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I hope the hangover from our crazy party last night wasn’t too bad for you all this morning. I woke up really refreshed. I think my sleeping patterns maybe back to normal, as I fell asleep at 11pm, and slept right through until 7am, feeling fully awake.
I then did an article about The Young’uns for the Big Issue. So I’ve already written 2000 words today, and now I’ve got to write some more. I mean, I suppose I could cheat and use my Big Issue article as today’s Dollop, but then I am a bit worried that this might affect the newspaper’s sales, resulting in homeless people all over the country starving to death. Of course, this is working on the assumption that I am going to be that day’s headline story, the big draw to get people to buy; but is that such an outrageous assumption to make? I mean, is it? What? OK then, fair enough, probably yes.
I’d like to think that even if I did put my article up here for free that you wouldn’t refuse to buy the Big Issue as a result. I think you are all far too conscientious to do that. But I would hate it if word got back to me from the Big Issue that they’d not seen the major boost to newspaper sales that they’d imagined my presence would have afforded them. I don’t want to hear back from a member of Big Issue staff that a load of potential buyers picked up the newspaper, saw my front-page article (I assume it’ll be on the front page), said “ah, that’s a brilliant article, I read it for free on David’s website last week” and walk off, maybe chuckling to themselves remembering their favourite line from the article that’s still in their memories because of how funny it was, while the poor Big Issue vendor shivers in the street next to a pile of unsold newspapers because everyone’s already read it online for free and have already printed out their own copies, laminated it and put it up on their bedroom walls. “Curse that David Eagle,” they will whimper. “The Big Issue staff told me that today’s newspaper would sell so many copies that I’d be able to buy a house. Why did he have to put it up online for free, the bastard? Why?!” I don’t want to be a figure of hate among the homeless community of Britain.
Or even worse, the Big Issue staff might not know that I’ve put the article online for free, and when they get the disappointingly low sales figure, they conclude that I’m obviously nowhere near as popular as they assumed me to be. I’d hate them to think that. That would be a terrible blow to my ego, and would be arguably worse than the shivering, whimpering homeless people. Hey, I said “arguably,” don’t look at me like that.
I’m not sure when my article is coming out, and I probably won’t get to know. I hope though that this blog post isn’t going to result in people approaching a Big Issue seller, picking up the newspaper, rifling through it in order to see whether I’m in that day’s publication (not that you’ll have to rifle through, because I’m obviously going to be on the frontpage as their leading story) and then, upon discovering that there’s no article by me, put the paper back down and walk off. Perhaps I should email the Big Issue to warn them that this might happen, and ask them to alert me as to the day of my article’s inclusion, in order to avoid this kind of thing occurring, which could be pretty psychologically damaging for the poor Big Issue sellers.
Obviously, I am not being serious, and think it is very doubtful that my inclusion of the +article on this blog will have any affect on Big Issue sales. I may be in the Big Issue, but I am not a big issue. They’ll probably edit what I’ve written down quite a bit, baring in mind it’s 2000 words long. So I may well release the article as tomorrow’s Dollop. Then hopefully you will enjoy it so much, that you will buy loads of copies of the Big Issue and give it to your friends so that they too can enjoy my amazing words.
My housemates Ben and Elsa return from their holiday in Spain tonight, which will be good news for any Dollop readers who have missed those particular characters. I don’t know if there’s anyone out there reading this who has missed their mentions in these Dollops, but that news may bring cheer to someone reading this. I am in the house and have no plans until Saturday, so I hope that Ben and Elsa will be able to offer some inspiration for these Dollops, and not just be all boring and ordinary around the house. One of the terms and conditions of me moving into the house was that I write about them, and I haven’t done that for the last month, due to being in Australia, but now that we will be once again united tonight, I am obliged to start writing about them again.
Now and again they deliberately do things in order to gain Dollop inclusion. Elsa bought a needlessly complicated kettle, knowing that I’d mention her in my Dollop, which obviously succeeded because it spawned my hilarious kettle-based observations. Who knows, maybe they’ll have brought back another needlessly complicated household appliance for me to write about.
Oh what excitement, friends. Will it be my Big Issue article? Will it be some observations about a stupidly overly complicated domestic item? Or will it be something else entirely? Join me tomorrow to find out; as if you’d be able to resist.
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