About Hoggy

Hello.

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I am Hoggy.

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'Hoggy the Yimp'.

 

'Who?' I hear you ask.

 

Hoggy. As in 'Hopeful Old Geezer Gone Yimping'.

 

'"Hopeful, Old, and Geezer" I think I follow, "Gone" definitely, but "Yimping?"'

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Yimping? Think of a 'wimp' and think of 'yomping'. A yimp is someone in between.

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If you are anything like me you are probably a yimp at heart. 

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Someone who doesn't quite know what the heck is going on any more?

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Someone who started out life wanting to carry a sixty pound Bergen, wear a natty green hat with a fetching little badge on the front, and yomp across miles of frozen tundra but who in reality takes two hours to come round in a morning and finds switching the TV controls on in the right order hard enough.

 

A yimp. 

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And 'a geezer' (he, or she, or it, or they, or whatever you will), defined by the books as 'an informal, humorous, mildly disparaging, odd, eccentric or unreasonable person.' That is Hoggy to an 'H'. (I ignore the rider that says 'usually a man'. Tut. I know plenty of women and people of all hues who are fully paid up yimps of long standing.)

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'Why this blog then?'

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Because needs must.

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'Hoggy the Yimp' started life in book form as a satirical take on the home-spun, overly self-focused philosophy of the 'Because I deserve it' brigade. But then brave brigades of Ukrainians who definitely did not deserve what was coming their way took priority. Big-time. And Hoggy the Yimp abandoned the book and went to war.

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Yimps don't really do war. Not with guns. I wouldn't trust quite a few of the yimps I know with a tin opener let alone an anti-tank gun. But yimps always do what they can. They are fearless that way and care little for what other people might think. Yimps are the lifeblood of any community. They are always smiling, always hopeful. Sometimes they are old geezers like me. But old only because their birth certificates say so. In no other way. At heart, yimps are always twenty one.

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What do yimps do? 

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Well the Bergen is out for a start. Although I know a ninety year old who jumps out of planes and she's a yimp. She thinks she's twenty one for sure. But this yimp, Hoggy the Yimp, writes letters. And hears their replies. And hopes the letters help.

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This blog is for Ukraine. It will stay as long as it needs to. It isn't much you might say, but it is a call to yimps everywhere who might feel the need to help. And to hope. 

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There are probably very few yimps now in Ukraine. Necessity has made them all heroes. Hoggy is as hopeful as ever that war, all war, will, one day, end. But rest assured brave people of Ukraine you will, a little like the Phoenix, rise again. I hope these letters help you keep hope for that great day. You are amazing.

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Love to you all and the world, (it needs it).

Hoggy