Nicky Bond and Writer's Ramblings: That's Numberwang!

I've been thinking about the number one hundred a lot recently. You? No? Oh.

According to my research - the reason for which I'll get to in a sec - Tony Hart was paid £100 for the ship design on the Blue Peter badge, there are over 100 million people in China with the surname Li, and in Bangladesh, 100 mangoes is a traditional unit of measurement. Those facts and more, can be found here in this article. (When I said 'research' I really meant I'd Googled 'Facts About 100' and clicked on the first thing that came up.)

One hundred. It's got a ring to it. It's a mile stone. It's a thing. You get a telegram from the Queen when you reach a hundred years of age. A century is a big deal in cricket (I believe.) It's what the entire concept of percentages is based upon. So why do I care? What's making me waste brain cells on a random number this week.

Well, excitingly, this very sentence you're reading is from the one hundredth Nicky Bond and Writer's Ramblings blog post! CAN YOU BELIEVE? There've been ninety-nine previous Rambles. Who'd have thought that I'd manage to string it out this long? Like Pokemon and childhood infections, have you caught them all?

I'm being a bit silly, natch. This blog is a bit of fun most of the time. It's a chance for me to write something to be read, when I'm wading through the murk of non-writing book-tasks in the week. Keeping up the skill of churning out polished paragraphs on a regular basis, is useful when I've spent the rest of the week researching names for a character, or deleting erroneous commas from a manuscript. This blog makes me write actual sentences, often.

And like Bangladeshi mangoes, it's a unit of measurement all on its own. I started this blog to promote the first book I was writing. It came out, I wrote another one and now I'm banging on about that. One hundred blog posts = twenty-three months (approx - it all fell apart over the first Christmas when I chilled out for three weeks). As well as book news, I've covered actual news - the Women's March, #MeToo movement, Black Friday - I've covered cultural events - Eurovision Song Contest, Strictly Come Dancing, the World Cup - and I've talked nonsense about all sort of shenanigans - iPhones, my legs, GDPR.

Like the cricketing century or the royal telegram, one hundred blog posts is A THING. For me, anyway. So to subscribers, casual readers, or random bots from far-flung places - thanks for the clicks. And like the self-indulgent diva I can be at times, here are some of my best bits.