The Curious Incident of the Vole in the Night-Time

Llandegley Rocks from Bryn y Maen

I recently received this notification from Blogger:

 FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner) is going away
You are receiving this information because your blog uses the FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner). Recently, the Feedburner team released a system update announcement, that the email subscription service will be discontinued in July 2021.
After July 2021, your feed will still continue to work, but the automated emails to your subscribers will no longer be supported.

The “widget” referred to is the box labelled “Follow this Idiot by Email”, top right on a PC. If I have understood correctly – and it's hard to interpret unambiguously the words "your feed will still continue to work, but the automated emails to your subscribers will no longer be supported" – new posts will no longer be emailed to subscribers after July this year. This is a shame, as I know some of my most loyal readers rely on the emailed version to alert them to new posts (which is also in some ways superior e.g. for viewing images). In fact, most of the comments I receive via email (rather than directly onto the blog) come from users of that service. So I thought I'd better check the list, and it seems I have 685 such email "subscribers", which is a bit of a surprise, but on closer inspection it's obvious that an awful lot of those are clearly fake, algorithmic mashups of real names masquerading as Outlook users. Oddly, these are often Hispanic: things like "salazarcxdamarisfgm" (¡Hola, Damaris Salazar!) or "antolinylwmariato" (¿Qué pasa, Maria Antolin?). Who knows why? Hopefully I'm not unwittingly involved in some elaborate criminal enterprise.

Other, more general blog feeds are available that will alert you to new posts on all the blogs you want to follow, of course, and I know many readers do use those: I don't, so can't make any recommendations. The irony is that both email followers and blog-feed users are probably any blogger’s most loyal readers, but never figure in the blog statistics unless they (you!) click through to the actual blog. I "follow" a certain number of blogs myself, obviously, but do so by plodding through each of them each morning to see what's new (often nothing, with honourable exceptions) simply by serially clicking on my bookmarks. Which is inefficient, I know, but it gives a certain structure to my early morning routine. Wake up to Radio 4, make tea, have breakfast, turn on computer, see what's been posted overnight on blogs in other time zones... If nothing does get posted on a blog for months, as so often now seems the case, I relegate that blog to "dormant, possibly extinct" status, but do still check in occasionally. Optimism, or a refusal to accept reality? Some might say they’re the same thing.

This dogged attachment to routine reminds me of a curious incident, or rather, series of incidents. I recently described the cottage near Presteigne in the Welsh Borders that belonged to my partner’s parents. One night around 1979 we were sitting by the fire, when I noticed something moving on the uncarpeted slate floor near my feet. It was a tiny vole. Oblivious to the lights, the fire, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the two seated humans, it made its way under my chair, across the room, and disappeared under the door to the hallway. Strange! The next night, at the same time, the same thing happened: the vole appeared from under the door on one side of the room, crossed the room, and vanished under the door on the other side of the room, utterly unbothered by our presence or scrutiny. The night after, the exact same thing: in, out, oblivious. No doubt it repeated this ritual circuit every night: after all, the variety of invertebrates that can be found within a cold, dark, damp country cottage located near a stream is surprising, and occasionally revolting. Unless you're a vole, of course.

Anyway, this is important: if you are currently receiving emailed versions of these posts, and wish to continue with an uninterrupted service, you will need to have made alternative arrangements by July. I suppose you could join me in my old-fashioned, vole-style (but statistically significant) bookmark-clicking, but I imagine that wouldn't be ideal for you, so you probably need to sign up for some sort of new-fangled blog-feed thingy (yes, yes, I know perfectly well how long RSS has been around). Alternatively, if you have not been finding the nourishment you seek here, invertebrate or otherwise, then this may be exactly the opportunity you need to quietly disappear under the door for the last time, never to return.

Near Pen Offa