Caption competition – come and have a go!

Can you believe it? The novelty of being home after a week of camping still hasn’t worn off. And a source of particular joy for me today was my shower.

After spending days showering in a communal shower block, where the floor was muddy and strewn with leaves, twigs and other people’s hair [cue: dry gag. Other people's hair sticking to the underside of your feet is probably the worst feeling in the world apart from using a public toilet and finding the seat still warm from the previous encumbant]; it didn’t take much to make my bathroom seem like something out of Burj Al Arab.

I turned the shower on and the water was hot. I looked at the shower basin and it was clean. Man alive, I was in heaven. Living like a bearded goat-sacrificing heathen does wonders for appreciating what you have at home.

This evening, I will mainly be sifting through the hundreds of photographs that I took whilst living like a badger on holiday in order to try and cobble together a holiday blog post. In the meantime I leave you with this: It is a picture of Izzy and her friend Olly (who she wants to marry) “enjoying” a boat trip together.

I survived camping!

Hurray! I’m back. After surviving four days of living in abject poverty, I can now say that I have ‘done’ camping. I won’t go into the details now because I am totally exhausted, but suffice to say I got so close to nature that a ladybird plopped on my hand. And the plop was yellow in case you were thinking I was faking it.

After arriving home two hours ago, I fell to my knees and rejoiced when I pressed the lightswitch and a light came on. I blew kisses to the little flashing modem in the corner of my living room. I positively sprinted up the stairs and threw myself onto the bed to sample my long lost Egyptian cotton sheets and pocket-sprung mattress. And finally, I ran into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, just to check that mud pits and dock leaves were a thing of the past.

The journey home was long and arduous. It took 3 hours and Izzy was sitting in the back of the car playing a new computer game called Fly Control. The whole time the game was emitting random buzzing sounds and then Izzy would burst into fits of laughter.

So I asked her; “Iz darling, what game are you playing?”

She replied, “It’s called Fly Control.”

“What do you have to do to win?” I said.

“I’ve got to guide the flies to the roadkill to feed them,” she replied.

WTF?

“Are you telling fibs?” I asked.

“No,” she said, adding, “but I’ve won that one, so now I have to direct the flies to the dog poo.”

Bloody nora! The whole premise of the game was making sure that flies could land on their given target and feast before moving up the next level! Games have changed since I was a girl, when the most complicated thing I had to do was flick a marble into a hole. 

Anyway, I am dead on my feet now, so I am going to spend a few minutes seeing what Brahm and Ron have been up to whilst I was away (I bet you have done a lovely job dahlinks!), and then I am off to bed.

I will report on the camping experience soon….. Au revoir!

I’m not a Badger

“Why the bloody hell did I agree to that?” I asked myself, following it up with a self-flagellating bonk on my head with a serving spoon as punishment (I was in the kitchen and had been trying to swat a persistent wasp with the spoon before I turned it on myself). 

“Agree to what?” I hear you cry (inquisitively).

“To go camping, that’s what.”

Yep, you read right. C.A.M.P.I.N.G……… Me. Lady M. Proponent of all things luxurious and all things stuffed with duck down.

I had been duped into partaking in a pastime that I had previously denounced as barbaric: Akin to bear baiting, dog fighting, and sympathising with investment bankers.   

I had been duped into camping. So instead of sleeping in my comfortable bed, having long hot showers, and knocking up leisurely lunches on my ample cooker, I was faced with the prospect of sleeping on a plank in a semi-waterproof nylon room, and trying to scrape together a meal using a single miniature gas-burning stove. Why would I want to do that?! I didn’t want to do that, but as I say, I was duped.

It gets worse; there wasn’t going to be room service or a Concierge in the tent. And that is before I start on the lack of electricity or internet connection. Let’s look at how Stone Age men lived and then compare it with camping – see what I mean? – there’s not much in it. Well except for the clothes. Looking on the bright side, at least I’ll be wearing jeans and boots rather than a loincloth fashioned from pelt (although I wasn’t 100% sure that’ll be the case).

For god’s sake, I’m a human being! I have my needs and my rights! If I was supposed to grub around living off the land, I would have been born a Badger.

So how did I get myself into this scrape? It was totally my daughter’s fault. No actually, thinking about it, it was Izzy’s Dad’s fault. He had decided to take Izzy camping to help keep her entertained during the school holidays. So far so good. But then, during one of his regular coffee visits to my house, he got some devilment in him and said to Izzy; “shall we ask your Mummy if she wants to come camping?”

