This blog began exactly four years and one day ago.

Since then a whole lot of words have been written and read by countless scoundrels in many countries throughout the world. Thousands of comments have been left, many, many people have been called a cunt.

But, all good things come to an end, and even bad things come to an end too, which is why from today I will no longer be updating the blog. I may pop in the odd post from time to time, more than likely to give info about book two, but there will be no more regular posting.

No more stupid questions from Dirty Dave, no more Stinking Pete putting odd things up his urethra, no more Jimmy being a Bollix, Lucky knocking people off, Splodge splodging around or no more Guinness from Ron. Many of you will also be glad to know there will be no more excruciating puns based on 80s pop music.

I have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this blog. It’s been a creative outlet, often cathartic and it has done many good things for me. I would never have written a book without this blog, I certainly wouldn’t have written two of them (well, one and seven-eighths ed!). I was proud to win an award at the very first Irish Blog Awards, I never thought I’d win Best Blog for three years in a row. Neither did Mulley, I bet, haha.

I loved the anonymity of it and the little bit of mystery it caused. Grainne Seoige asking Una and Sinead Gleeson ‘Just who is this Twenty Major?’ on the TV that day, as if I were the Scarlet Pimpernel, still tickles me to this day. I liked the fact that almost every single Irish blogger respected that anonymity when it would have been a piece of piss to blow it out of the water. I’m very grateful for that.

I loved getting new readers, I liked making people laugh, people groan (at shit puns, not anything else), making people a bit sick, making them a bit emotional, but most of all entertaining people. I know there are those out there that didn’t, and still don’t, like it, but blogs are just like Fair City. You can turn if off if you think it’s a load of old bollocks. Nobody is forcing you to read it. I hope that those who read the blog regularly enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it – and I hope the many people who claimed to hate it but still read it enjoyed it like a dose of the fiery scuts.

So why stop? Well, for one thing I think every non-subject specific blog has a limited lifespan. I mean, if you’re writing about politics or football or tech then you’ve got new content every day now and forever. When you’re making up stories it’s more difficult, it becomes harder to think of things you haven’t done, jokes you haven’t made, and so on. It gets to the point where if you were a sitcom and your brain was the team of writers somebody would eventually say ‘Hey, I know! Let’s get a guest star in, that’ll keep things fresh’. I didn’t want a guest star. This blog does not need a Charlie Sheen cropping up to open up new avenues. I don’t want it to be like that.

As well as that I think Irish blogging has changed a lot and I find it very difficult to identify with many of these blogs. They have their own style, and that’s all well and good, but I just don’t think I have anything in common with them. I know that might seem irrelevant but when you have other blogs to spark off, like there were back in the day, then it does make a difference. Of course my blog stands on its own two feet, it always has done and could continue to do so, but I just feel a bit detached from it all. And it’s not that I was ever in it to make friends or be part of a big community. It’s still not a motivation for me despite meeting some top people down the years. Maybe I’m not explaining this well enough but it’s more a vague feeling than anything concrete. For me the vibrancy and excitement of the scene is gone. I’m not suggesting it was better back then, just better for me. There are those that are new to blogging now that are probably experiencing all that vibrancy now and good luck to them. Anyway, whatever it is it’s a very small part of why I’m shutting up shop.

The main reason is that I’ve been doing this non-stop for four years. Creating something nearly every day, trying to maintain standards and I think I’m just tired now. Not of the blog, as such, but just tired of having to blog, if that makes sense. It’s a pressure sometimes, you set the bar high, you win awards, people have expectations. And while it is a motivating factor after a while it becomes hard going. I won’t say a chore because it hasn’t been, I just think it will be if I keep at it and I would hate that. I would hate that something I have loved doing for so long became a thing of high drudgery. It’s time.

I’m also aware that there has, over the years, grown from this site a little community of sorts. When you have people commenting every day then people get to know each other. It’s something that has been hugely important to the success of the site. I think the comments have, to my mind, sparked two of the best days of blogging ever when we did the name changing stuff (see here and here). People were going all day and it was just brilliantly funny. So as much as I try to make things amusing and so on, when your readers engage with you and the other people on the site in that way it’s a bit special.

I could do a bit about my favourite posts but after four years I can’t remember. Sometimes I read back over the archives and think ‘Hah, I don’t remember writing that at all’. Of course my favourites really were all the puns and being called a cunt after a torturous build-up to a shockingly cheesy was always ace.

Despite my curmudgeonly ways I enjoy the comments, the slagging, the crap puns, jokes, the trolls, the people who just didn’t get things, the mock outrage from others, and even recently when we discovered one of the regulars was diagnosed with scary disease 1 it felt kind of real. Like it was a real person that you knew and had met and stuff. So, with that in mind I’ve set up a forum where anybody who wants to can come and register and continue that little community if they would like to. The forum will not be closed down anytime soon, it’d be great if people wanted to get involved so the daily streams of consciousness could continue, but there’s no pressure. Maybe someone else’s blog will get busy and that’s where all the former cool people will congregate (you would be former cool people if you went somewhere else, I’m sure you all know that).

So really it just remains for me to say thank you to everybody for reading, emailing, commenting and taking part in the blog over the years. Thank you to those of you who bought the first book and I hope you’ll enjoy the second when it does come out in February/March of next year. I will update about it on the forum, definitely, and maybe on the blog.

Until then picture me with an handkerchief tied around a stick, Bastardface at my side and Throatripper chasing a condor through the woods, as I walk away into the distance with the end theme from the Incredible Hulk TV series playing.

Goodbye, you wonderful cunts.

This was Twenty Major, September 29th 2004 – September 30th 2008.