Rambles
– a history
I
have just been updating my blogging profile and in the process I looked at the
overview page for this blog. I have done
just over 2,650 blog postings on this blog alone. I have had over 11,900 comments. I have 187 followers and I get about 375 page
views each day. In total I have had over 604,000 page views. My audience is spread across the world with
the exception of Africa and South America.
My
most viewed page remains ‘Brothel Creepers’ the story of the shoes of that
name. It shows what most people are
using the Internet for!! Ignoring that and
the next one which presumably has similarly-minded searchers the most popular
posts have been on eggheads(6048 views), starlings, Buddy Holly and a new penny
each with over 3,000 views.
Two
of the updates on my profile were pinched from Tabor – “Breathing in and
breathing out” in the interests section and “I am over 60--living is my
occupation” for the occupation section!
Thanks Tabor.
Golden
Birthday
It
never ceases to amaze me what I learn from the Internet. I suppose it shouldn’t since I learn
something from nearly every book I read.
I recently learned what a Golden Birthday is. It means that someone has turned the age of
their birthdate. So if you were born in 2010 your Golden Birthday is your
tenth. If you were born in 1944 your
Golden Birthday is your 44th.
Pity I didn’t know that when I was 49 I could have asked for special
presents.
Lychees
Son-who-watches-films
had never tried lychees so when he saw them in the shops he asked Partner-who-loves-tea
if anyone else liked them as there was no point in buying a whole punnet if it
turned out he disliked them. “Oh, yes,”
she replied, “Your Dad loves them.”
Substitute ‘hate’ for ‘love’ and you’ve got something approaching my
view on lychees. So when Son-w-w-f
rejected them and learned I hated them he told his mother. Her response was “Oh well, I knew he felt
very strongly about them…” Anyone want
any second-hand lychees?
Thunder
and Lightning
On
Monday evening we had a marvellous thunderstorm that lasted just over half an
hour. There was sheet lightning on
average every 20 seconds with the occasional fork lightning and constant
thunder which varied from a background rumble to a big bang. The rain drummed down and poured off the
roof, spilling over the gutters. I love thunderstorms.
I remember when I was about ten watching
a thunderstorm in the early evening from the side passage of my parents’
house. It was the most spectacular storm
I have ever seen and just seemed to go on for ever.
By
contrast my mother really disliked thunderstorms because they reminded her of
the bombing raids on Liverpool in the Second World War. She was also unfortunate enough to have a fireball
float around the room she was in at work one day before the ball lightning
grounded itself in the corner and disappeared.
Spooky.
Some
Quotes
"I
like to fiddle with words and put them together like a safe deposit combination
to see what they can open." ColleenRedman
"About
to have fingers and toes done in readiness for a night out.
This
is the beauty equivalent of turning up at an earthquake with a dustpan and
brush." Muma
Leary – Wirral (Facebook)
“Old
age is fifteen years older than I am.” ~
Oliver Wendell Holmes (and GB).
“I
was wrong to grow older. Pity. I was so happy as a child.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The
Beeb
Don’t
you just love the BBC and its efforts to remain neutral and uncontroversial in
its presentation of the news around the world?
Take for example the reporting on the mine disaster in Turkey. The BBC showed the following photo with this
caption…
“Photos emerge of the prime minister's aide,
Yusuf Yerkel, appearing to kick a protester in Soma”
“Appearing
to kick”???????????? Don’t you mean “Kicking
Hell out of…”
My
Spillchucker
There
are so many advantages of having a spellchecker on one’s cvompiuter. For example, it underlines in red the word
cvompiuter so you realise you have mistyped or misspelled ‘computer’. A click of the right mouse button gives
alternatives that one might prefer – sometimes just the one word and sometimes
a list of words. I recently mistyped
Postcrossing and it ended up as ‘Ppstcrossing’. Although I had added Postcrossing to the dictionary, the Spillchucker helpfully just
offered me the one word – ‘cross-dressing’. Duh!
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My Granddaughter turned 12 on May 12th...She said that was her golden birthday. Far be it from me to argue with a pre-teen!
ReplyDeleteI think we are all being conned here! It's just a way of getting some more special birthdays... My birthday is on 22nd of October. In 2015 I'll be 66 so I reckon I'm going to count it as my three times Golden Birthday.
DeleteWell, there's enough there to keep my mind wandering all the way to work this morning. I think I'll have to start to carefully consider my post titles as a means of increasing page views! I'll work on it :)
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on Lychees nuts (spell checker has suggested 'cheerfully'). Also with you on the bias of the western press - the caption under the photo could easily have been written by one of ours.
Oh, I know where there is a lychee tree but I didn't know till now what it was. I picked some with my grandson and knew they were sweet but was afraid to eat what we didn't know. I DO have some lychee tea and love it! And thanks for the shout out!
ReplyDeleteSpell check is okay when it works, but i loathe auto correct, and turn it off at every opportunity.
ReplyDeleteYears ago i loved thunderstorms, too. Since moving into this house and having to mop water that leaks in during the worst storms, sometimes around the clock for days in a row, i tend to panic when the thunder starts now.
The facts about your blog are truly impressive! In the 4 (or 5?) years since I have started my blog, I have not even yet managed 600 posts, and only 108 followers (one of which is myself - I still am of the opinion this should technically not be possible on blogger).
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I still have enough time until my Golden Birthday to let everybody know that I shall expect special presents on that 22nd of March in 2036 when I will turn 68.
We're in for a temptestuous few days and nights, according to the weather folks on telly, so I may get a chance to watch some spectacular lightning from my kitchen window.
While I like the scent of lychees, I don't like to eat them. RJ does, though.
Appearing to kick! Ha! That sounds like how someone would talk if they were afraid of a lawsuit!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a travel agent, I never once said that someone would like a place, I always said that they SHOULD like it! HA! Gotta cover yourself!
Love thunderstorms. Best memory of one was looking out of my bedroom window one night and seeing a great, white cart-horse careening across the field with mane flying, scared to death of the storm.. I've gone off nuts though I used to love them. Had some bad experiences with Macadamia nuts and now this week massive hives from peanuts. How come I get more allergies as I get older?
ReplyDeleteAre lychees nuts? I thought they were fruit. But I'm not sure I ever actually tasted one. (If I did, I can't recall now what it tasted like!) I don't think that whatever they are it would be a very good idea for you to 'ppst' your second-hand lychees to Sweden, though.
ReplyDeleteI think they are fruit as well! Inside the red spiky outer coating is the white fruit part that is served in Chinese restaurants. Inside that is a hard nut but I don't think that is eaten at all.
DeleteThanks for introducing something new to me...yet again.
ReplyDeleteGolden Birthday....never heard of it until now...I've got quite a way to go until I reach my golden birthday of 61.