What a git. As soon as the words had fallen out of his mouth, I started frantically sawing the side of my hand across my throat …… “Noooooooo!” I  mouthed at him behind Izzy’s back. But it was too late. Izzy had picked up the baton and was running with it.

Not only was she running with it, but she was jumping up and down and clapping with happiness. To turn down a five year old who was so excited to have you camp with her, would have been like killing a kitten. So I hugged Izzy and said; “Ok darling, I would love to go camping with you,” whilst silently mouthing “you bastard,” to Steve who was laughing in the background.

So, tomorrow I will be driving to a campsite in Swanage for a “camping holiday” (that’s got to be an oxymoron).  I’m not sure how long I’ll be away, but the good news is that I have got two amazing Guest Bloggers lined up to keep you entertained……. please put your hands together for …………………..

Ron Reed from “If I had a Blog” (who will be writing tomorrow)

Brahm from “Alfred Lives Here” (who will be writing on Wednesday)

Enjoy! And see you when I get back.

Nature is not human hearted

At last, the rain this week eventually let up long enough for Izzy and I to undertake some outdoor activities. That’s because television is evil right? And children who watch too much of it are bound to have a penchant for mugging grannies and sniffing glue when they grow up. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen my superglue for a while…..

I had decided that the theme for our activities was going be nature, because I wanted Izzy to see some wildlife outside their normal context of roadkill. And with this in mind, we headed off to the Sutton Courtenay Nature Reserve – a place that had been advertising children’s activities for the summer holidays.

“Izzy,” I said in the car, “we are going to experience nature in its natural habitat.”

“What’s habitat?” Izzy asked.

“It’s like the outdoor house that animals live in,” I replied inadequately, turning up the radio in the car to avert further questions.

It worked and Izzy started singing along to Razorlights, ‘America’ which, in truth, is wholly inappropriate for a five year old.  

Once we arrived at the Nature Reserve, I marched up to the Reserve’s reception desk and said: “We would like to sample some of your nature and your finest children’s activities as well please.”

“No problem,” smiled the lady behind the desk (nature nuts are always ‘nice’, it’s from all that lovin’ animals), “that’ll be £2.50 please.”

Blimey, nature had gone up since last time I experienced it. That’ll be inflation then.

“So what’s first then?” I asked Mrs Nice once she had prised the money out of my cold, clenched fists.

“Pond dipping,” she said, “over at the pond.” Unsurprisingly.

“What’s that bloody hell’s pond dipping?” I asked.

“One of our helpers will explain once you are there,” she replied.

It took five minutes to walk to the pond, and I have to say, Izzy was pretty excited by the time we got there. We headed towards the helper, and I said, “we’d like to do some pond dipping please.”

“No problem,” she smiled (also terribly nice), “get one of those nets over there and dip it gently into the pond, decanting what you catch into one of these white trays,” she said, thrusting one into my hand.

“So basically it’s just fishing?” I asked her.

The horrified expression on her face told me that it wasn’t. “No,” she said, “we are looking for all manner of wildlife.” These nature types are very defensive of their wildlife techniques [note to reader: if you are at a nature reserve and see a spider, don't shout "UGH there's a spider! Kill it!" because they don't like that either].

So there we were, balancing precariously on a muddy pond bank and going in for the ‘catch’. The helper was watching us, and after dipping our net into the pond three times she shouted to us; “that’ll be enough now.”

Izzy and I scrambled back up the bank and poured the contents of our net into the white tray.

“Oh how exciting!” exclaimed the helper, “this is best variety of wildlife we have had all day.”

Izzy and I peered into the white tray; “You are obviously seeing something that I’m not” I said, “I can only see green sludgy stuff.”

“There!” she pointed; “you’ve two fish, a water beetle and some mosquito larvae.”

Call me a cynic, but it wasn’t the haul I was expecting. In fact, I was coming to the conclusion that nature was a bit crap.

“We can have those fish for dinner,” I said to Izzy, pointing at them and laughing my head off.

Izzy guffawed heartily in return, but Helper looked shocked beyond belief; “Oh no, you must put them back,” she said seriously.

“Erm, it was a joke,” I pointed out to Helper; “the fish they are no more than half an inch long, and even though I could do with going on a diet, that fish would be taking things to extremes.”

“Oh sorry, of course,” Helper laughed laughed nervously.

“Anyway, we’ve done pond dipping,” I said. “What’s next on the agenda?”

