DROPPING BY

Recently Google published its annual survey of search criteria, which survey it is pleased to call Zeitgeist. Hardly any of the names featured on the list means anything to me, so I am clearly well outside the zeitgeist. I suspect, though, that, unlike me, most of those who have sought the persons on the list never have cause to use the term zeitgeist in any other context (unless, of course, there is a pop combo, unknown to me, called Zeitgeist – which seems perfectly likely).

This blog, like many (most?) others, features a visitor counter to keep me (and indeed my readers) abreast of the rate of visits made to the site. It appears as a numeral framed off-centre in an elongated rectangle predominantly of yellow on the right side of the screen, below the archive list, the “about me” paragraph, the site search box and the roster of regular readers, stubbornly stuck at five (go on, register: it costs nothing). The counter, as it declares, is supplied by blogpatrol.com and it is a free service.

Blog Patrol gives me access to quite a lot of useful information about my visitors. Not their identities or their email addresses, you will be relieved to know, but their countries of origin (which always fascinates and thrills me as I imagine readers in circumstances, cultures and time zones far removed from my own) and the specific search criteria of those who have arrived by search engine. This last information is the most electrifying of all.

By a long stretch, the single search term that has brought more visitors than any other to this blog (and continues to do so) has been Elin Nordegren. I first mentioned her, rather in passing, when I wrote about her then husband, Tiger Woods, at the time that his life and golfing career first began to unravel (‘Go Get ’im, Tiger’ November 29th 2009). Because the photograph of her that I found through Google Images was so amusing – she looks, if she will forgive me, like the archetypal gentlemen’s club cocktail waitress that seems to be the type to which Woods is unfailingly drawn – I included the image in the posting. For a while, my visitor numbers went through the roof. Never slow to capitalise on a good thing, I attempt to repeat the trick here:

Here she is, boys, back by popular demand: Elin Nordegren

The other big draw – at least at the time – was William Hague and his bedroom-sharing escapade with his aide Chris Myers (‘Don’t Be Vague …’ August 28th 2010 and ‘Smear Studies’ September 5th 2010). This blog was almost the first to name Hague, way before the print and broadcast media did so, and that, I imagine, generated much of the traffic. Hague survived, Myers didn’t, which is the way round you would expect with Tories.

Somebody came several times to this blog with the search “HAGUE AND Myers sitting in a tree” (searcher’s use of upper case). I hope he found what he was looking for, but if it was a photographic image or a reported sighting, I never came across it myself.

A great many people got very exercised about the Hague/Myers matter. A man living within walking distance of us wrote to The Sunday Times complaining that it was a pretty poor show when two chaps couldn’t thriftily share a room without people making something of it. I wrote in reply, pointing out that this wasn’t a case of two teenaged backpackers on a budget cycling tour bunking down together, it was a millionaire Foreign Secretary and a man young enough to be his son whose entire career depended on the older man’s patronage, but the paper obviously thought this was too extreme to publish.

The Moet & Chandon room at the Hotel Du Vin in Birmingham where, staff confirm, William Hague entertained his young fellow spartan

Other search criteria have been considerably more perplexing. I have had visitors looking for references to eBay and to Michael Jackson. When I checked just now, there were approximately 215 million results of a Google search for the late Jacko and 425 million for the on-line trading site. I do not imagine – and do not imagine that I tested the theory – that the two mentions of Jackson in my blog index (there may be other unlinked references) appear in the first 214.5 million of those results or that the three mentions of eBay are ever again likely to be reached in a Google search. Whoever came to my blog on his (her? – no, surely his) quest for stuff on Jackson must have devoted hundreds of hours to that quest before getting to me and, on visiting Common Sense, been deeply disappointed. Not even a pic! Here’s one as consolation:

Jacko or at least a fair facsimile

Another search that must have required a multitude of stops before it arrived at this blog was the question: is ed miliband circumcised (searcher’s lower case and lack of question mark). As the Labour leader is Jewish, I think the answer is an unforeskinned conclusion, but why ask me?

Some devotee of James Lundie has sought him on this site, once accounting him “handsome” and once “fit”. The James Lundie who once appeared here is the partner of the former coalition cabinet minister David Laws. There also seems to have been a Scottish footballer of that name (not knowingly referred to by me before) but of course “fit”, in modern parlance, can mean, nicely defined as well as regularly exercising.

One search that made me smile was “Simon Longland leaves Harrods”. This evidently had not exactly been a headline across the international press. I put it into Google myself and was informed that there were no results if the line was placed in quotes. Without the quotes, there were 576 results, the first three of them pieces from The Financial Times about this Longland character who is – or was – fashion accessories general merchandise manager at Harrods’. This blog was listed eighth, on the strength of my referring to Sir Jack Longland, the late chairman of the wireless quiz My Word, linked up with a different reference on the site to “leaves” in the sense of foliage. It’s this kind of serendipity that makes using search engines a somewhat laborious business.

