Encore!

Hello there

Another Friday and another no Cabin Fever I’m afraid.  Shan’t dwell on it, and nor should you, just count yourself lucky that you don’t have to endure me playing the autoharp. What’s that?  You like the autoharp? The last two songs I played were “Freedom” by Wham and “Shine” by Take That.  Yep?  All good again now?  Thought so.

Anyways, it won’t have escaped your notice (assuming you’ve read the posts in the last couple of weeks) that there’s a major rollercoaster on the go over here.  Not going to go into it, but I’ve really not felt up to most of my podcast commitments.  Particularly Cabin Fever as that’s a round-up of what’s been going on, and what’s been going on is horrendous.  However, I have been thinking about Patreon a lot. You know, like always? Specifically how one should deal with running a business during difficult times, especially a business that relies on - at least an attempt to provide - entertainment.

So, there’s been lots of rejiggling and shuffling stuff around behind-the-scenes, and a great deal of thought as to the content I can manage to provide.  You’ll have seen this week that I repackaged some of the vintage Peacock & Gamble videos, that have been in the vaults for several years, figuring that there’ll be folk who haven’t seen them for that long, as well as folk who have never seen them at all.  I’ve also edited together another four videos in the same sort of vein. The next lot are better than that first lot.

Was that the right use of vein?  “Vain” definitely didn’t look right.

I’ve not been my usual dynamo self on the art front, which is a bit daft as it’s one of the things I probably could manage, but I have made a start on the conversion of the dolls house into a haunted house, and that’s already been quite a fun little project.  I’ve been filming the progress of that, so as soon as I feel there’s enough that’s worth showing I shall be thrusting that upon you.

After Jon and Rob covered Reboot on Monday, I managed to get Loopholes out for you this week (I mean, I appear to be just telling you what has happened at the moment), and the current plan is for me to be back recording Reboot on Saturday for a Monday release.  It’s subject to change, as everything presently is, but am hopeful that’ll be on the way for you.  I promise I’m getting really close to the point of this missive.  In fact, here it is now…

You’ll know that recently, when the need for an emergency post has arisen, I’ve tended towards doing one of the universally much-loved Harping On podcasts.  That still feels slightly out of my grasp for now, so much of my pondering this week has been about what I can do if I need an emergency post.  I’ve always liked with Gilbert Gottfried’s podcast, that they do – what they call – Encore episodes.  Sadly, all they ever release (or re-release) now are Encore episodes on account of Gilbert being away, but even before he died, they would release a new show on the Monday and then an Encore episode later in the week.  This was because they’d amassed so many shows, that they would go back into the back catalogue and select an episode that folk may have missed (or simply want to listen again to without an enormous searching chore).

I’m sure you see where this is going.

I think there are now over two thousand posts on this patreon (that’s purely guess work, but it sounds plausible - there’s certainly way more than a thousand).  There’s a relatively healthy “churn” (that is officially what it is called) of folk coming and going, and new faces arriving every month (and very welcome they are too – thank you).  It stands to reason that there are plenty of people here (if not all of you) who haven’t seen every single one of those twenty thousand posts (I’m rounding it up) (I’m also using too many brackets so will stop that now – it's very late when I’m typing this).

So, the thought I had was to – very occasionally – utilise Encore posts.  Where I’ll go back and select something buried away on here, that I think you’ll like, but probably missed, and give it another chance.  I flatter myself to say there is some top-notch work on here. Actually, every single post was worked hard on.  I don’t do half-arsed posts at any point.  In fact, ironically, this is probably the first half-arsed post I’ve done. If I select an old podcast or video I’ll write new retrospective copy for it, so it’s not just a case of lazy re-releasing.  There’s also a slightly slimmer chance I could do Encore posts of some of the old, long-deleted, public podcasts, but that’s a bit more graft on my side as they will deffo need a decency edit on some of them. I know those of you who were around then will consider this blasphemy but think about it.  Of course they will.

All of this though is dependent on your say so.  I’m pretty confident anyone who votes in the poll (another first for this patreon today – pretty sure I’ve never done a poll before) will vote in favour, if only to give me a break, and whilst I sincerely appreciate that care, I actually would like you to vote honestly.  If this sounds like a mickey-take on any level, then by all means make your voice heard. I appreciate there’s a chance there’ll only be minimum votes on there, but I’ll go with it.  Unless it’s two votes, one for each.  Dunno what I am meant to do then.

I’ll reiterate, this isn’t something that will be like every week or anything and may not even happen at all if I’m able to get back into my stride smartish. So it’s not like I’ll get a positive result and then give you a daily bombarding of repackaged stuff. It is genuinely just for as and when.  “As and when” is a touch present at the moment.

As you can see – the poll choice is “Encore! Encore!” which means you are in favour, and “Booooo get off!” which means you aren’t.  I probably didn’t need to explain that eh?

Sorry for the admin posting, and really hope you have a fantastic weekend ahead of you.  Also really hope that Saints secure the League Leaders Shield against Wigan tonight, but think it could be a case of waiting till next week for that.

Much love to you, and sincerest thanks for your support and care

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