Helper looked totally relieved: “A bug hunt,” she said thrusting a piece of paper into my hands. It was a list of ten different bugs.

“What do we do with this then?” I asked

“There are pictures of these bugs hidden throughout the nature reserve, and you have to find them and tick them off the list,” she replied.

“Cool,” I said to Izzy, “you understand what you are supposed to do?”

“Yeh of course,” she replied indignantly like she had done a bug hunt every day of her life.

“Ok good. Now you are going to be Dora, and you are responsible for finding the bugs, and my name is Diego and I am responsible for writing the bugs’ names onto our list.” I said. Can you see the natural leader in me coming out? Yep, I felt the need to delegate even to a five year old. I shudder to think of the results of my Inkblot test.

Izzy, as always, threw herself into the task with gusto and rushed around with me lumbering and sweating glowing behind her. For hours we ran around meadows, squeezed behind bushes, climbed trees, scaled fences and explored dens in pursuit of those bloody bug pictures. 

So, fast-forward a while. The sun was starting to set, and Izzy had found nine out of the ten bugs. We had spent the last hour trying to track down the elusive ’snail’ but he wasn’t to be found anywhere. As I saw it, we had two choices: 1. Set-up base camp and continue our search in the morning; or 2. Abandon our search for the damned snail and head home.

Despite Izzy insisting that she would like to live in the Nature Reserve until she had found the snail (she was soooo proud of herself for finding the other bugs), I decided against it. I mean, it would be downright weird for me and a five year old to sleep under a bush in a Nature Reserve because we hadn’t found a picture of a snail. Especially all those people walking past us and pointing. I dread to think what Social Services would make of me trying to explain that one.

So we headed home, and to my great suprise, Izzy gabbled all the way home about what a good time she had had. Blimey, five year olds are really easily amused! How cool is that? She said that ‘fishing’ (her words not mine) was great fun, and that she ‘loved’ the bug hunt. Jeez, I am such a good parent – I didn’t see that coming.

Me, on the other hand, woke up at 2am that night sweating about not finding the snail. Seriously, I had a dream and I was manically running around only to be met with dead ends, and empty places. And I had been frantically digging my pillow. That’s not right is it?

Next installment of ‘back to nature’ coming soon……. in the meantime, has anyone else got any summer holiday tales?

The great ‘Blog Button’ exchange

Howdy! Today I did a post on how to create your very own blog button, but then it got me thinking…. maybe some of the yummy blogs that I follow might want to swap buttons? Yes, we can share the love!

Me and one of my all time favourite blogs, Alfred Lives Here, have already taken the plunge…. and it was quite exciting seeing my Blog Button pop up on his blog. I ate a packet of Cheese and Onion crisps to celebrate.

So, what do you think? [strikes a pose in the mirror]. How are my attempts at networking going? [attempts a Zoolander but fails].

So, my fellow blogging chums, would you like to trade Blog Buttons? I have already got a section on my blog called ‘These blogs are bloody brilliant – go on – have a peek’, and that is where your blog button will live. [attempts a 'Blue Steel' in the mirror and succeeds].

I am looking forward to some constructive blog cross-pollination……. *wink*

Nature is not human hearted

At last, the rain this week eventually let up long enough for Izzy and I to undertake some outdoor activities. That’s because television is evil right? And children who watch too much of it are bound to have a penchant for mugging grannies and sniffing glue when they grow up. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen my superglue for a while…..

I had decided that the theme for our activities was going be nature, because I wanted Izzy to see some wildlife outside their normal context of roadkill. And with this in mind, we headed off to the Sutton Courtenay Nature Reserve – a place that had been advertising children’s activities for the summer holidays.

“Izzy,” I said in the car, “we are going to experience nature 

Once there, I marched up to the Reserve’s reception desk and said: “We would like to sample some of your nature and your finest children’s activities as well please.”

“No problem,” smiled the lady behind the desk (nature nuts are always ‘nice’, it’s from all that lovin’ animals), “that’ll be £2.50 please.”

Blimey, nature had gone up since last time I experienced it. That’ll be inflation then.

“So what’s first then?” I asked Mrs Nice once she had prised the money out of my cold, clenched fists.

“Pond dipping,” she said, “over at the pond.” Unsurprisingly.

“What’s that bloody hell’s pond dipping?” I asked.

“One of our helpers will explain once you are there,” she replied.

It took five minutes to walk to the pond, and I have to say, Izzy was pretty excited by the time we got there. We headed towards the helper, and I said, “we’d like to do some pond dipping please.”

