Word!

So bad about blogging this month, but so excellently crafty in other respects (post coming up)

In the meantime, here is another excellent meme I'm stealing from Boz ~ a wordle pic of what I've been wittering on about here recently:


Cripes I'm obsessed with trivia! *hides in shame*

Google - a modest request :-)

Haven’t posted about stats for ages - Wait! - don’t all leave at once!! I’ll be brief.

This here website thingy is my little hobby blog, my window on the world, my place to spout stuff. I’m on the top deck of the Clapham Omnibus, opining on everything that passes through my little brain.

It’s quite fun to see what brings people to my blog.

In the last few months, I have noticed a massive upsurge in hits. I’m getting literally tens of hits every day. Partially, this was accounted for by my Eurovision coverage, but there was more to it than that . . .

Researching further, I discover that the massively vast majority of people are landing on this page . And strangely enough, I find that the great god Google itself posts Clapham Omnibus as the first source for images of Pink Floyd’s classic album Animals. Huh? Ahead of the band’s own website? Just weird.

And who would have thought that there are so many people googling that every day??!

The problem is, hits for this are completely swamping hits for other things, so much so it’s difficult to see them. So please, Google, de-rank me or something!


OKTHNXBYE!! xx

The Duchess

In which a spirited Keira Knightley as the eponymous Duchess is abused mightily by her mother, husband and 'best friend' – and even more grievously by the clunking script and pedestrian direction, cinematography and editing. To cap it all, a thousand violins interject themselves whenever they spot an opportunity. Usually at a point where we are enjoying yet another long lingering close-up of Keira emoting moodily with fantastic 18th-century hair.

How I longed for the wit and stylishness of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

Ralph Fiennes’ performance as the Duke is pretty magnificent. But then – perhaps an easier role? (the patriarchal insensitive oafish bully showing flashes of humanity now and then) – and a decidedly smaller one, meaning there is not as much for the production team to tamper with.

My google stats show a consistent demand for The Duchess of Devonshire and Keira Knightley, so to satisfy my readers I just had to see this film! The things I do for you.

One sees strange sights on the tube these days . . .

. . . Boris Johnson, 11am on the east-bound circle line at Victoria Station. Surrounded by a gang of suited acolytes, but no obvious tv cameras to be seen.

And in other Boris news, a sad reflection on the state of Google these days:

(click on pic to make bigger)
'yippee Boris wins' arrives at THIS blog?? WTF??!!!

Ok. I promise. This is the very last post I make bemoaning the unfairness that is Boris winning the mayoral elections. Moving on now.

Stalker Alert

A google search hit according to statcounter.com:

One hopes this is a desperate attempt by his mother, who has just mislaid her address book. Conceivable. Just about. Hopefully.

Stats

A few months ago when I last checked my stats, people were curious about Dalek cakes at Marks and Spencer’s. At the time, I didn’t know M&S did Dalek cakes, but now I can confirm a sighting of a chocolate Dalek cake in the Clapham Junction branch. Woo! Very exciting, although I would have preferred a standy-uppy Dalek rather than a lying-down Dalek. Exterminate! Exterminate! Anyways, a possible contender for my very own upcoming birthday.

The fickle public has moved on and now the googling masses can’t get enough of bombs in Balham in WWII. You may remember the Balham tube bomb disaster features in the movie Atonement, and it is indeed based on a true incident, when a bomb damaged a water main and flooded Balham Tube station, where locals were sheltering from the air raid. They all drowned.
Celebrity-wise, my most hits are still on Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (rather mysteriously), although the wonderful Keira Knightley is zooming up the hit rate chart.

Which brings me to this pic:



I papped the filming of Atonement on location in central London! From this distance, can’t tell you which one is Keira and/or James McAvoy.

statistical analysis - daleks and duchesses

Well, analysis shows that if you don't want to be taken for a food blogger stop blogging about food! By far the largest number of hits I'm getting on Google searches are from people looking for "Marks and Spencer Dalek cake".

Sorry, people, I haven't actually written about this cake - I mentioned purchasing and eating a M&S Dalek Easter Egg a couple of weeks back - but the idea of a Dalek cake sounds so great. And the very large number of people looking for one at M&S seems to suggest it might be real.

So I kept a look-out for it at the Clapham Junction branch yesterday but couldn't find it. Maybe they only have them at the larger branches. If they don't have one what an opportunity! M&S product development people take note! The two dalek-themed Easter Eggs were at Clapham Junction, although on floor-level shelving - slightly disrespectful to the glory that is Dr Who, I thought.

The £4.99 egg is all about the packaging - the vaguely dalek-shaped box contains a standard chocolate egg. However, the killer detail on the box is the speaking chip which cries "Exterminate! Exterminate!" on demand.

It is this feature which has to date saved my empty dalek box from the recycle bin.

I still pine for an actual chocolate dalek. However, the production costs of creating a mold for one might scare off licensees, and I understand the BBC doesn't hold the full copyright to the daleks anyway, so any deal would be a three-cornered discussion. Oops.

In other analysis news, my blatant and brazen strategy of naming every random celebrity going is bearing fruit. Out of the celebrities I've name-checked recently - eg Madonna, Terry Wogan, Fern Cotton, Jonathan Ross, etc etc etc - can you guess the one who tops the Clapham Ominbus charts?

Well, in a breakthrough for the British Aristocracy I can exclusively reveal our top celebrity is none other than Her Grace the dowager Duchess of Devonshire. There you go. Who said the British class system was dead, or even off-line?