1 October 2025

· A decade of scribbling on the internet ·

• 2015
• Note, I never the lily did gild
• When misquoted by readers unskilled
• I went online to chide them
• But as I decried them
• A fancy to blog was instilled

• 2016
• Shared my penchant for Python and Grail
• Henry Four Part the Second, my tale
• Of the subtitle track
• The post never’s gone slack
• As most viewed, to this day does prevail

• 2017
• While at Henri troisième’s coronation
• The reine mère and I made conversation
• I asked what was her scent
• Soon to Florence I went
• Sant’ Maria Novella’s creation

• 2018
• In the third of three posts about Shrew
• I re-lyriced Cole Porter, but through
• All the years since I hung it
• No one has yet sung it
• For two tuneful gangsters I sue

• 2019
• An old daub of the sixteenth Earl, John
• Was some wooden boards painted upon
• Added later, my name
• Leading others to claim
• That it’s me– c’est mon père, pas moi, non

• 2020
• In the year that the Covid plague struck
• When I inside my manor was stuck
• Had to pass up the chance
• With an F1This First Folio edition of my plays, 1623 to dance
• It hurt so much I didn’t write about it for three years. *uck.

• 2021
• A detectorist found my old ring
• Gold and carnelian, Venetian bling
• Was a reader who cried
• (I admit with some pride)
• At my story of losing the thing

• 2022
• A new sonnet I wrote for the day
• Used a gaggle of words long astray
• I was curious to see
• Would they come back to me?
• They returned at my beck, pleased to say

• 2023
• On the Ides of March, posted a peek
• Of the project I had yet to speak
• Of: my Ovid, mark two’d
• Old translation renewed
• To make flow all the language antique

• 2024
• At the new year up MMM went
• A quick sequel was not my intent
• But Tom Nashe made me smile
• (As I mourned for a while)
• Torching Harvey, my notes to augment

• 2025
• It was time to Prince Tudor address
• Though the subject oft causes distress
• Yes Southampton’s my son
• With blood royal? No, none
• Mary Browne was his mother, not Bess

• So the blog now completes its tenth year
• As the place where my new words appear
• While there’s more yet to say
• I look backward today
• Over all that I’ve done to get here

On the first of October, 2015, one of my most misquoted lines was misquoted again. I don’t remember who did it but I was tired of eating the mistake. Impulsively, I fired up a free blog to carp about it. No one else knew of my complaint, but I was on record. Then I kept at it, getting a few more whinges out of my system while I thought of other things to say, and other ways to say them. Instead of diverse voices, my own. Not too serious, even when serious. Poetry on occasion, with a difference: the odd sonnet, a few fourteeners, but limericks were droll, quick, just the ticket.

It felt good to be writing again. A new audience began to arrive. I spent time and money to give the site an identity, and to be reasonably sure that my new words would be worth reading. I became a half-arsed web geek because I couldn’t afford to pay anyone else. That money was needed for books to feed the muse. So many books. I even wrote a couple.

Today is the first of October, 2025. Whatever you call what I do here, I’m better at it now than I was ten years ago. That’s not vanity, that’s probability. Give an ape a typewriter and eventually he’ll bang out… well no, he won’t. Nothing posted here (aside from the quotes) approaches the Shake-⁠⁠Speare of my long-⁠ago self. It was never meant to. The blog is what it has been all along– personal prose fretted with verse, my Author’s-eye view of the complicated fate I’ve faced since I first put pen to paper. No plan, no schedule. Only the most general of agendas. I have sent my sentences gratis into the aether because my cause should be an unchained book with its pages open to everyone. And I’ve always been good at giving away what I couldn’t hold onto anyhow.

A few hardy souls have been here for the entire run. My gratitude to veteran partisans and new visitors alike, except for the unmanner’d dog who tried to download the whole Nashe book. Avaunt, thou degenerate fustilarian. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

The things I wrote when the first Elizabeth reigned continue to carry the misspelled name of the misgiven author. This will change. Where truth is known, falsehood cannot stand. All it can do, like the bad actor it is, is to chew the scenery as it falls, dragging out the throes of its overdue death.

Ten years is an eternity in internet time, but only a moment in the tragical-comical-historical story of my life and work. By any measure, time is our surest ally. Those recognising that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was the true Shake-Speare grow in knowledge and conviction as they grow in number and publicity. The decades ahead will build on the decades past, for as long as it takesI made this graph for anniversary #5 in 2020. Still applies..

Even postlife doesn’t last forever, however. The increasing complications of existence both on and off the internet make this digital coil more of a question than ever, and it’s time to do some thinking. When I know what the blog’s future needs to be or not to be (sorry), I’ll post it. New scribbling may be scarce until then, but I’ll be around.

Whatever answers may come, thank you for these ten years gone.

Ten Years Gone
Led Zeppelin
from Physical Graffiti (1975)

• Then as it was, then again it will be
• Though the course may change sometimes
• Rivers always reach the sea
• Flying skies of fortune, each have separate ways
• On the wings of maybe, downing birds of prey
• Kind of makes me feel sometimes, didn’t have to grow
• But as the eagle leaves the nest, it’s got so far to go

• Changes fill my time, baby that’s alright with me
• In the midst I think of you, and how it used to be

• Did you ever really need somebody
• And really need ’em bad
• Did you ever really want somebody
• The best love you ever had
• Do you ever remember me, baby
• Did it feel so good
• ’Cause it was good the first time
• And you knew you would

• Dewy eyes now sparkle, senses growing keen
• Tasting love along the way
• See your feathers preen
• Kind of makes me feel sometimes, didn’t have to go
• We are eagles of one nest, the nest is in our soul

• Vixen in my dreams, with great surprise to me
• Never thought I’d see your face the way it used to be
• Oh darlin’, oh darlin’

• Oh, oh darlin’, oh yeah, oh darlin’

• I’m never gonna leave you
• I’m never gonna leave
• Holdin’ on, ten years gone
• Ten years gone, holdin’ on, ten years gone
• Ten years gone, holdin’ on

• Jimmy Page – music
• Robert Plant – lyrics
• ©Succubus Music Ltd, Sons of Einion Publishing, Flames of Albion Music Inc

VERO NIHIL VERIUS
VERITAS OMNIA VINCIT