“No problem,” she smiled (also terribly nice), “get one of those nets over there and dip it gently into the pond, decanting what you catch into one of these white trays,” she said, thrusting one into my hand.

“So basically it’s just fishing?” I asked her.

The horrified expression on her face told me that it wasn’t. “No,” she said, “we are looking for all manner of wildlife.” These nature types are very defensive of their wildlife techniques [note to reader: if you are at a nature reserve and see a spider, don't shout "UGH there's a spider! Kill it!" because they don't like that either].

So there we were, balancing precariously on a muddy pond bank and going in for the ‘catch’. The helper was watching us, and after dipping our net into the pond three times she shouted to us; “that’ll be enough now.”

Izzy and I scrambled back up the bank and poured the contents of our net into the white tray.

“Oh how exciting!” exclaimed the helper, “this is best variety of wildlife we have had all day.”

Izzy and I peered into the white tray; “You are obviously seeing something that I’m not” I said, “I can only see green sludgy stuff.”

“There!” she pointed; “you’ve two fish, a water beetle and some mosquito larvae.”

Call me a cynic, but it wasn’t the haul I was expecting. In fact, I was coming to the conclusion that nature was a bit crap.

“We can have those fish for dinner,” I said to Izzy, pointing at them and laughing my head off.

Izzy guffawed heartily in return, but Helper looked shocked beyond belief; “Oh no, you must put them back,” she said seriously.

“Erm, it was a joke,” I pointed out to Helper; “the fish they are no more than half an inch long, and even though I could do with going on a diet, that fish would be taking things to extremes.”

“Oh sorry, of course,” Helper laughed laughed nervously.

“Anyway, we’ve done pond dipping,” I said. “What’s next on the agenda?”

Helper looked totally relieved: “A bug hunt,” she said thrusting a piece of paper into my hands. It was a list of ten different bugs.

“What do we do with this then?” I asked

“There are pictures of these bugs hidden throughout the nature reserve, and you have to find them and tick them off the list,” she replied.

“Cool,” I said to Izzy, “you understand what you are supposed to do?”

“Yeh of course,” she replied indignantly like she had done a bug hunt every day of her life.

“Ok good. Now you are going to be Dora, and you are responsible for finding the bugs, and my name is Diego and I am responsible for writing the bugs’ names onto our list.” I said. Can you see the natural leader in me coming out? Yep, I felt the need to delegate even to a five year old. I shudder to think of the results of my Inkblot test.

Izzy, as always, threw herself into the task with gusto and rushed around with me lumbering and sweating glowing behind her. For hours we ran around meadows, squeezed behind bushes, climbed trees, scaled fences and explored dens in pursuit of those bloody bug pictures. 

So, fast-forward a while. The sun was starting to set, and Izzy had found nine out of the ten bugs. We had spent the last hour trying to track down the elusive ’snail’ but he wasn’t to be found anywhere. As I saw it, we had two choices: 1. Set-up base camp and continue our search in the morning; or 2. Abandon our search for the damned snail and head home.

Despite Izzy insisting that she would like to live in the Nature Reserve until she had found the snail (she was soooo proud of herself for finding the other bugs), I decided against it. I mean, it would be downright weird for me and a five year old to sleep under a bush in a Nature Reserve because we hadn’t found a picture of a snail. Especially all those people walking past us and pointing. I dread to think what Social Services would make of me trying to explain that one.

So we headed home, and to my great suprise, Izzy gabbled all the way home about what a good time she had had. Blimey, five year olds are really easily amused! How cool is that? She said that ‘fishing’ (her words not mine) was great fun, and that she ‘loved’ the bug hunt. Jeez, I am such a good parent – I didn’t see that coming.

Me, on the other hand, woke up at 2am that night sweating about not finding the snail. Seriously, I had a dream and I was manically running around only to be met with dead ends, and empty places. And I had been frantically digging my pillow. That’s not right is it?

Next installment of ‘back to nature’ coming soon……. in the meantime, has anyone else got any summer holiday tales?

How to: Create a Blog Button with the code underneath

Random Police and Shrek Rants

Police. Sometimes I question their powers of deduction. I was reading an article in the Oxford News today, and it was about the discovery of a decapitated man in the grounds of a golf course. When the Investigating Officer was interviewed, he confirmed that the victim was dead, and said that they were treating the death as suspicious.

