Footnotes: Understanding The "Timeline"

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Hello and welcome to my dad wrote a porno the footnotes.

Now in this week's chapter we were getting a little bit lost in the timeline as Rocky calls it.

We weren't really sure what was happening, where and when.

So to help us figure it all out we're speaking today to the preeminent Belinda Blinked historian Kian O'Mahani who has created a website which you can see for yourself at belinda belindablumenthal.business with a full chronological breakdown of everything that has ever happened in the Belinda Blink saga thus far.

Kian, hello.

Hey, how are you?

Very good, thank you.

And what a website it is.

Oh my god, Kian, this must have taken forever.

You have far too much time on your hands.

Do you have a job?

Oh god, you'd think so.

Yeah, God, it didn't take too long to put together.

What took the long time was actually researching it and reading the books and cross-referencing is an absolute nightmare.

Well, just reading the books is a nightmare.

But I gave up around three times, honest to God.

Like there's bits where she referenced, oh, I'll meet you in 10 days, and then you check what she did 10 days later, and she was like in a different country, the plot line dropped.

So, yeah, it took a lot of nerve to finish it off, I think.

Kian, if people don't have it in front of them right now, I mean, I think everybody should go and look at it because it is so clear.

As clear, it's amazing.

I mean, it's as clear as it can be when it stems from Rocky's work.

but if people aren't looking just yet what exactly have you made yeah so we take that we me we

me and my team of scientists

the the research department no um i took day one as being the day she's interviewed at steels and then broke down what she does in every day, who she visits, and I've added like continuity stuff.

So if something doesn't make sense, I point it out.

If there's like things wrong with her calendar if things are just flat out unrealistic I flag that too I love how you flag them because it's a big red patch that says community alert with a massive exclamation point

yeah it um I was only going to do the continuity alerts and then I kind of realized there's a lot of generalizations there's a lot of Belinda bitching at people and so I kind of broke those down too on a day-by-day basis because like Belinda's quite a mean person when you start reading the books on their own.

She's got a kind of, she's got a dark stroke.

An edge, definitely, yeah.

Yeah, I mean she called Bella a dog like at that wedding.

She did, yeah, I remember that.

I mean to be fair, that's the least of her sins, I feel.

True, true.

Yeah, and I noticed that she gets kind of worse as the book, I've noticed there's more of those in the kind of later books.

She just gets more aggressive as time goes on.

Yeah, I mean, she reduced the RSMs to tears at one point when she was doing that meeting, calling him a stupid goon.

And

I mean, the only defense really is that she's kind of consistently unpleasant to everybody when she is unpleasant.

Yeah.

And I think as well, we tend to forget that she responds to people in her head a lot.

It's even worse in person when someone says, oh, hi, Belinda, how are you?

And she just like doesn't respond, just thinks to herself the answer.

So a lot of the time she's just silent and people are sort of hanging around waiting for a reply.

Yeah, she just ignores them.

And then if she does speak, she just insults them.

What a way to live your life.

So let's go back to

why we had you on in the first place.

Where are we exactly in the timeline right now?

Like, how long has Belinda been at Steel's?

How long has all the stuff that's happened?

Yeah, so where we are now, we're about 102-ish days since we've met Belinda.

So, everything that we've experienced from book one, blinking her lids in that interview to right now is about three and a bit months.

Um,

just like the wedding, the proposal, the wedding, the proposal, uh, hair bish, everything has been a bit over three months, and we're in 2015 still.

Yes.

So, like, as the sea, as the years of this show go on, we're getting further and further away from it.

Like, um, it's supposed to be like one of the things I can't pin down is the time of year we're in because it's described as being quite sunny at moments.

Like, do you remember when Belinda crashed her car in Epsom?

Yeah, she just decided to flop out in the tarmac naked to wait for someone to pass by.

That's like a really warm summer's day.

But in the books, 10 days later, there's a blizzard in Berlin.

Climate change, climate change.

Yeah, I mean, there's like it's like the day after tomorrow or something.

