"Everyone's doing it, so why can't I?"
So (nearly) went the name of the 1993 debut studio album by the Irish band The Cranberries. In a not-so-thinly veiled attempt to lessen the financial burden of being a struggling self-employed author, I've finally bitten the bullet and decided to create a "Buy Me A Coffee" account and add a link to my webpage, which probably few look at in any case ;)
If you're reading this, thank you. If you've donated me the price of a cup of coffee, thank you again. It's appreciated. Really. I have Andy McGrillen (of "That UFO Podcast" fame) to thank for introducing me to Starbucks' excellent Venti Caramel Macchiato. They're not cheap, but they are nice. If he wasn't such a mate, I'd be calling him some really rude names right about now.
That's the two of us meeting up at his local Starbucks back in August 2021. I need a beard like that to hide my double and triple chin. We only live about 20 miles apart so it wasn't like a fan-boy kind of trip. Honest. It was actually the first official meet-up of the Northern chapter of UAP Media UK. A planned hour-long meet up ended up being a three-hour "putting the world to rights" rant, or that might have just been me. I think Andy simply nodded in all the right places and kept looking at his watch after about twenty minutes... ;)
Mind you, he's clearly a glutton for punishment. He travelled down to London at the end of October 2021 to meet up with me and the rest of the UAP Media UK gang, bar Adam (who sadly was working and studying), to do some research at The National Archives and meet up with a few people. Having meetings over Zoom and texting over one of those WhatsApp type apps isn't a substitute for looking your colleagues in the eye, or having a laugh around the dinner table. Yes, Vinnie does like his Malbec. Dan was really surprised he could make out stars in the skies above London. Andy looked down his nose rather disdainfully when Dave went into a Costa for a takeaway coffee. It wasn't all fun and frolics. We spent three or four hours buried in piles of old files at The National Archives, looking for UAP-related documents in a variety of different areas of interest - and we're busy going through the copies we took in the comfort of our own homes.
Before I sign off this debut post, another plea (other folks' posts often end up as begging letters, so I thought I'd be no different) - if you've been so kind as to buy my Foo Fighters book, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave a review at Amazon. Add your voice to those wonderful people who have already put one up - and that includes Andy. I swear he's on commission. He's even on first name terms with the staff at his local Starbucks, you know...