Saturday 17 September 2016

Secret discussions


A fellow blogger and I have been having secret and private discussions on what makes one blog more popular than others, and I have wondered to what lengths I would go to make mine as popular or if I would ever want it to be in the first place. I mean, it is not like selling books or something, so what is it like?

I toyed with the idea of attracting a teenage audience by making a video blog on make-up and its application - some of those 18 year-olds are making thousands a week - but I am not sure I would get the cosmetics sponsorship. Do you know how much some of that stuff is?!

I recently stopped following a Canadian woman's off-the-wall fashion blog, because I got fed up with all those bloody photos of her looking stunning in some rags she bought at a charity shop, despite the fact she is very photogenic for her age. She has a very expressive face, and her images are so compelling that I just can't be arsed to look any more. I have compelled myself dry.

I suppose I could take you on a daily walk through the village and introduce you to all the animals, old people and psychotics that inhabit it, but it would be a short walk and I would have to supplement it with deeply emotional, heart-rending tit-bits to keep you coming.

There again, I could give you a running commetary on my daily lunches, dinners or breakfasts - with photos - but I cannot help thinking that this sort of post has had its day. Many restauranteurs forbid people to photograph their food before eating it, despite how much it cost. This brings up an interesting legal point - does the food belong to you before you have paid the bill?

Thank CHRIST that the cup-cake fad has had its day. What was all that about? Highly intelligent women were competing against each other in the mindless cup-cake stakes, and the icing on the cake arrived with the advent of edible sparkle. Whenever I saw someone eating a cup-cake with sparkle sprinkled on the top, I wondered if they also competed with each other as to who had the most attractive turds.

Some blogs appear to have been written by George and Weedon Grossmith. I find these the easiest to read, in much the same way I love looking through other people's ordinary holiday photos.

I miss the days of the old 35mm prints. It just isn't the same as scrolling down through a camera or iPhone. Whenever someone offered to show me the 36 prints that they recently brought back from Boots, I jumped at the chance - on the strict condition that there was to be no pre-selection, editing or running commentary by them as they looked over my shoulder. I would have to choose which ones I lingered over and which ones I passed over in a second, otherwise no deal.

Ok, I know I am going off at a tangent now, but I have just remembered the days when certain middle-aged couples would actually invite a few select friends around to their house to watch a slide-show of their recent holiday! Can you imagine?! What kind of a boring egomaniac would give a running commentary on their hotel in Southern Spain in the dark, whilst their long-suffering (but weak) friends sipped on a dry sherry and wished they were dead?

I am not going to tell you the name of the blogger with whom I have been sharing thoughts about others here - oh, all right, it was Rachel. Not Petra, Rachel - just to make it clear.

The most impressive thing about Rachel's blog is how she can insult everyone using taboo four-letter expletives, and how they come back for more the following day. I have to admit that she has been doing this less and less of late, but occasionally she returns to the old winning formula, and everyone is happy again. Every time I have called someone a c***, they have stormed off and I have never seen them again. Rachel entitles one of her posts something like, 'Why don't you all fuck off?' and people flock there.

Then there is the blogger who seems to think that everyone will be fascinated by the way they have decorated their bedroom. Maybe some are, but these could be the ones who do not have a clue about interior design and have to seek the opinions/instructions of personal dressers before they leave the house? (Did you hear the upward inflection in that last sentence?)

We can only do what we are capable of and, before anyone else points it out, I am capable of writing thousands of words about nothing on a daily basis, never expecting anyone to get to the end.

49 comments:

  1. The rise of the cup-cake was a fucking mystery to me too.

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    1. Talking of which, are you going to follow Bake-Off over to Channel 4, or whoever has paid £75 million for it?

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  2. Bel ami ( a dear friend in real life) often comments on my blog with a stream of negativity.....this is wrong,that is awful........how dreaful is that, i hated this film, bake of is shite......etc etc.
    I said a long time ago
    " if you dont like it dont read it"

    And i stick to that.. We all have our own style...personally do do enjoy your caustic " banter" more than most as it never bores me but Rachel's meandering through the nothing of her day is kind of hypnotic.

