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The collected opinions of an august and aristocratic personage who, despite her body having succumbed to the ravages of time, yet retains the keen intellect, mordant wit and utter want of tact for which she was so universally lauded in her younger days. Being of a generation unequal to the mysterious demands of the computing device, Lady Bracknell relies on the good offices of her Editor for assistance with the technological aspects of her journal.

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Location: Bracknell Towers

Monday, January 15, 2007

The handbag and the glad rag

Never let it be said that Site Meter is not worth the effort of installing. Not so much for the statistics it supplies on the number of what Lady Bracknell believes are termed "hits", as for the fascinating insight it provides into the circuitous routes via which readers have been led to the pages of her blog.

Earlier today, the Dude expressed his gratification that a search for "Rolls Canardly" drew one inquisitive soul to his own comments on his Sisyphean labours as her ladyship's chauffeur. It would, perhaps, not be stretching the truth too far to state that the Dude for once feels appreciated.

Were it not for Site Meter, Lady Bracknell would never have experienced that fluttering of authorial pride in her capacious bosom which comes from knowing that her words have been chosen by the prolific Mr Worstall for inclusion in his Britblog Roundup. (Admittedly, on this most recent occasion it was the Editor's words which were chosen: still, Lady Bracknell supposes that one cannot have everything. We cannot all have the great good fortune to witness eel-torturing first hand.)

Be that as it may, what has motivated Lady Bracknell to indulge this evening in what might otherwise have appeared to be an activity dangerously close to bragging, is the apparently random link to her Perorations from this site. Bracknell, if her ladyship is not very much mistaken, is in the county of Berkshire. Lady Bracknell, who has precious little knowledge of Buckinghamshire (despite having been incarcerated for some years in Milton Keynes), can state firmly and without fear of contradiction that she knows nothing at all of Berkshire. It is not that Lady Bracknell is ungrateful for the link: far from it. It is just that she suspects that such readers of the Buckinghamshire Advertiser as click on it may find themselves sorely disappointed at the lack of local information herein contained.

15 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ma’am

I am of course intrigued that your Ladyship’s preferred mode of transport (now that the Harley Davidson is permanently mothballed) has been the subject of a search by some underemployed soul; although I confess to being somewhat more personally gratified when the search term which brought an unsuspecting Googler to these pages was my very own name – which I believe has also happened just the once.

With regard to the link from the Buckinghamshire Advertiser to your undoubtedly worthy perorations, it may earn you some new readers which cannot be a bad thing, even if some of them (particularly the felinophobics) are a tad put out at what they find.

However I must report that the tenuous connection between said rag and your Ladyship’s blog has already led to one unexpected (and quite unwelcome) encounter when I visited their pages for the first time this morning. I say ‘unwelcome’ because it meant that I came across this appalling piece of ‘shock horror pity-the-poor-crip’ journalism which would otherwise have passed me by http://www.buckinghamshireadvertiser.co.uk/archives/2006/12/a_blind_man_mug.html#comment-86495 (sorry, I don’t know how to do the HTML). Yet another indicator that the lazy sub-editor who linked to your site hasn’t actually read what is contained within.

Dude

8:41 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now I do, and this is the link :<)

9:48 am  
Blogger Lady Bracknell said...

Can Lady Bracknell expect the Dude's comments to be liberally peppered with links from now on?

Being a martyr to her own pedantry, she can not prevent herself from pointing out that the correct term for a fear of cats is ailurophobia.

12:27 pm  
Blogger Daphne Wayne-Bough said...

I installed Site Meter and was rather gobsmacked, to use a popular if plebeian expression, to find that I had been "googled" by people typing in such things as "piddle knickers" and "old slappers over 70".

9:38 pm  
Blogger Lady Bracknell said...

Ah yes. It is always entertaining to imagine the disappointment. The latest such search term to have brought a reader (presumably for only the briefest of moments) to Lady Bracknell's own blog is, "waiters in tight trousers".

9:42 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If the Lady Bracknell would care to - and I do not much care to use this term - "click" - on the following "link" (another such) she might find a little something to keep her amused between afternoon tea and the sounding of the dinner gong.

Rolls Canardleigh

10:39 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ma'am

I respectfully suggest that whilst ailurophobia is an acceptable name for fear of cats it is not the only option. I did check before using felinophobia and, although I willingly concede that this website might not be the most scientific resource available to the ardent Googler, you will observe that it does include both options.

Naturally I plumped for the one which would be more likely to have some intuitive resonance with your colonial readers, not to mention those without the benefit of a classical English education like what we done. Anyway I always incline to Latin over Greek.... and yes I do realise that "phobia" has a Hellenic rather than Latinate entomology.

Dude

8:32 am  
Blogger Lady Bracknell said...

The fact that dictionary.com will not give the inerloper house room is quite sufficient for Lady Bracknell's purposes.

Lady Bracknell dumbs down for no man!!

9:11 am  
Blogger Lady Bracknell said...

Lady Bracknell regrets to report that the link kindly provided by the septuagenarian gentleman appears to be faulty.

9:17 am  
Blogger BloggingMone said...

This post made me curious and I have tried to install a site meter myself. I have successfully managed to find out how to do it in principle, but when I press the "save" button I am asked to "correct the mistakes" I have no idea what kind of mistakes I am supposed to correct. I assume that her Ladyship has no intention to deal with technical problems of this kind, but maybe she is kind enough to allow her Editor a few helpful words.

3:46 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It works if the final / is removed, i.e. http://www.romford.org/transport/car/hare-hall/LD8278.htm

A most handsome horseless carriage is depicted therein.

4:23 pm  
Blogger Lady Bracknell said...

Sorry, Mone: I remember it taking me much longer than it should have done and having involved a great deal of bad language, but I'm no expert. Does this help at all?

And many thanks to Dame Honoria - now, why didn't I think of that...?

The Editor

5:38 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Personally, I'm beginning to wish I never installed Site Meter in the first place. It is very exciting to see hits coming from, say, Milton Keynes when one has never in her life met anyone from Milton Keynes before. And that little world map is a lot of fun. Then again, when one suddenly finds a particular lurker living rather closer reappearing in the stats with alarming-- indeed hourly-- regularity...but that's rather more about one's life than her Ladyship asked to hear. Let's say only that I was better off when blissfully ignorant. :)

7:05 pm  
Blogger The Goldfish said...

A potentially useful point about the sitemeter following Jess' comment, if her Ladyship would forgive my making it on the offchance is it of interest to her readers. The sitemeter only identifies the location of the server through which readers are browsing the net.

So for example, I believe I appear as someone from Milton Keynes, because that is the location of one of the servers used by my ISP. This despite the fact I am about 200 miles further North.

Therefore, if Jess, for example, lives near to a server, then she may get the impression that lurkers are living nearby when they could be literally hundreds of miles away.

Only when individuals access the net through their own servers (i.e. are serious geeks) would anything like an accurate location come up on Sitemeter.

10:06 pm  
Blogger Lady Bracknell said...

Thank you, Goldfish. I had intended to make that very point to Jess today, but must have got distracted somehow.

The Editor

10:12 pm  

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