Another unfamiliar name that brought me a visitor was cited in the search “donna e carroll adultery”. Again searching for the phrase myself, I found this blog listed because I entitled one posting ‘The Woman Taken in Adultery’ (a piece about the Northern Irish political couple Peter and Iris Robinson). The Mrs Carroll sought appears to have been the subject of a trial in Wisconsin in 1990 at which archaic laws concerning adultery were invoked – it sounds quite diverting. That Google should list my blog under this search seems excessively tenuous.

Two queries about other public figures needlessly brought searchers to this blog: “sue lawley rumour” and “pj proby benefits fraud”. Google appears to carry no satisfaction for anyone wanting to spread a rumour about Ms Lawley and my only reference to her concerned her asking Gordon Brown on Desert Island Discs if he was gay. There was an evidently inconclusive story about the famously trousers-splitting ’60s pop star and a fraud inquiry some years ago but as there has (until now) been no reference to Proby on this blog, it is curious that Google should ever have directed anyone here.

Some of the criteria are just weird. The search itself is weird and any notion that I might provide satisfaction is even weirder. One seeker after truth had as his quarry “the song from movie here on earth where chris klein is drinking by himself in the %”. I’ve seen a few movies so I know who Chris Klein is and the search makes a bit more sense when you know that Here on Earth is a movie title. Klein was a coming man a decade ago but is so no longer and, my enquiries reveal, has, as it happens, been in and out of alcohol-related rehab. But this is his debut on my blog.

Here are some other searches that have disturbed this quiet corner of the net:
– chappie-shasta ohv 1990 Dedicated to Chappie
– como ter um bumbum como os dregs quij
– bruce1btrfancy wheel 60[1]
– 2010 GMTC steel &metals market research Bars rank
– MIAO NATIVE PEOPLE
– youtube zonal restriction
– winking 101 in russia1 acter
– show iqra carner in min caster
– beaumondeau
– sweet words of pismotality
– the heights where is big coke is processed
– HnKO«P Ã COUPT
Why any of these searches should bring their perpetrators to my blog is most mysterious. The last appeared in Cyrillic and I used some ingenuity to get all the letters reproduced but they have not been retained as I determined them in transferring to the blog.

However, these mysterious quests all add to the gaiety of nations and, as far as I am concerned, such visitors are all most welcome, no matter how eccentric their requirements. Come one, come all, I say.

For the sake of balance, here is a recent portrait of Miss Ann Widdecombe

*******************************************
Now, any idea what this is? –

“The sun is shining, the grass is green,
The orange and palm trees sway.
There’s never been such a day
In Beverly Hills, LA.
But it’s December the twenty-fourth
And I am longing to be up north”.

Well, it’s the verse, usually omitted (certainly by Bing Crosby in his most famous version) of Irving Berlin’s imperishable seasonal standard ‘White Christmas’. And of course it goes some way to explaining the particular yearning quality of the song. People in California and other southern and western states, especially those who have moved there, are rather apt to envy those in the north and east of the US the more wintry weather that they often experience. If you want to hear the song complete with verse and not just with refrain, go to Phil Spector’s vintage album, A Christmas Gift for You (the first real collectable pop album, released in 1963), where Darlene Love sings it very nicely; or the first of Barbra Streisand’s two magnificent Yule collections, A Christmas Album of 1967 or Bette Midler’s Cool Yule CD of 2006.

White Christmas? Bah. Technically, a white Christmas is one on which snow is recorded as falling on the day. Various parts of Scotland had a white Christmas. But everyone else in Britain saw nothing but white for weeks and we were sick to the back teeth of it by Christmas Day. Yes, I know southern California and even Los Angeles actually had flooding (most bizarre) and that blizzards have brought the eastern seaboard to a standstill in the last few days, but these people are johnny-come-latelys. Since the third week of October, there have only been three days, at the start of this month, when there wasn't lying snow in the UK and since those three days it's been deep and crisp and even, turning to impacted, frozen and frankly dangerous. Over the last couple of days, a steady thaw has set in and suddenly there’s the unfamiliar view of grass and pavements and roofs. But there’s further snow in the forecast. The boffins are now saying that this has been the coldest December in Britain since 1890. I don't doubt it.

Anyway, our celebrations were put on metaphorical as well as actual ice. My partner and I were both ill for the duration, he much more than me (and he is the chef), and what’s more while he is a brilliant nurse and I an ideal patient, the reverse cannot be said to apply. So the seasonal fare all went into the freezer, the presents finally got opened on Wednesday night and still it is largely a house of sickness. I don’t somehow think there will be much wassailing at New Year’s here either. So bah. And humbug.

*******************************************
I blubbed my way through the concluding pair of episodes of Ugly Betty, shown back-to-back in Britain on E4 the other week. I’m sorry to see the show end, because it has certainly diverted me over its four-year run, but that wasn’t what got me blubbing. Nor was it the playing out of Betty’s own particular (peculiar) career path. No, it was the resolution of the treatment of Betty’s kid nephew that got to me. Justin’s subplot has traced the growth of a gay boy from 12 to 16, really without ever putting a foot wrong, a remarkable achievement in a mainstream US television comedy drama. Whether the Colombian show from which it derives, Yo soy Betty, la fea, is quite so enlightened, I cannot say.

Happy 2011 to all my readers.