MISSING BLOG

Poor little blog went missing...poor little blog got lost in the garden at night, like a cat with no sense of smell. The blog disappeared for a few days, didn't return when you rattled a box of soya-crunchies out on the patio or played its favourite record.

Where have you been, little blog? What happened to you? Are you alright? We put up posters with a picture of you on the local telegraph-poles.

An old lady finds the blog shivering under a bush. It looks sickly and unwell, its ribs protruding like sticks. She calls to it, trying to coax it out. "Are you alright, little fella? Don't be frightened - I won't hurt you."

The blog eyes her suspiciously. Something's spooked it, made it wary of humans - but what? I guess we'll never know. Did it spend the week locked in someone's garage or their tool-shed? Maybe it had a fight with next door's blog - did that nasty big Doppleganger blog chase it across the neighbouring gardens? Did that weird-looking blog up the road called Loki hiss and spit at it, send it packing off its turf? It looks round warily as the old lady tries to tempt it out with a saucer of milk and a plate of Kit-e-Blog gone well past its sell-by date. "Come on out - that's it, boy. Don't be scared."

You should never give a hedgehog milk. It can make them very sick.

Is that true or did I just make it up? An old-wives tale. Round our way the gypsies used to bake hedgehogs - wrap them up in a big ball of clay and roast them. When they were cooked the clay would crack open and you could pull out all the spines and get at the meat. For a while you could buy hedgehog-flavoured crisps.

I've been busy. Very busy. But I'm not going to protest too much, methinks, 'cos I get to do lots of things that I really enjoy and that other people would kill to do. So I'm not moaning, just busy.

And my poor ol' scanner is on its last legs. I've had to resusitate it a few times now, de-frib it: "CLEAR!" What do scanners see when they leave their physical bodies - do they travel down a long tunnel of light. Do they see everything they've ever scanned flashing past them at once? Is there an after-life for electrical appliances - where do the anima that sit at the heart of the allegedly inanimate go when they die? Do souls run on 240 volts AC?

Perhaps I'm just being cruel - maybe I should just let him go, you know? My scanner is 10 years old - that's 17 in cat-years, 114 in human-years and 3-and-a-half months in blog-years. But I just can't bear the thought of life without him. Sure, I could get another scanner, but it...well, it just wouldn't be the same.

But that poor ol' blog...take him indoors and give him a plate of food, let him settle down in front of the fire. We'll soon put some meat back on his bones.

More in a minute.