Heretic TOC has been on the move this week, on a hectic festive tour of duty almost as demanding as Santa’s, manoeuvring steadily southwards from the blog’s bleak northern fastness to greet old friends, and make merry and in ye fine olde taverns and ale houses of London.
It’s proving a tough slog for the blog, which is totally unfamiliar with life on the road or, rather, railroad. Wi-fi was very welcome on Chiltern Trains, but proved to be heavily policed. I was refused access to the IPCE site (see Blogroll), which I needed for reference purposes in connection with the work of James W Prescott (see previous blog post). An online message delivered the damning verdict that the site was “tasteless”. Chiltern Trains passengers, it seems, are obliged not just to obey the law but also share the tastes of…well, those whose tastes match those of the directors of Chiltern Trains, perhaps, or more likely some dreary agency touting themselves as experts in taste and decency, such as the Internet Watch Foundation.
Heretic TOC immediately fired off an angry email to the administrators, of course, pointing out they had banned an important website for academic research. If it achieves anything, I’ll let you know.
Another hassle of being away from home base was that I could not log in to Heretic TOC’s WordPress website as I had left the password at home and couldn’t think what to do. So much for any claim to brainpower I might have! Eventually I realised I could get a new password, though I could have found the old one from my LiveDrive cloud backup, except that I was also lacking the password for that. The upshot of all this woeful inefficiency is that my blog on the Sandy Hook school massacre appeared rather later than intended. Also, embarrassingly, I was unable to approve the posting of a suitably modest disclaimer when I was flatteringly mentioned in a comment post in the same breath as Shakespeare, Socrates and other such immortals.
In the face of this omnishambles, perhaps I should just wish everyone a Merry Christmas, or joyous pagan winter feast, or whatever!
And more here soon, I promise, provided that the immortals choose to smile upon Heretic TOC’s humble endeavours. Cheers!