Have I really been doing this for only five years? Is that all? It already feels like forever.

True, the evidence is there in real time, from May 2010 to May 2015, but in terms of the interior life, it seems so much longer. In just sixty months I have driven my patient readers, my unwilling family, my always-willing Alvis (the faithful Miranda) my variegated crew of friends and acquaintances, the voluntary and the co-opted, on an epic journey to the origins of the universe and its possible objective, to the heights of human glory and to the depths of inhumanity.

I have described the oddness of God, the messianic reincarnation of Jaguar, the age of innocence, the strange ways of the Greeks, the even stranger ways of North Korea, bossy fridges, crumbling bridges, midlife and midwife crises, the why and wherefore of weather, the unpalatable and pointy end of Islam, the beginnings of life and its termination, the political inclinations of Yoghurt, the blindness of justice, European disunion, American dystopia, shipwrecked Dictators, economic inflators, the West Wing, the East End, the South Seas, the Nordic Model (not what you’re thinking), Tokyo, New York, Verona, Brussels, Oslo, Zanzibar, Aachen, la France profonde and the idylls of Wiltshire and Wales.

On the way I have examined popes and prelates, mullahs and moles, generals and judges, whistleblowers and prevaricators, educators, elucidators and obfuscators, suffragettes, private jets, bad art and good science, as well as sounding the depths of failing plumbing, failing dynasties, falling towers, false friends, false ceilings, false profits, false tax returns, false teeth, fallout, fission, fissures and fixes. I have endeavoured to understand cricket, rugby, tennis, American cars, English weddings, Russian funerals, Scottish referenda, even turning a puzzled and still inquisitive eye upon devolution, revolution, resurrection, statistical section, viral infection and states of dejection in a search for lost children, lost aircraft, lost causes, lost generations, lost ideals, lost files, lost billions and lots of lost mojo ... all in all some 171 postings of a personal, universal, individual, reverential, tangential or sentential nature.

In all of these sorties into the blogosphere I have laid no claim to authority, neutrality or objectivity. This may lose me the admiration of my peers but nonetheless returns in attitude anything I may miss in gratitude and grants me greater latitude when I fall short in altitude. In this vein, I hope that my small band of readers can forgive any lapses in taste or judgement, while accepting that all has been done with the best will in the world since Shakespeare and with as much desire to entertain them with each passing page as to illumine or comment our complex and difficult age. And if I write less as time goes by, please understand it will always be with the intention of meaning more.

Yours,

Edwin – the mysterious – Drood



© Edwin Drood





Editor's note

Well done, Edwin! Five years is a long, long time in the blogiverse.

We did consider linking all the references to your previous columns, for example North Korea, midwife crises, bossy fridges, Scottish referenda, South Seas ... However, as you have probably heard, this suggestion caused a riot in the My Favourite Planet Factual Verification Department (otherwise known as "Cubicle 101"), and we have had to let the idea drop for the moment – at least until the hostage negotiators have secured the release the Acting Deputy Assistant Editor from the grasp of the mutinous hacks.

In the meantime, your readers may like to browse the index of previous blogs to find some of the gems of Droodian wisdom revealed to the world since 2010.