A SMALL SMATTERING OF SELF-REGARDING NONSENSE

We were so much older then, we're younger than that now. If you have a glass, mug or some other sort of drinking vessel to hand, you might to like to raise a surprised toast to the fifth anniversary of No Rock & Roll Fun today; coincedently on the same day that, in about twenty minutes, the turnstile will click on our semi-arbitrary counter to record the 1,000,000th visit.

It's not a bad run for a thing I only really started because my old iMac used to be on a very low coffee table in the corner of my bedroom, and sitting underneath it to create HTML pages for the bothsidesnow site in Dreamweaver used to take longer than my legs could take without going to sleep. I think the first few posts suggest that there never was a masterplan, and it's kind of shaped itself - luckily, there seems to be enough people interested in what we do here to make it worth the time I spend on it.

The first proper post also established our habit of being wrong - we'd misheard Steven Malmkus sing "Jennifer dates a man in a sixties cover band" as "Pixies cover band", which would have been a much better line; we've gone on to be wrong many times since - we've probably never been more than wrong than when we noisly suggested the casting of Billie Piper as Dr Who's assistant was probably a worse idea than Bonnie Langford had ever been.

But here we still are - I've changed jobs twice (yes, I do have a day job, despite what some people assume) and moved office seven times; moved house three time and are on the cusp of a fourth, including one move of 350 miles; got married (I suspect this fact surprises some readers more than the having a job part); had one minor visit to casualty; said goodbye to three cats; redesigned five times (more or less) and filed posts from Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Hull, Berlin, Fort Worth, Colorado, Tunbridge Wells, Newcastle and Brighton. We've seen the mooted "Radio One and a Half" be born as 6Music, Top of the Pops shunted off to the weekend, Oasis scrap an entire album in disgrace, Jack White turn to the darkside, the Melody Maker and Select cease publication, Mariah's career crumble and then reform, Avril Lavigne pledge to never sell herself on her body, John Peel die and Apple become one of the key players in the music industry. Countless posts have been eaten by Blogger quirks, and a few others I wish had been. I think I'm just starting to get the hang of this blog business now. Another five years, and it might just be coming together.