I don't know what's happening.

It could be one of those very unseasonable, you know, sort of temperate days though.

Cold snap.

If we're being kind, you know, I can see perhaps that Rocky's just reflecting that.

Yeah, another thing as well is just that I wanted to bring up was Bella's age.

So

you're kind of led to believe in the books that Bella is roughly the same age as Belinda.

But if you, now, this is me being way too into Rocky Finnstone.

If you subscribe to his newsletter, he sends you a chapter from Bella's perspective.

And now I'm not British, but you do your A-levels when you're like 17, 18, isn't it?

Yeah, that's

so Bella did that in 1990.

Oh,

yeah.

So there's this chapter that's set from Bella's perspective, and it starts like

June in 1990.

And she's doing her exams and she gets interviewed at Steel's.

So she's been at Steel's for 25 years.

Hang on.

And she was the receptionist when we met her, yeah.

So she's just stayed there, she's happy out, and but it does kind of make other events in the books a bit different knowing that.

Because, like, do you remember again the wedding when she turns up at Giselle's wedding in a wedding dress and then starts crying?

Do you think this will ever happen to me?

It kind of feels a bit differently.

Oh, because we think of her as sort of the little sister of the glee team.

But she's the grandma.

But she's the grandma.

She could be Belinda's mother.

The only kind of claim to fame I could have with this is that after I published this timeline Rocky revised the page to remove the year so now he's kind of retconned the history to match what he wants fucking hell you cannot keep up with his fucking he changes it from one day to the next that's the biggest problem do you have any kind of favorite plot holes Kian oh um the one of them is the bombing at Steeles because Steeles is in the first book it's described as being so close you can't get a taxi to Heathrow but like the minimum distance is about 200 meters for a taxi before before the fare increases.

So, like, Steel's is less than 200 meters from Heathrow.

Oh, my God.

And you have them getting taxis and getting collected to be brought to the office, and you can probably see it from the terminal.

Like, it's insane.

But when the bombing happens, like, the whole scene unfolds, it's like five to ten minutes long, maybe of them running around and checking who's dead.

Yeah, but the emergency services only come when they're called.

Yeah, that's so mad.

The ambulances and the fire engines would be all over it.

Yeah, a bomb went off, like, literally on the grounds of Heathrow.

With the head of MI6 present.

With the head of MI6 present, lest we forget.

And her horse, of course, Toffee Apple Chew.

Toffee Apple Chew.

Do you ever wonder about Toffee Apple?

Do you ever wonder?

My God, listen to me.

But like when she turns up at places on Toffee Apple Chew, she's riding from Epsom.

So she's going from Epsom into like Snowhook.

How far is that, Kia?

That's about 20 miles.

Jesus.

Wow, each way.

Even up to like Steel's, up to Heathrow.

Like, that's a long distance down to go on a poor horse.

And also, it's not all side roads, is it?

A lot of that's motorway.

Yeah, a lot of that is going to be your carriageway.

Unless she's hopping the piggy line or something with the horse, who knows?

Yeah, she couldn't get on one of those deep line tubes, could she?

Over the ground only.

Then again, she's head of MY6, so maybe she's like hella lifted out or something.

Who knows?

Can you imagine just toffee apple chew hanging from below the helicopter?

I mean, it doesn't bear thinking about.

You open the fridge, there's nothing there.

So, what's it gonna be?

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Raise your hand if you want your nails to look perfect all the time.

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Where did you get them done?

You're going to proudly say, I did them myself.

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So do you think that we're being a bit pedantic?

Because if you're creating an incredible world like Rock has created, there's going to be little holes here, there's going to be little inconsistencies there.

Are we being picky?

No, I don't think so.

I think normally there's like a continuity editor, and there's editors in general to realize these things.

But when you're dealing with revelations that change earlier stuff, like finding out that the Duchess is the head of MY6, like a book earlier, she was driving around the countryside with her tits out.

Do you know, you wouldn't want that from the head of social services.

