Full Circle?

As I sit here in my little room, I can’t help but think of the first flat that I ever rented in the United Kingdom, it was fractionally bigger than this one, and I lived there for a year or so. This room is only very temporary while I await my turn in front of the camera tomorrow.

It’s been a long time!

I almost feel like I’ve come full circle. This feeling is somewhat intensified by the similarity in the two rooms, my cold-water flat in 1982 and this small single room with it’s own shower and toilet. The other similarity is that I am alone here. Just as I was back in 1982.

Of course the two biggest differences are my age (a lot of difference there) and my reason for being here.

In 1982, I was running away. I had lost the “love of my life” and in my misery sought to get as far away  as possible from the place where I’d lost her. I needed  thinking time, unfortunately, my brain translated that into “drinking time.” England was a good choice for that reason alone.

This time, in my little room, I am not running from anything. I am, in fact, running to something. I have not been in front of the camera in more years than I care to admit. Not that I am ashamed of not acting for so long, but because it has been a long time and that equals older! I am, hopefully a little wiser now than that almost 26 year-old chap who got off the wrong side of the “freedom bird,” as the military contract flights back then were called.

I was not going to write much on this “busman’s holiday” but the realisation that I’d just passed (damned quickly) the 600 follower mark on my poor somewhat abandoned blog and that I was just a gnat’s whisker from having 70,000 views.

Wow.

I have been busier than ever over the last two(?) months and  last week has been fraught with tension and the knowledge that, however inadvertently, my life has changed yet again.

I will explain to those of you who’ve followed me so faithfully what has happened.

I started working for a newspaper. I write for the Las Vegas Guardian Express and I am the Deputy Managing Editor as well as the Senior Entertainment Editor, but I also write news stories in between.

Last week I wrote a “draft” article for publication when we got our second source verification of the great Nelson Mandela actually dying last week. Unfortunately, while it was still in draft form, which will explain the misspelling of Zuma in the second or third paragraph, the article was published.

It turned out that we were right and he had, in all essence died last week, on the day that we’d  said. We thought we might have gotten it right after our site was attacked by a South African source repeatedly using a “DDOS” which is massively expensive. This was after my article got over half a million views in just under five hours.

We (and I) have gotten hate mail and been trolled. I’ve had people on my social network sites bandy my name about as an idiot. I’ve even had people get onto to my paper and demand that I be fired. As time went on, more people began to remark in a less hostile fashion. I’m sure the comments will continue, but I rarely read them. I’m writing for a newspaper and I don’t respond. I only respond to comments on my personal blog.

And I only respond to comments that are not “trollish” in nature.

But aside from the paper I write for, I am still writing my blog and although not as often as I should, I haven’t forgotten you guys and gals who’ve stuck by me, before and after my heart attack. I want to thank you all for doing so and you’ll never know just how much you mean to me!

So today, I’m closing with a big “thumbs up” for you, my faithful followers! May the blogging never end!

Cheers,

Michael Smith 

United Kingdom

5 July 2013

Related articles

• Nelson Mandela, Death, Dishonesty and Denial (guardianlv.com)