Tweetie Pie

I appear to have lost any followers I may have had. No comments from anyone for a while now. I'm not blaming anyone - you've all got busy lives and the ramblings of a pensioner come a poor second to "The Great British Bake Off" or putting the cat out at night.

Some of my fellow bloggers appear have slipped over the bloggersphere's horizon and sailed off to NeverNeverLand. Who can blame them: life's too short - even if reading my mishaps make theirs less catastrophic.

I've been going through other blogs and it's a very sad story. Loads started with such hope, such ambition, such dreams - many  have faded to nothing. There's a veritable cemetery of blogs out there. It's like the great Jurassic extinction without the asteroid.

It's evolution. There's Facebook, loads of other blogger sites and sites to upload pics. Then there's Twitter. It's the survival of the fittest and my blog is one of the few remaining of my species. I'm a Neanderthal staring out at the Atlantic from our last bolt hole on Portugal's coast.

It's "The Great British Bake Off" that's the coup de grace. 10 million of us watching three ordinary people bake a cake or three and stir our hearts. What a better riposte to the frightening Teresa May at the Ugly Party's Conference to have two of the finalists in this year's final not white, not Christian and so articulate.

I have never seen Twitter so joyous, so full of sheer pleasure than at Nadiya's victory.

One lesson I take away from this: Television at its best can bring people together. Mass audiences are good for the nation. We will all talk tomorrow about tonight's final: around the water cooler, in the canteen, the pub or on the shop floor. In a small way we'll connect - and TV helps us to do that. And boy do we need to connect.... The Olympics demonstrated that.

Walthamstow set Twitter alight last night as we all wanted to know what happened when two young girls argued over one young boy. Rumour:

 "Open your ears, or which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth.
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports."

We had reports of stabbings, deaths and all manner of riotous behaviour. Our MP was moved to tweet, calling on the youth of Walthamstow to think about their future careers and criminal records.

Someone suggested that letting  hundreds of young men out of school at the same time and in the immediate proximity of a large school full of adolescent gals might have had something to do with the "happening".

The police were on the streets today as schools disgorged their oversexed populations. No doubt someone has set up a crisis centre to take those young people through the trauma of yesterday's bust up.

All this was acted out on Twitter, and no doubt on Facebook with hundreds of phone videos on Instagram, Tumblr, Whatsapp etc. We bloggers don't stand a chance. We're like the silent movie stars in "Singing In the Rain". Dead men walking.

By the way: I was discharged from the hospital. My right hand is now able to do what it was made for.

I wonder if that could be the basis of a brilliant reality show?