That would be a news story for sure.

Yeah, it just kind of weird how some things were clearly planned and some things weren't like he didn't he thought of the duchess on the fly but the special one he did plan from the second he introduced her which i found very interesting why do you say that because like the first thing she thinks is well it's something to do with like oh oh yes family like this the reason she's doing it is family and it ended up being true um that she was doing well i mean

that's me probably reading too much into the scraps of information i guess um i want to talk about tony and giselle actually talking of the special one and their relationship, because it was a real whirlwind, wasn't it?

I mean, it all seemed to happen quite quickly, but how quickly did it actually happen?

Yeah, so you remember when they got engaged, Giselle was just like showing everyone the ring, so it clearly just happened.

Yes.

So

their engagement lasts 16 days.

Their marriage lasts for 15 days.

So the marriage is shorter than

the engagement.

And then within 20 days of the marriage ending, tony has just fully moved on to maeve so yeah less than 50 days yeah all happens in 50 days he and the heart wants what the heart wants

that is unbelievable and is there anything else that dad has got legitimately right so if you're saying that the special one kind of was seeded quite early what else is quite impressive in terms of his storytelling technique if i can say that oh god

Sophie gets right.

I mean, I think in the first two or three books, when he says, oh, I'll meet you in 10 days' time in Brussels, a lot of that does happen.

And I was kind of surprised by it where in book one, she'll say, In 10 days, I'll meet you here.

And if you follow the timeline in book two, that actually does happen.

But for every one thing he gets right, he gets about six wrong.

Um, it's quite a good ratio, actually.

I would have thought it was worse than that.

No,

it's like Des Martin and his wife.

Do you remember when the wife walked out in him and within

20 days, they're fully divorced, and the house is fully sold?

Within what, 20 days.

It's 20 days.

From the moment she walks out, so there's not even like a trial separation or anything.

Like, that's the fastest divorce I've ever heard of.

And also to have it on the market and sold.

I mean, fair play.

It must have been a great property.

Wash that man right out of your hair, is what I say.

There's another kind of weird temporal thing with Helga.

You did a footnote once about Helga and her case files.

Yes.

You can get the text for the case file on Rocky's website.

And so Helga's been investigating Dr.

Robbins for 22 years before we meet her.

Because

the report is dated 1993, and that's like her first encounter with him when Dr.

Robbins steals like a million cans of baked beans to put into a shop.

And so

she's been investigating him for over two decades.

She hasn't gotten anything to tell arresting him.

And then she just like leaves the case to go help Belinda.

Let's be fair, she wasn't getting any of that.

Oh no, it's a sunk cost.

Oh my god, this is absurd.

This is stupid.

Kim, do you have a favorite character from your kind of professional scholastic position?

Yeah, I mean, I think my favorite character is probably Madame Sweet Juice,

just because of her entrance.

So I had to do a bit of maths for this one.

So basically, do you remember when Madame Sweet Juice is lowered into the Mulan Moron?

and she's covered, she's covered in a thousand and one balloons.

And so, I worked out that the average volume of a balloon times a thousand and one, if you ignored her own mass and the gap between the balloons, that's a sphere of balloons four meters tall almost.

Wow.

So, she would not be able to reach her hands out and start popping.

She'd have to pop from the inside out.

And if she popped one every second, it would take about 16 minutes to pop all of them.

So you'd be just sat there hearing the page pops for about 10 minutes before you saw anything.

Oh, right, because she would just be breaking out and then she would finally get to the outer shell.

Of course, that's not much of a show, is it?

No, and then, like, also, did they hoist her up there and leave her there while they like opened the doors of the building and let everyone in?

Like, was she just there for hours?

Yeah, probably.

I have another question on that, then, Kian.

So, if it's four meters, how tall is the Mulan Maron?

Because, like, it's only a little windmill, isn't it?

Yeah.

So, I mean, four meters is high, isn't it?

Ceilings-wise.

She'd be taking up quite a lot of the headroom.

