Speedy Gonzales

Those of you who were reading this way back in September last year (bless you, by the way, you're clearly suckers for punishment) might remember how I drove from one end of this sceptered isle to the other - twice - over the course of a long weekend. I was supporting some people who'd had the ambitious (read: positively daft) idea of cycling a non-stop relay from Land's End to John O'Groats in 60 hours.

It was all in a good cause, money was raised from sponsors and Macmillan Cancer Support ended up better to the tune of about £10,000 as a result.

As well as driver and jaffa cake wrangler, my other job was to journal the whole thing. Because I didn't want to bore you all rigid with the detail, I set up a separate blog and wrote about it there. Everything worked to plan. We ended up at John O'Groats (to a Top Gun soundtrack - we are children of the 80s) with 30 seconds to spare. Whisky was drunk. We came home the following day. I'd failed miserably to 'live-blog' about it; something to do with wrestling a heavily-laden Ford Galaxy along the Highland roads while high on Red Bull made it hard to touch-type. No problem, I thought, I'd just backfill it all after we came back. After all, it would make a right ripping yarn. I was rubbing my hands together at this; it was something I was really proud of and there was plenty to tell.

And then, about a week after we returned, Blogger locked the blog, meaning no-one could see it or update it. To them, or rather to their computers, it looked like a spam blog. Clearly this means there are plenty of other blogs out there selling pictures of pasty blokes wearing lycra.

Actually, now you mention it....

Anyway. I contacted Blogger straight away. And processed unlock requests pretty much every week for a month or so. No joy. There were no email addresses I could use to complain, no telephone helpdesks I could berate. Blogger are to customer services what King Herod was to Mothercare.

Everytime I logged into Blogger to update this blog (which clearly doesn't get enough readers to fool Blogger's computers into thinking it's spam), the locked Queasy Riders link would regard me balefully. "Why have you forsaken me?" it seemed to be saying.

I don't often get inanimate objects accusing me of abandonment. It's not a nice feeling.

This evening I logged in to write something pithy and amusing (or to stare at a blank screen for 60 minutes, which is par for the course these days). Lo. And Behold. Queasy Riders is back. Dance around and jump for joy, people!

I feel it's only fair to congratulate the good folks at Blogger. After all, it's only taken them four months to check out one blog with 17 posts on it. That works out to one whole post every week. As a result, I lost the chance to write about it when it was nice and fresh, so the record of this trip, a great achievement about which I was quite pleased, has gone largely unrecorded.

I haven't used the word for a while, but I will now. Dickwaddery.