WTF? Of course the bloody victim was dead. He had no head! …. unless in my ignorance there are people out there who have actually recovered from that particular injury? And of course his death is suspicious!….well, unless he had the worst golf swing known to man…….. 

Anyway, that story had nothing to do with today’s post. It was just something I read whilst I was in the supermarket exchanging a faulty tube of superglue that had led to me accidentally sticking myself to a child’s teapot earlier in the week.

Back to the matter in hand. After Izzy’s school holiday jaunts, she was back in Oxford and I was excited about having her for four straight days before she set off on another holiday. I had made sure that all my house chores were done so that we could concentrate on having fun. Yeh, you got it …….. I’m the bloody double of Mary Poppins I am.

I had it all planned. We were going to be doing loads of ‘outdoors stuff’ because I am a Victorian parent in that I believe that television is evil and if a child watches it too much, when they get older they will do horrible things involving fireworks and animals. The television rule doesn’t apply to me, obviously. I don’t know what I would do without my daily dose of ‘Big Brother’.

So along came Day 1 of our funfest. I opened the curtains and to my chagrin, it was raining. Damn! Actually, it wasn’t just raining, it was totally pissing it down. As I peered through a hole in the condensation on the window, I could see Naughty George in the garden having a wee whilst the rain bounced off his head. 

It became instantly apparent that my strict outdoors regime had been washed out, and that I needed to come up with a contingency, and quickly.

I jumped onto my computer and typed; “what the bloody hell can I do with a five year old if it’s raining outside?” Amazingly, Google came back with an answer, but I didn’t like it; “Shrek Forever After at Witney Cineworld.“

Ugh the cinema. I hate the cinema. But Izzy had already seen the picture of Shrek on my screen and had started jumping up and down and nearly spewing with excitement; “Can we go and see that mummy? Purlleeeeaase?”

I sighed……. and reluctantly agreed. Jeez, I’m a total pushover.

Two hours later, we arrived at Witney’s Cineworld, and it wasn’t long before all the things that I abhor about cinemas were pushed into my face. Firstly, there was the queue for tickets. For some bizarre reason, they were only selling tickets at the food counter (seems to be a new trend), so we had to stand in line for TWENTY minutes, watching people buy hot-dogs and popcorn, when all we wanted were the bloody tickets.

Then I had to actually pay for the tickets, and it cost £17.00 ($26.00 USD) …. oh yeh. For that price I could have bought the Shrek DVD and a DVD player to play it on.

So there I was, grumbling and swearing and cursing about the crap customer service at cinemas, but even I have to admit (begrudingly); Izzy abso-bloody-lutely loved it. It was all 3D, so things kept coming out of the screen making her laugh her head off. And I suppose that the film’s storyline was moderately entertaining.

But! And I say, BUT! Surely cinemas cannot survive in the long term with their current levels of customer service and price structure? Is it me?

Where’s Izzy?

After all the dashing around I have been doing over the last couple of weeks, it took a while to dawn on me……..

“What took a while to dawn on you?” I hear you cry.

Well, to be frank, the fact that I haven’t seen my daughter for quite a long time. As in about a week or so. Let me elucidate; I am not normally this scatter-brained about where I put down my daughter, but diary management (both Izzy’s and mine) has never been my strong point.

I decided to ring Izzy’s Dad, Steve (who is in charge of all Izzy’s engagements) and found out what was going on.

Me: [phone ringing]

Steve: Hello?

Me: Hi, it’s me. I just thought I would ring up to find out when I was going to see my daughter again. It’s been ages and I nearly had to refer to a photograph to remember what she looked like.

Steve: [sigh] I told you what she was up to, and that she is due back tomorrow.

Me: Oops, I’d forgotten, can you tell me again. …………..

It transpired that Izzy was like a real-life version of ‘Where’s Waldo‘ (or Where’s Wally, as it is called in the UK). Basically the little tinker has been popping up everywhere, with all types of friends and family, just like a five year old metaphorical prairie dog.

After piecing together the evidence and the pictures, I discovered that she had undertaken three major engagements in the last week and a half. I mean, WTF? She is five! She has a busier social life than me, and I am an like a cross between Mother Theresa, Paris Hilton and Justin Bieber (except I don’t do sex tapes…. like Mother Theresa ……. at least I hope that’s the case).

So, Izzy’s diary in the last week has been like this:

1. A weekend visit from Nana Shirley (paternal Grandmother)

Awww, it all started off so promising; Nana had dressed Izzy in a sweet little summer frock and matching sunhat. ‘It’ll never last’ I thought to myself when I heard that they were going to Shotover Park (the place where I used to live off the land).