Like a cathedral.

Yeah.

But you'd walk underneath it and just think it's a balloon drop.

Like, you wouldn't think it was a person in some.

And could those balloons, like, could 1,001 balloons sustain the weight of a human being, do we think?

I don't know.

I think they're described as being tied down with licorice, so I think it would

just be correct.

Oh, and there was bread and cheese in them as well.

So actually, yeah, they get quite a hell of a lot.

One other thing you did was you broke down like statistically some elements of the book, right?

You counted uses of certain phrases and.

Yeah, I counted the number of blinks.

So there's 74 blinks in the first five books, which is the books that I have the text for.

74 blinks in, what, three months?

In three months.

Wow.

And then there's also, there's, I think the word fuck is mentioned 104 times, which surprised me.

I thought there'd be a lot more than that.

Yeah, me too.

Ish words?

Yeah, should I list them out?

Oh, please do.

Yeah, yeah.

So, all the ishes so far, at least, were youngish, quick-ish, tall-ish, trampish, warm-ish, six-ish, longish, small-ish, thinnish, sixty-ish, large-ish, newish, biggish, boyish, goodish, devilish, old-ish, white-ish, wicked-ish, bright-ish, gold-ish, sharpish, prudish, central-ish, ticklish, and short-ish.

Ticklish

ticklish is like the one real-ish word.

That was me being a bit pedantic.

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That's right, $2.

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Where did you get them done?

You're going to proudly say, I did them myself.

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And what's amazing is that you've included the Christmas specials as well.

And we see them as like completely like where do they fit into the whole timeline?

Yeah, so Christmas is an interesting one.

Christmas, none of the Christmas chapters overlap.

So they could all be one Christmas.

Like one's New Year's, one's Christmas Eve, one's Christmas Day.

So you could take it to be Christmas 2015 if you wanted.

Remind me how we know it's 2015.

Does that come from the CV?

Yeah, the CV.

It's like

she finished her last job in 2015, and that's like the only reference to a date.

I mean, that's an absolute gold mine, that CV then.

I mean, mean, not just because of Tongui, of course, Norman Tongui, but um, for all the data that's in there.

I'm wondering if we've only been at Steel's, or Belinda's only been at Steel's for three and a half months.

I mean, she's got a long way to go till she knows if she's got the bonus because that's usually an end-of-year bonus, isn't it?

Yeah, there's one thing actually, just this morning I realized I was on just doing some prep for this, and I went to Rocky's website.

He published Belinda's address.

Well, that's dangerous.

There's a fake listing for her flat because she's selling it apparently.

And

it's priced at £2.95 million.

Wow.

Well, it is central London, guys.

Yeah, but it's 61 Half Moon Street, London, W1J, 7AZ.

£3 million, pretty much.

And my favorite detail is it's about a two-minute walk from the Ritz Hotel.

So she doesn't need to keep getting taxis between the place.

Right.

Well, that would explain why she always visits the Ritz because it's basically her local.

It's her local.

Yeah, yeah, it's just wild.

That's the tone of a man who's thinking about his life choices.

Yeah, why did I do this again?

Kian, have you ever met or spoken to anybody who knows as much about Blinder Blinked as you?

No, but when I put the timeline on Twitter, there's a bunch of people who gave me corrections and notes.

So there are some people out there who could be.

Cheeky little wenches.

You were like, I have a PhD in this.

Back off.

No, I think by the time I put it online, I was so burnt out.

I was like, oh, grand jazz.

The more, the merrier.

Any help you can get would be great.

I think there was one person who got very upset that I misspelted the Isle of Wight on the timeline.

And then I had to screenshot the book and be like, no, no, no, this is what Rocky said.

Don't do that.

S-I-C in square brackets.