    I guess we all should read blogs if their entertain. Stop reading them if tey dont

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    1. Your friend Bel Ami seems to think like the rest of us, and still continues to read - like the rest of us.

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  3. As long as no-one writes about horrid dogs who shit up against the fridge; I don't care what I read (or write).

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  4. Whoops!
    Anyhow i kmow we have played this game before but I shall post two blogs later " in the style of" Rachel and Tom Stephenson
    What fun..all very
    i'm sorry I havent a clue xxx

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    1. See if you can get a stream of consciousness going.

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  5. Tom, I continue to enjoy reading your posts because you write well, have a unique voice and a sense of humor, and choose all sorts of topics.

    Over the years that I've been posting my blogs, I have been contacted by companies who wished to pay me to promote their products in my posts. I declined their kind offers, but was curious why what it was about my site that interested them.

    Best wishes.

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    1. Send them to me. I'll take the money.

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    2. If I ever get another proposal of that sort I will let you know. Promise.

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  6. I occasionally write about lunch and dinner but never breakfast or cupcakes.

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  7. I prefer only few readers, i don't want to be "famous".

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  8. After a double expresso,brewed carefully in our small but perfectly appointed upper middle class, inner city apartment , I loaded a friend's van with a one ton piece of Italian marble I won on ebay last week and commenced the four hour jouney to Lord Flintshire's estate.
    Lord Flintshire is an old drinking buddy of mine. Back in the 1960s we shared a flat above The Kings Road and had a debauched time swinging our way around london with Joanna Lumley and Jane Asher.
    Of course Lord Flintshire went on to bigger and better things after I was arrested for what can only be as" a minor indiscretion " .......suffice to say that I never heard from Jenny Agutter ever again!
    But that's another story
    C'est la vie
    I thought at the time that it was his loss......but was surprised out of my every expensive brogues when he sent me a telegram requesting that he would like to commission me to sculpt a life size bust of Edwina Curry as a centrepiece for his new orangey.

    Of course I said yes, the standard of his wine cellar is beyond belief , so I donned my expensive and beautifully tailored tweed coat and ruffled my amazingly thick white hair before setting off on another adventure.

    Unfortunately " Her Indoors" wasn't able to accompany me this time, (she had left for New York days earlier to oversee a new retro exhibition of 1960s candlesticks at MOMA ), so I had to fall back on " Miss Brown-eyes-blue" who had a few days off from running the " Cock-and -Pullet" pub in Finisham Lane , to keep me company.
    At first Brown Eyes Blue wasn't quite sure that it was seemly for her go, especially as she was not 17 and I was a robust yet virile 71, but she relented after I had explained that only she knew just how to re start my pacemaker when it malfunctioned during that infamous bar brawl of 2001...a brawl when I managed to get barred from 44 pubs in central Bath in a 24 hour period.

    .........part 2 tomorrow....

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    1. You obviously don't have a clue - I hate brogues.

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    2. John gets the grand prize for being able to fit all that in a very small box.
      I hope for an appropriate resonse.

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    3. First for what? Fitting it all into a very small box?

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  9. And one for rachel

    G made me fishfingers on toast for breakfast.
    He shouted at me for not adding red ketchup

    His loss.
    Good job the neighbours moved out six months ago.

    I feel strange today.

    I picked flowers, swam with the fish in the canal by my childhood farm and looked at the clouds

    Sweet, sad clouds.

    I sketched them on the back of a cornflakes packet then mapped out one of my 1970 trips wih best friend Nobby. We drove from Norwich to Ipswich in an austin 1300. We watched football and drank absinth

    She wore a yellow mini skirt

    I Wore angst.....like a pashmina.

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    1. This one needs expletives like spuds need salt.

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    2. Also (everyone's a critic like you say) there are too many paragraphs. Stick to the dog-shit.

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    3. Its four blog entires made into one!
      Duh!

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    4. My paragraphs are important; Cro got them wrong too. I just had to ring BT to sort out my fucking broadband so i could read this! By the way, who is G? Is he my lover?

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  10. On facebook I'm in a group which calls itself "Blind Designers" - great photographic material (not only about bedrooms) to support the title.
    I love John's satires!!!

