Ten Years Ago Today (or Thereabouts)

You know what?  I've been doing this for ten years.  That's right, ten years of Sleaze Diary.  I only realised this the other day, when I noticed that the oldest archive entry is for February 2006.  To be fair, as I recall the posts for that month were effectively test posts before the blog went live - I don't think that I made it public until March 2006.  Nevertheless, it's a long time to be doing this and I sometimes wonder why I do keep on going.  I started this blog back in the days when The Sleaze was still a static site and adding a new story or article took almost as long as writing the item.  I decided that I needed a more immediate form of publishing to supplement the main site, somewhere I could react immediately to events in the real world and record my thoughts and ideas in real time.  Indeed, Sleaze Diary still has the description 'Editorial Blog of The Sleaze', even though it has drifted away from that original format over the years.  In recent years it has become a vehicle for my various pop culture obsessions, not to mention my first steps in podcasting (before I joined the Overnightscape Underground, which is where my new audio stuff now appears).  It's also been a place where I've worked through my various emotional traumas of the past decade.

But ten years of Sleaze Diary isn't the only anniversary being celebrated this month.  Apart from my birthday in a couple of weeks' time, this Monday it will be forty five years since we went decimal.  That's right,the UK's decimal currency will officially be middle aged.  Interestingly, although I was at school before decimalisation, I have no recollection of actually using the old monetary system - in anticipation of the change, at school we were taught nothing but the decimal system, even though it would be a couple of years before its introduction.  Consequently, I could never understand the nostalgia amongst my elders for the old system, as the decimal system seemed so simple and logical compared to the old one of twelve pennies to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound.  Apart from the use of two different bases withing one currency (twelve and twenty) - three if you include guineas (twenty one shillings to a guinea: a base of seven) - it implied that the people who invented it had twelve fingers.  It was the same with the whole base twelve Imperial system of measurement, (although, interestingly, I still use feet and inches rather than metres and centimetres), which just seemed to smack of the arrogance of Empire: the fact that our ancestors had twelve fingers proved their superiority over all those ten fingered natives.  Not that I wasn't aware of the old system - I'd seen the old coins and goods in shops priced in pounds, shillings and pence.  Moreover, the old shilling and two shilling coins (which were identical in size to the original decimal five and ten pence pieces, respectively), lingered in circulation until at least the 1990s.  Even the old sixpence was legal tender until 1980, or so.  Anyway, it doesn't seem possible that it is forty five years since the new money came in, just like it seem possible that it is ten years since I started this blog.  Clearly, time really does fly when you are having fun.