I'm imagining, Ian, if anybody ever hadn't, you know, spoken to you in a few days, couldn't get a hold of you, and came to your flat, you would have one of those slightly crazy sort of homeland homeland style things on the wall with lines between bits of paper well you'd basically be like belinda was in book five when she was trying to work out where what was she trying to work out oh that graph she did like on the flip chart the flip chart yeah exactly yeah where she just circled bish and germany and called it a day yeah exactly bish circled jermany circle connected the two and done thank you very much um is there anything else you want to raise with us flag with us uh make us aware of um no the other thing was like the trioxy Brillo pan.

How amazing it is, like it would end world energy issues.

But also, how would you wash a pan that can boil water in a second?

Maybe it's one of those pans that you never clean.

You know, they're supposed to be better for yeah, don't you just like whiz a bit of kitchen roll around it with some oil?

I'd love to think that they, because like you could power, you know, energy reactors and stuff like that, but I'd love to think that Steels has patented it.

This like life-changing technology and no one can use it except for pans.

Yeah, yeah how philanthropic of them why think big when you can think pans is i think the you know the motto of steals um so obviously uh we're in australia at the moment uh which is you know takes what 24 hours to get there yeah roughly yeah does he always get kind of travel timelines right he gets them right some of the time i mean i think he was fly i think he took him like four hours to fly from london to amsterdam once four hours yeah but there was one time all right when Belinda crashed her car.

I keep going back to that moment when Belinda crashed the car and she says there's not a soul for 25 miles, which would encompass a lot of London, like more than half of London.

Because

if you were halfway between Epsom and London, you're only 10 miles away from London.

So yeah, I think Rocky doesn't know where some places are in relation to London, probably.

Oh, yeah.

He doesn't get to London all that much.

And also, it really slows you down if you use Google Maps to check.

So

why bother?

Yeah.

Do authors really check?

Because like you say, is that the editor's job to make sure it all makes sense?

And dad has forgone that, you know, an expense not worth it for him.

And if it wasn't for thorns in his side, like you, Kian, he would get away from it.

You know, he'd get away with it.

I should say that he's been an absolute sweetheart to me.

He got in touch after I put it online and he sent me a little goodie package with like posters and stuff.

And

he invited a friend of myself to your HBO recording.

And it was very nice of him.

Like, he didn't, he's very good to his fans.

He is.

He's great.

Yeah.

He is.

He did stand me and my friend up, though.

He was saying, oh, I'll take you for a drink before the show.

And then we got there and we were like, oh, we'll wait for his text now, look out for an Irishman in his 60s.

And then never heard from him.

He's a man of mystery.

He's an enigma, Kian.

This is the thing.

He did email me the next day going, oh, I couldn't get out.

HBO wouldn't let me leave or something like that.

He was locked in a dressing room, he was right.

We did chain him up for the evening.

He was too drunk.

I think that's really what it was.

But, I mean, do you really want to meet your hero?

That's the question.

Oh, no, absolutely not.

No.

You were relieved that text never came.

It was just morbid curiosity more than it was.

This is so brilliant.

It's just really making me laugh.

And also, it's such a nice trip down memory lane.

Yeah.

It is so thorough.

Like, you can

go and look at it.

It's so incredible.

He's even read the extra bits.

Showing on Rocky's website in your spare time.

And I love that you'd think that that would be dad's opportunity to make things make sense, but no, no, just makes it more complicated.

He actually,

he never corrected me on it, so I can only presume everything I've done is accurate.

Oh, yeah, you'd have had a cease and desist by now, I think.

Yeah,

well, Kian, it's been so, so great to talk to you, and yeah, kind of remind us of the whole world of Blender Blinks.

It's quite an epic piece of writing, Dad.

Yeah, I would say you've cleared things up, but you've you really haven't.

But thanks anyway.

I try, I try, that's the main thing.

The website is again, Kian, yeah.

So if you just go to berlindablumenthal.business and have a look.

I love that it's dot business.

Of course it is.

It's fantastic.

And it's super nerdy and super great.

We just love stuff like this.

And it's just so unbelievably detailed.

It's great.

Keaton, thank you so, so much for joining us.

No worries.

Thanks for having me.

Just timelining.