UPDATES ON LIFE AND DIGI AND THAT

Hello gang. Sorry for being a touch quiet this week. After spending much of last week editing, I’ve had my head down with the day job. Actually getting paid for my work has continued to be a slow, difficult, process this month, but that drought should come to an end this weekend.

Today I was also doing dump trips and charity shop runs, as we’ve been clearing my mum’s house in order to sell it.

We’ve been resisting doing so – partly because it’s a massive job, and partly because it’s making us all feel sad. Unfortunately, we’ve been told her care will no longer be covered, and she has to fund it with the 50% of her house that she still owns (the rest is split between my sisters and I). Anyway. It’s all a bit rubbish and heartbreaking, though I’m very fortunate that this isn’t entirely all on my shoulders, and I have my sisters to help through all this.

In slightly better – if bittersweet – news, it would seem that her nursing home doctors have finally acknowledged that mum appears to have some sort of dementia. it’s a weird new world we’ve been navigating through, but apparently they will usually only do a cognitive assessment once every 12 months.

She passed an assessment back in the spring – even though we were already seeing signs of her not being quite normal back then – and so they were refusing our request for another.

Having finally seen how much she has declined in recent months, her doctor is now putting her forward for an urgent emergency re-assessment. Not sure whether that’ll have any impact on anything, but at least we’ve finally been listened to. Again, it’s sad seeing her slip away so rapidly, even if she’s still here in a physical sense.

So, that’s all the grimness, more or less. I do try not to talk about it too much, but as I’ve said before… sometimes it just helps to write it down.

NEXT VID

The next Digi vid will be filmed at some point next week. In all honesty, I’m slightly struggling to nail down what it’ll be.

I’ve got a list of about 20 ideas – roughly in the order I want to do them, but some of them require more time or money than we have at our disposal over the next couple of weeks.

We’re doing a bit of a road trip over the weekend to see assorted offspring, who inconveniently have their birthdays in the same week. So instead we’re trying to find the right video to fit around that, which we can film early next week. I’ve kind of found a topic to talk about… but I’m worried it’s going to have us yet again fannying around in a graveyard, which we seem to do a lot of.

There’ll be something next week though, one way or another!

Oh. And Biffo’s Brain tomorrow night. 7.30pm. Mark that down.

MORE DIGIMATTERS

The channel is still growing, though it has slowed down an enormous amount. Our views remain up from where they used to be by quite a bit, and we’re still putting on subs, but we’re losing some too, as – I suspect – certain new subscribers have buggered off after realising we’re not just a straightforward conspiracy channel.

So far, the Haunted Museum is doing okay – certainly way, way better out of the gate than our videos were doing a year or so ago – but it definitely doesn’t seem to have the same momentum as one of the big subject vids like Sussex, Canary Wharf or Milton Keynes. Maybe people are just sick of YouTube ghost hunts.

Oddly, the Excalibur video has started getting a load of attention this month, which I’m pleased about because I always felt it deserved more views than it got at the time. It’s just gone over 10k views as I type this.

As I’ve said before, it’s a marathon not a sprint…!

We’re also playing around with thumbnails still – running the new YouTube test and compare thing on them. Sadly, the results are starting to speak for themselves, so I think it’s goodbye to my beloved big yellow letters, and hello to simple, striking, thumbnails without text. And me pulling a stupid face and pointing, probably. FFS.

OH!

I don't think anyone's really noticed in the videos - because I remain a lard-arse - but did I ever mention that I stuck to my diet that I started way back in... whenever it was?

I've not really been weighing myself, because I've been trying not to think of it as a diet, but I think I've lost almost two stone now. It's more noticeable when I've seen some of the vids we filmed last year followed by the ghost hunt or Sussex ones.

It's not really a diet tbh - I've just cut out most of the crap, and only really snack at the weekend (and even then it's only healthy-ish snacks). Can't remember the last time I had chocolate.  

Right. Anyway. Enough about that. It's just a nice feeling, because I thought the days of being able to lose weight were behind me.

THE END

Tomorrow (Thursday) the upper tiers should get the epic Ghost Hunt outtakes, which Sanja was finishing up today. Lots of lovely stuff in there.

And some of you we’ll talk to tomorrow night, I hope. Link to follow.

Paul