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  11. I would enjoy seeing you dressing up in charity shop finds and posting fun photos of yourself about town, with maybe a video here and there. And get a photographer to help - afterwards you go out for drinks and snacks where you annoy other customers while you laugh reviewing your photos.

    You wouldn't have much competition and lots of women would enjoying watching you. Heh. Your turn to compell. You already do, but show me some cool manly duds.

    Just a thought, hahaha!!

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    1. That might be a good idea, Mel. I have already featured in one fashion shoot (Tweed Pig) and people were stopping me on the street for weeks afterwards. Maybe I will get that cosmetic sponsorship after all.... (I might be compelled to come back - I have just remembered that video of your award you put up. I want to see it again.)

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  12. A new to me line in food crossed my plate the other evening. It was small lettuce leaf adorned with a quarter of a tomato and a thin slice of something yellow. When I queried this item with the waiter he informed me it was a 'salad bouquet'. I understand now why they've stopped people photographing meals before they've eaten them. It's because they sometimes resemble the bits you've left on the plate when you've eaten your meal.

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    1. The hotels and restaurants have learned that you can turn a £4 cheese sandwich into an £8 cheese sandwich with adornments like that.

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  13. I don't often comment, but I always read all your posts and I like how you write. You also explain so well about technical things that I would never read elsewhere but I enjoy reading here.
    Greetings Maria x

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    1. Thanks. I now nominate you as head of my fan club. Please answer all the adoring mail I get from my sycophants. It shouldn't take too much time out of your week.

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    2. Thank you Tom, and when I write and express myself as well as you do, I will be too happy to answer all your mails. X

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  14. I think we all blog for different reasons Tom - which is why there is such variety. I blog because I used to belong to a writers' group but found having to write a piece to order - My day out, The countryside in Autumn etc. didn't fill my need. So I left and began to write what I felt like writing. One day it might be something happening on the farm, one day going out for lunch (I am a 'lady who lunches'), one day having the bedroom decorated(!!!) - but it makes me write something and thus keeps mu brain active.
    As for the blogs I read- if they are not to my liking then I don't read them.
    People I blog with regularly (John, you, Cro, Rachel, Gwil) have become like old friends, albeit virtual. And because I am slightly less mobile these days then I like to go round a Welsh village at the pace of a bulldog, or read about some delicious lunch concocted from a few vegetables (and I often try these out). I suppose to some extent I like to live my life vicariously. But don't stop blogging - and this goes for the rest of the regulars too. I put up with Rachel's four letter words (although I have never used them myself (something to do with my age) because she is a virtual friend and I love to read what she has been up to - and the same goes for you too.

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    1. Yes - for me it is like letting my mind wander, which is why I go off in so many tangents. Sometimes I feel as though I am talking to myself, then I upset someone and I realise more poeple read it than I think. If I don't amuse myself, then I don't expect to amuse anyone else either. Every now and then I question it, but that is not meant as an attck, though it sounds like it sometimes. I love reading your blog, Weave, but don't always comment.

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  15. I agree with Weaver, we all have our reasons. I admit I get somewhat discouraged if I have published a post and get just a handful views on it, but on the other hand, I'm no author, I'll survive. I started with that bad hip of mine, and discovered a whole new world. Some of these bloggers have become part of my world, and I enjoy immensely to follow Johns dogs and neighbours, Weavers villagejourneys, Mels irish canals and ancient settings, Sians lovely desolate island, my fellow ministers wisdom and your deep knowledge and sense of humour, Tom. And so many more lovely and interesting people. I never publish cupcakes or nailpolish, just thoughts and stories. But for sure, blogging can be a search for public adoration, counting in hundreds of views to each post. But some bloggers are just wonderful, I am blessed to take part. If someone enjoy taking part of my wanderings, that's nice!

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    1. Now come on - you must find me/us irritating sometimes??

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    2. Well, that would perhaps be that wild discussion you and John are having on this post...no, really, irritating was the blogworld I first tried, and very shortly afterwards, left, never to return.
      Am I overdoing my praise here, you think?

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  16. I like the 'bit of everything', type of blog. A few serious topics, with tales of everyday life, and splattered with humour.

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    1. That's what I aim for. Lenny Bruce ceased to be funny by getting obsessed with one issue.

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