24

 The number twenty four. First discovered after the number twenty three, the history of the number twenty four is connected deeply with our own. For example the Edinburgh Municipal Fire Brigade was founded in the year 1824 and a failed Soviet coup occurred in the year 1924. Even more strikingly, by the march of the year 2024 I will be 28 and if this wasn't enough evidence to back up the importance of the number 24, those born 4 years after myself will be 24 years old in the year 2024. Coincidence? I think not.

 However if it is not sheer chance then who has engineered it this way? Perhaps there exists some secret society, a covenant of 24 followers. A devout cult whose members pray to 24 24/7. And this secret organization has, today, spun me into their conspiratorial web for this is my 24th blog post! (I usually detest exclamation marks, trying to force their enthusiasm or surprise or excitement on the reader without any respect to his/her actual emotional response but today I'm making an exception on the account of it being a celebratory occasion!)

 Considering my long winded verbose writing style, these 24 blog post behemoths combined can probably create a good sized book to be sold in WHSmith alongside all the other deeply meaningless celebrity autobiographies (and mine would have the advantage in the celebrity autobiography market of actually being written by me, though this may be slightly outweighed by the disadvantage of myself not actually being a celebrity).

 

 

 Nonetheless, despite my best efforts, I still appear to have minimum readership. Zero followers. Twenty four posts, god knows how many words (or he would know if he existed which is a really rather murky grey area at the moment) and yet, zero followers. What? How? Why? Who? Where? When? With whom? These are questions I ask myself when I see my follower count (although the last four questions were possibly irrelevant but I ask them anyway because I am a thorough individual) which is still a colon followed by a solid stubborn zero, a combination of symbol and number that, incidentally, perfectly mirrors my shocked expression every time :0

 I have more than once discussed this issue with my underlings and the response I got was either that I should include more cute cats or cut down the words I waste in rambling. Ignoring the former as I refuse to bow down to the vulgarly low standards of internet popularity, the latter is a difficult suggestion. This is largely due to the fact that my posts are composed of nothing but rambling, cutting away the rambling would leave absolutely nothing behind which, might precisely be the source of all my problems. Namely that my blog, like a broken camera or a child with ADHD, has very little focus.

 With a clear focus comes a target audience, with a target audience comes an audience and with an audience comes readership. Therefore what I need is some subject for me to concentrate all my posts on. However I have no job, nothing of interest happens with any reliable regularity in my school or family life and I have no interests that could feasibly involve a blog such as botany or animal experimentation. One topic I could attempt to cover is some social injustice that enrages me, something I find absolutely unforgivable to the extent that I am willing to dedicate my blog to pursuing the injustice's demise. Like a knight fighting a terrible dragon, I could brandish my pen that is mightier than the sword and write aggressive campaigns against the said injustice.

  

 

 ....There is however, one problem. I really have no social injustice I would willingly dedicate this blog to. I am the sort of horribly cynical and unhelpful human being who, whilst being perfectly aware of the fact that there are a multitude of things wrong with the world as a whole, is too unempathic and lazy to feel even the slightest need to do anything. The only things that passionately enrage me are petty day to day issues such as casual Americanizations, blatant marketing, irritating adverts and mild illogical phrasings and ideas. I could make them the main focus of my blog but as social injustices go, they are less of a tremendous dragon to be fought by a courageous knight and more of an irritating worm to be cruelly crushed by some malicious child. There's really only so much I can milk from that petty topic before the metaphorical udders begin to bleed.

 Then, as it lies bleeding to death at my feet, where would I be? On the run from the metaphorical RSPCA for needless cruelty to a topic. Unplanned and frantically shoddy writings mindlessly fleeing from the pursuit of the police and the angry animal rights activists (who are exactly the sort of people capable of maintaining a blog about social outrage, spewing out a post per day on the cruelty of eating eggs or whatnot). Soon, apprehended and arrested, I will be forced to stand in a court of law, surrounded by stern animal lovers and bestial romantics.

 "And why, Mr Galanthus, did you milk the topic until it bled?" asks the judge sternly, glaring coldly at me from his majestically high oak podium.

 "For internet popularity," I mumble ashamedly, hurriedly adding, "your honour."

 "So you pushed a meager topic far beyond its capabilities for blog readership you say?" he affirms accusingly, an accusation in response to which I can only give a silent downcast nod, "Then," he announces, "you are indeed guilty."

 I sigh shakily and feel tears spill out from the corners of my eyes, my entire body sagging with depression as I await my sentence. The Judge continues, "Guilty of losing your way," an unexpected warmth enters the Judge's deep booming voice echoing around the courtroom, "Why do you need to gain popularity and readership? Why can you not do it just for your own creative entertainment? I for one, preferred it when you were just writing your pointless and unfocused, but nonetheless honest thoughts" With that he smiles slightly, a paternal reassuring grin and before I know it, I'm out of my own defendant box, legs propelling me towards my savior.

