Statistics, Statistics and lies

I have, this week, reached the tremendous milestone of over 10,000 pageviews since I started this self indulgent alter-ego project in August 2011.

I am not entirely convinced by what constitutes a 'pageview' count in the Bloggosphere and therefore, in actuality, the true number of those reading my daily pages will be considerably lower.

I admit that I do get a thrill from the statistics column of the blog, more so the source of the audience which shows a casual interest or a mistaken browsing than the other figures. I did not start my ramblings, ravings, musings, political incorrectness, rumours, hearsay, scandal, mumbo-jumbo, speculations, outrageous reminiscences, mis-spellings, poor grammar, historical confusions, fictional liberties and factual misrepresentations as a numbers game but from a desire to just put things in writing before they disappeared from my memory and consciousness.

I have enjoyed the discipline of writing every day although this has involved very early or very late sittings at the keyboard of a worn out laptop with sticky keys and a tendency of mine to strike that key, in a bleary eyed moment, that causes an hour or more's work to just disappear with no trace or chance of recovery.

In daylight hours I keep a notebook. The now second volume has many indicipherable scribbles as a consequence of that bad habit of writing and driving. What seems like brilliant ideas and themes when they first fall out of the roller ball pen or stunted wet-weather pencil , are on later review gibberish and infantile. I still, invariably, write these up though and they are still gibberish and infantile but disguised in many, many more words, sentences and paragraphs.

I did toy with the idea, briefly, of sending a story or two to a magazine or publication. Having registered with a resource who match writings with publishers I find that there is very little demand for my offerings. The main reason is that my blogs are just too long. There tends to be a limit of 1000 words for a typical submission of a short story or fact based article and I am way over any such wordage and do not have the inclination or skill to slash and edit these down to an acceptable level.

I have a dedicated but small band of followers to thank for tirelessly logging on.

I have thought about joining up with a Counselling service to offer some hope of relief and sympathy to these folks. Others have declined to register as a follower but I respect their reticence to do so because, again, I am not doing this as a numbers game. A few have left comments, mostly encouraging but mainly to correct a liberty or untruth that has formed the core of a particular piece of writing .The one anonymous comment I received freaked me out completely because it was a bit obsessive and geeky and made me think if I could be making better use of my idling hours by sleeping or perhaps learning knitting or bridge.

I apologise to those who have logged on to 'One Last Soul' thinking they were loyally following rock band Black Country Communion from whom I borrowed the song title. It is after all a meaningful, melancholic and evocative one. Apparently the same thoughts will have crossed the minds of many other organisations, religious denominations and individuals based on the thousands and thousands of internet references to the same phrase and wording.

I may even have received, in error, the benefit of a pageview count from those thinking I was a fan of James Last but who I undertand is still with us in mind, body and small goatee beard.

Those devoted to the Rough Guide Travel Books may have mistaken my blog title as a reference to a publication about visiting the South Korean capital before it becomes too spoilt by development.

Those interested in prolonging the life of their favourite pair of shoes may have mis-read the title as a miraculous method of patching up footwear.

White slave traders with a poorer comprehension of English may have mis read the title as being a classified advertisement for a Scottish girl in 'One Lass to Sell'.

I have also thought that those in a sober idealogical frame of mind or equally in a drunken stupor, outraged at the way that this country is being run, might have put in a random search for chat rooms about posh David as ' One arsehole' and landed on my pages.

I have accumulated a large pageview count from Russia which has now passed an otherwise impressive running total from the United States. This may be due to inclement weather or just austerity preventing them from getting out and about rather than confined to a computer screen. There are also strange peaks of activity with a simultaneous eight or more pageviews on any one day from Lebanon and Venezuela. I like to think that this is an English Language Class logging on but more likely to have practical experience of grammatical incorrectness. There are many countries of just a single pageview over the 14 months of my output. These are from more exotic and distant lands but as thrilling to me as my Moscow or New York statistics.

I decline to look at the statistical traffic sources figures because they will only show the truth that a vast percentage of my pageviews result from auto-dialer machines, boiler room operations, call centres and those intent on stealing my identity and bank account details.

I say thank you to all for the last 14 months. To paraphrase the character of Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister, 'I am not a high flyer, rather a low flyer with occasional bursts of wind'. Heres to flying.