MONDAY BLOG: THE NICHE IS... MY DAD

Happy Monday, gang.

Don’t worry. This isn’t about Doctor Who. Might write about The Last of Us for the upper tiers this week though… 

The past month or so has been reeeeeeeallly useful in terms of developing the channel, in terms of marketing it, in terms of growing it. I mean, even though we evidently got hit with a report by some loon which buggered up the reach of the Gdansk and chicken nuke videos, which stopped them getting pushed out.

That said, we wouldn’t do something like the Gdansk video again, I don’t think. It was too political even for us – admittedly that was borne out of where we were at mentally after a week of watching Polish news, and the fact we couldn’t make the original we’d intended to film. I’m proud of it, but still. Not really where I want us to be.

One of our bonus Poland vids is currently uploading for the upper tiers. It was filmed straight after we'd checked into our emergency hotel after our flat tire. So... I'm not in the best mood! Be warned.

Anyway... the next big vid is flinging us north once again at the end of this month, this time to Scarborough – with a few pitstops along the way in and around the Midlands. I once got my head stuck in some railings in Scarborough. Yes: like in The Beano, or something. I’m going to try to find those railings.

That’s not what the video’s about, or why we’re going there, but I’m sure it’ll be part of it. This’ll be a much lighter video than recent ones. And we’re also going to try to film a couple of other videos too, which will be shorter.

One of them – not the main one – is WW2-themed. I really don’t want the channel to just fall into some sort of wartime history niche (not least because there’s too much weirdness that I want to cover), but lately I keep stumbling upon these weird bits of WW2 history that are too odd not to share. 

I’m not woo-woo, but my dad was obsessed with the Second World War, and it does feel a bit like he’s guiding us now.

I’ll admit I’ve been missing him terribly recently. Looking after my mum when he died, and then selling her house last year and getting her into care, I think the grief over losing him got kind of pushed aside. It was inevitable that it’d surface again. It’s not any sort of unable-to-function grief, just a sadness. Just that feeling of missing him, and wishing I could sit down again and have a conversation. 

How I’d loved to have discussed our Poland videos with him. I’m fortunate I got to go away with him a couple of times in the years before he died; to Chernobyl, and a road trip that took us to Monument Valley. He drove me mad on those trips – he was NOT an easy travel companion - but I know we both cherished that time. 

I’m also re-reading his autobiography. He wrote it quite some years ago, and though it’s not long, and – typically for my dad – pretty matter-of-fact, I’d forgotten a lot of what was in there. It was always obvious that the war had shaped him – which clearly got passed onto me, with an added sprinkling of Cold War angst – but I’d forgotten that his first ever memory was being sat at the kitchen table and his dad talking to him about the coming war. As the war raged on, he’d follow the progress of the allies from maps printed in the papers. I also learned that my maternal grandad was evacuated at Dunkirk.

Growing up, all of my dad’s army stuff was in the house, along with a collection of history books that seemed to get larger every month. I’d love the challenge of finding him books on topics that he might not have read about, or that looked at familiar subjects from fresh angles. 

Literally… I’ve just realised that’s exactly what we’re trying to do now with Digi. Genuinely just got chills. I can’t talk to him about this stuff anymore, so now I’m sharing it with you lot. Huh. That’s weird. But makes total sense. 

Sanja's always asking me to think who our audience is now when we're coming up with video ideas. It has just clicked: I think it's him.

Paul