical intern’s normally spotless white uniform, designed by ourself in Helsinki in 1970, we would have had to consider police access to the POWcityblog bunker.

We think, we fear, Miranda is an alcoholic. This may explain her moods, weight gain, shirking of duties and high consumption of stomache discomfort relief tablets.