Every day, I get at least one email asking me why I haven’t updated Haikurious for a while. These tend to be from people who don’t read the blog, or follow me on Twitter, and so haven’t heard me whining on about how busy I am with things that - occasionally - pay the bills.

Unfortunately Haikurious has been a temporary victim of this busy-ness.

Until today. Because today, I’ve found someone else to write/edit it.

It’s a funny story, really, and one that I still don’t fully understand - but these things have a way of becoming clear in the long run. It started with a fellow by the name of ‘George Wiley’ who wrote to me while I was in the Valle, enclosing some suggestions for haiku. They were quite good - a bit rough around the edges at times, for sure - but good, and with potential to be great.

To the first one, I wrote back, simply: “Heh.”

And so they kept coming. Including a great one about Jerry Yang and Faceparty which he promised he wouldn’t sue me over if I used it to inspire one of my own. And so I did, writing back…

“Ha - oddly enough I was thinking on similar lines. I’ll mash them together. Cheers, and thanks for not suing”

And still they came - even during the weeks where I didn’t update at all. Until this…

“Suddenly realised you must be awiting my next haiku as nothing has been posted since you plagiarised my Yang one a few weeks back. So here you go.

Twitter buys Summize
Be careful what you Tweet now
A voyeur’s delight

Can’t wait to see it published.  Happy for you to take credit as always!

George”

Perhaps it was George’s self-confidence, or perhaps it was the fact that I was feeling bad about not updating Haikurious for a thousand years but I decided to reply to George, offering him the gig permanently, if he wanted it. I also asked him - not that it matters, really - who on earth George Wiley is. I mean, he’s obviously not really called George Wiley and he needs to be credited for his work. His reply came as follows…

“This is very exciting.

As you can tell from my email address, I would prefer the anonymity for the moment. I’d like a bit of mystery around this and who knows it could become one of the great questions of our time such as:

Was there a UFO at Roswell?
Where is Lord Lucan?
Who killed Bambi?
Is there life after death?
Kate Nash or Lily Allen?
Who killed Laura Palmer?

Who is George Wiley?

Actually George Wiley was an esteemed American Chemist who disappeared in the seventies. I sort of ’stole’ his name. You may well have heard of the famous anonymous comedy writer Gerald Wiley (if not you can Google him). Let’s just say I’m his brother.

As to who you link to? I don’t have a site, well not as George Wiley. So happy for you to decide how to play that. You can just make something up, give this transcript and some of our emails and make it a little blog.

George”

So that was that. Haikurious reborn. And even I have no idea how or why. All I know is that the answers to the questions in his email are: no, dead, Felix Salten, no, Kate Nash and Leland Palmer.

And I know the more cynical amongst you will probably assume this is all an elaborate hoax and that either George Wiley is me, or that I know who (s)he is. But it isn’t, and I really don’t. I’m not sure I want to, actually - it’s much more fun this way.

Welcome, George!

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