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Enjoy the silence, because it won’t last. There’s a reason for this, of course. There’s always a reason.

I’m hammering the keys of my bruised and woe-begotten laptop at 3.15 am on Christmas morn. There’s a reason for that, too, but it’s not what you might think.

I’ve just finished building my brother Rob’s Christmas present. I hope he likes it. My brother Rob – AKA, Brother Younger – is somewhat more practical and pragmatic than me. He’s a carpenter by trade, and a very good one at that. He enriches people’s lives through the medium of wood and when he builds something he builds something useful like a kitchen or a staircase or a patio. Being somewhat less practical and pragmatic than him, I built him a website. It involved no heavy lifting and I managed to complete it without getting a splinter. Ree-zult.

It’s a fairly modest affair, but I’m happy with the results. You can find it at www.roblennon.com.

Initially, I tried to build the site using Notepad, Paintshop Pro and my somewhat rusty grasp of HTML. I say “rusty”, but I doubt my web design skills were ever metallurgically pure. In any case, I tried to build a site the old-fashioned way and the results were squonky to say the least. If I left it as it was it would have looked so late-1997 that the Government would probably have slapped a conservation order on it and declared it a Website of Special Scientific Interest.

In the end I cheated and used a rather nifty hosting and website design package called Mr Site’s Takeaway Website, and it did exactly what it said on the tin. Granted, I fiddled around with the HTML a bit, but that’s just the way I am.

As a brief aside, Brother Younger – when he’s not being more practical and pragmatic than me – is also prone to low humour and theological high jinks. It must be a family trait. Like I said, he’s a carpenter, and he once told me that: “In this line of work, the next step on the career ladder is Messiah.”

If you live in or around Birmingham, if you’re partial to low humour and theological high jinks and if you have a home or a business that contains wood, you really should go here and give him a call.

Merry Christmas, by the way.