Sure enough, two hours later. Dress – gone. Hat – gone. Sparkly sandals – gone. And what do we have in its place? I guess the best description is ‘feral’ crossed with ‘Bear Grylls’.

This time, the steady decline into feral-dom begins with an ice-cream………..

2. A holiday with her Dad in Woolacombe, Devon

How cute! Izzy and her dad went on a camping trip to Devon so that they could be by the sea for five days. Awww, it all started off so promising; Steve had dressed Izzy in a sweet little summer outfit with matching sunhat. ‘It’ll never last’ I thought to myself when I heard that they might be going to the beach.

Sure enough, two hours later. Dress – gone. Hat – already gone. Sparkly sandals – gone. And what do we have in its place? I guess the best description is ‘feral’ crossed with ‘Steve Irwin’ ….. but without the stingray. That was killed weeks ago by the turds.

3. A weekend at Grandad Paul and Nanny Sue’s house (paternal Grandfather and step-Grandmother)

The final stop of Izzy’s England tour, was a weekend in Birmingham with Grandad Paul and Nanny Sue. Demonstrating extraordinary foresight, they decided to skip the ‘lets dress her up all cute” stage and instead went for the jugular. Yep, straight off they geared her up for action. Roller blades on. Knee pads on, and accessorise with a Hello Kitty tube of sweets. Apparently she stayed in that exact same outfit for the full 48 hours she was there….. except for ……………..

………….. the time when Grandad Paul asked Izzy to do an impression of Mummy and she came up with this…………..

4. Prodigal daughter returns home

So. That was a brief summary of what went on during Izzy’s disappearance. And sure enough, as promised by Steve, she returned home on the predicted day, and he telephoned me to say that I could come and collect her. I arrived at Steve’s flat to be confronted by this ……..

I turned to Steve, “what the bloody hell is she doing?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said, “she told me that her teachers at school said that summer must be spent outside.”

“But it’s pissing it down with rain,” I replied.

Steve shrugged and I shook my head; “We need to complain to that school,” I said.

But I have to say – feral or not – danger seeking or not – I was mighty happy to have my little girl back from her jaunt….. and I had a whole load of activities ready for our impending weekend together.

So how are all you other parents getting on with the summer holidays? What are you doing to keep them entertained? ……… We need to swap notes ….. only another two week push before school starts again!

Do you want to know who’s reading your blog?

I love statistics I do. And algorithms. I reckon I could write an algorithm for any situation….. because living life in binary always adds an interesting dimension.

“What the bloody hell are you waffling on about?” I hear you cry.

Ok, yeh, I have been sidetracked a little bit. Sometimes the Engineer in me bubbles to the surface and I have to knock it back down with a metaphorical ‘reality bat’, normally in the shape of my friends calling me a geek.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand: This week I was surfing the internet and I decided to find some interesting statistics relating to blogging.

Was I successful? …….. Was I?! I found an uber-interesting study done by an internet geek called Jakob Neilsen, who is renowned for examining the behaviour of internet users. In this particular investigation he had narrowed down his scope to encompass the behaviour of people who followed other people’s blogs, and what he discovered was quite amazing.

His latest study found that 90% of online blog readers are ‘lurkers’ (people who read a blog without ever commenting on it) with only 9% of users contributing ‘a little’ and 1% actively contributing.

So in summary,  1% of your blog’s users are actively engaging with your blog and the rest are at best occasional contributers…… according to Jakob that is.

At first I thought it was all poppycock, but then I looked at the super-dooper graph that I get everyday that tells me how many people have visited my blog. And then I looked at the number of people who leave comments. And then it dawned on me……… most (i.e. nearly everyone) of my blog visitors are lurkers!

Hey lurkers ….. stop that! Come and say ‘hello’, I promise that I don’t bite. Blogging is all about meeting new people and if you are ‘lurking’ I can’t interact with you, so we need to put some de-lurking processes in place.

So, I decided to sneakily steal an idea from a blog that I follow called Alfred lives here.  He devised two cunning plans to coax lurkers from anonymity (whilst contributing to a good cause in the process). Here goes:

De-lurking process 1. 

If you leave a comment on my blog, I will donate £1.00 to the Pakistani flood relief fund

De-lurking process 2. 

If you become a ‘follower’ of my blog, I will donate £2.00 to the Pakistani flood relief fund.

Let’s do it! (but not so much that I can’t afford the charity bill!).