Jaysus. I can't believe this is still here.
I was having a cup of tea this morning — sat down at the kitchen table with Rattlin' stretched across my lap (the cat, the CAT, still with me all these years, the mad old thing won't die), and my mind just wandered to the old days. To this place. The Rattlin' Bog Fan Shrine. So I did what anyone would do in 2025, I suppose — I googled it. Just wanted to see if it was even still on the web, you know? Probably long gone, buried in some archive somewhere.
But no. Here it is. Still up. Still active on the servers.
I haven't logged into this site since 2003. That's TWENTY-TWO YEARS, lads. Two decades and change. When I left, the hit counter was stuck at something like 2,000 — it wasn't much, but I was PROUD of those 2,000. This was my corner of the internet. My shrine to the greatest folk song that ever was.
I just checked the hit counter now.
847,293 hits.
That can't be right. It HAS to be a glitch in the system. Nobody's been maintaining this thing. It's been a ghost site for over two decades. But there it is, blinking at me in these old HTML files.
Rattlin' just jumped from my lap and walked over to the computer. She sat down in front of the monitor like she's waiting for something.
I don't know what's more unsettling — the impossible number of hits, or how familiar it all feels to be back in these old files, staring at my old work. My enthusiasm is right there in every line. I was so YOUNG, so passionate.
Twenty-two years is a long time to be away from something you loved.
Slan go foill,
BogLord2002