  Which is why I have decided that despite not having any readership, I will keep my writing style and subject entirely unchanged.

 I shall leave my blog completely unfocused, deeply shallow and thoroughly pointless. I will not cut down my long winded meaningless rambling, I will not display any pitiful pretence of social outrage and I will not bow down to compromise for the masses. It may be a lonely road but at least it's my road.

Urges

 Sometimes there are moments when you just feel like doing a particular thing. Like when you get home after a hard day at work and you really crave a cup of tea or when you wake up first thing in the morning and experience a burning desire to have a nice refreshing shower. In my case, I have recently been feeling incessant urges to water board someone.
 To those who think water boarding sounds like a form of leisure activity to be performed on some sunny remote island by tanned men and women in swimming suits, I would say that they are half right. It is a form of torture consisting of covering the victim's face with a piece of soaked cloth and pouring water onto it, thus giving the victim a perfect sensation of drowning, arguably the ultimate in sensory illusions (which makes it sound like some sort of Disney Land attraction). It has most recently made the news when it came to light that interrogators in Guantanamo Bay, a remote sunny island used to imprison a lot of tanned people, regularly used water boarding on the detainees. Whether the interrogators counted it as a leisure activity and whether the detainees were wearing swimsuits when it happened is yet an undisclosed mystery.
 I wake up in the morning, sunlight crawling lazily into my window through the half open blinds (which I still treat with a mixture of suspicion and fear as I'm not entirely sure how to operate its complicated system of strings and thinly cut plastic boards yet) and walk somewhat unsteadily to my kitchen, sleep still blurring my vision. Upon arriving in the open plan culinary hub of our household, I lumber up to the sink and with a twist of the gleaming silver tap, fill a cup with cool water. As I lift the cup to drink, I ponder for a moment, looking at the glass container filled to the rim in potentially suffocating liquid, the evolution of technology from the simple well to the grand network of pipes and tunnels that now reside, spread like some aquatic web, beneath the metropolis.
 Finishing my drink, I wipe my cup on the tea towel that, if soaked and placed over someone's horizontal face, could cause considerable discomfort and I briefly wonder about the intricate layers of fabric that have gone into making this simple every day tool. Scratching my itching head, I return to my bedroom whereupon my eyes fall on my school bag, within which, I know, resides a timetable that dictates that I should be arriving in my school within the next thirty minutes or be facing the consequences within the next thirty five. My mind then, bored of scuttling up this particular branch of thought, leaps nimbly onto an adjacent cognitive branch concerning the people I will surely meet through the school day. This branch then spreads out into several different twigs that can all collectively be labeled under the title, "people I know".
 It is then that I feel a strong urge to water board. I really could not say why. Perhaps the cause is in some undetectable stress or irritation but I am no psychiatrist and if ordinary people like myself could easily detect the causes of irrational thoughts or desires then I'm sure that particular job would have been abolished as obsolete a long time ago. However, if I were to make a complete and random guess, a total stab in the pitch black darkness, a wild baseless assumption then it would be the fact that I hate at least sixty percent of the people I am associated with.
 Acting as further cause of stress, presently at school there is a certain social reshuffle occurring. With the introduction of forty or so new, most of them female, students into what used to be an all boys school, what had been a concrete social hierarchy is currently shifting and merging. The injection of fresh blood into what was previously a stable system has acted as a catalyst for school politics, causing a chemical reaction as the result of which alliances and treaties are being written, unwritten and rewritten at the speed of light. A decisive moment of school history, when being considered a generally attractive human being or not is crucial in cementing ones social status for the next two years. In essence, whether you are subject of mockery or the mocker is as malleable as molten metal at present. However like molten metal, though it may be flexible now, it will harden and set in no time. Allowing those at the top to stay at the top and causing  those trapped within the lower social echelons to be imprisoned there forever.
 Therefore, taking this as a revolutionary opportunity, many of those I have long since despised and mocked have begun their ascent. With it they have altered their attitude, perhaps in an attempt to alter the past as well, where before some may not have talked to me (knowing full well I found them dull detestable individuals and had no reservations about articulating these thoughts) for fear of being verbally humiliated, they now act as if we have been the best of friends for the past few years. Irritatingly, I myself have to then bite back harsh words of hatred, that I would have happily spewed over them a few months back, because the present state of affairs dictates that all previous social levels have been flattened to create a soft even playground and any careless public display of needlessly malicious wrath could result in rapid sinking.
 Therefore, at present I must content myself with hidden malignant machinations and bide my time. However just they wait, once alliances and positions have been set in stone, once this quagmire becomes solid ground yet again, I'll ensure they're back to wearing bright orange onzies on their own remote social island where I'll be waiting for them, a wet towel in one hand and a bucket full of water in the other.