08/08/25 08:02

I can’t believe how far I’ve come over these past 20 months. I have 333 Instagram followers, 29 followers on Spotify, 19 followers on Apple Podcasts and 9 YouTube subscribers. Now, to the vast majority if the world, those figures aren’t great at all. But to me, the eternal realist, the regular guy on the street, they’re absolutely amazing. If we remove the possibility of 9 overlaps – that’s people subscribed across all my channels, I have a total of 48 people, all wanting to hear what I say. Imagine, having a room of over 40 people, all turned up simply for me. That’s an astonishing result. I’ve put in the hours, don’t get me wrong, but for those 40 people – and those that simply drop by to see what’s going on or don’t follow me – I am so humbled by your presence. Whilst I do this as a lasting legacy, I’m grateful to you all. And in many months’ time, you’ll hear this on my YouTube channel once I get around to recording it for my blogcast. That isn’t doing as well, but there are only 35 unadvertised episodes released with a total combined time of not very long at all. And yet, to those out there listening, I also thank you.

I’ve just finished (hopefully) recording the sandwich parts for Episode 4.3 in Costa, Barkingside. I need to edit, though, adjust sound levels and all the rest of it before it goes out on Tuesday – I need to be able to properly nail this and be more relaxed about it. Especially for my next November trip to Paris. That’ll be 3 years running. I quite like that habit. Season 5 is about halfway written but it needs to be typed up so I can transfer the words to Riverside to enable me to read the transcript whilst recording with 2 phones, a remote screen and a DJI Mini Mic. Then I also need to attempt to grab enough, and possibly relevant, B-roll to add glimpses of Paris through the monolgulous episodes. Yep, still going with that word…

I’m looking at more merchandise, possibly drop-shipping other bits (coffee and fragrance) and working out how to livestream on YouTube whilst Riversiding so I can respond to chat messages at the same time. And then there is the Patreon development that I need to get on with. So many thoughts in my head. On the plus side, I had the boys for a week which was nice – especially seeing Jasper on the bike and Rory encouraging him, I love them both so much.