Did you miss me?

I'm sorry. No, really I am. Terribly terribly sorry. I am apologetic in ways that only a seriously-lapsed Catholic can ever be. And I am lapsed, trust me. I don't know my Ave Maria from my Vorsprung Durch Technik.

I'm only too aware that throughout the world people have been anxious. "What's happened to Make Lard History?" they've been asking. "Almost three weeks and no posts whatsoever. What's that all about?"

I wrote 60-odd thousand words last month. This month? Bupkis. Nada. Nowt. Sweet bugger-all. Oh, the irony. One of the things you're supposed to get out of NaBloPoMo is the habit of writing regularly. "Write every day," they say, "and hang the quality control." It's supposed to make you more prolific; if you're getting used to knocking off a few hundred words before breakfast every day, the theory goes, you should be able to carry this on when you're not up against a deadline.

Unfortunately, Real Life is what happens when you're busy making plans.

But I'm back. Earlier this evening a friend asked me to help him with something, which meant logging into my Blogger account. And as I looked at the piles of dust, the cobwebs and dead flies, I thought to myself, "You know, this place used to have some life to it."

So I'm back. Hold onto, um, whatever it is you're supposed to hold onto at times like this.