Google in Bed

On Sunday evening I was very tired by the time I went to bed. I was already asleep by the time Robbie came to bed, but as he doesn't do anything quietly I was soon wide awake again. I really don't know why he feels compelled to talk to me (and to require an answer) when I am asleep because he doesn't get a good reaction. He doesn't seem to understand that when I am asleep I really don't want to hear about the cat's digestive problems or even the state of the railways, I just want to sleep - is that so much to ask?


On this particular occasion he had woken me to inform me that he had left the toilet set in the correct position, surely he doesn't imagine that he will get 'brownie points' for doing what any sensible person would do anyway! Seat down and lid up is the only practical option, anything else could lead to catastrophe in the dark! I tried my best 'not to be awake' but Robbie talks regardless and if he gets no response he prods me until he does. I think he enjoys living dangerously!


Somehow we got on to the subject of names and I mentioned that some names like my own enable you to have a good guess about the age of the owner. Robbie mentioned the name Wendy and I told him that it was not really a name until used by J M Barrie in Peter Pan.  It was inspired by a nickname given to him by a little girl who called him her 'friendy' but because she had trouble pronouncing the R sound it became 'fwendy'. 


I don't think I told him that there are rare examples of the name before that, or that it was once a boy's name, but it was the middle of the night and I was keen to go back to sleep. Robbie refused to believe the J M Barrie reference and he was now in confrontational mode demanding to know where the term Wendy House came from. After a deep sigh I told him that it came from the Peter Pan story, but he refused to believe me.  He turned the light on and grabbed his Blackberry, I thought he was going to 'phone a friend' but he was doing a google search. Reluctantly he confirmed that I was right (he should be used to it by now!). Then finally I was allowed to get some sleep.

Traffic Report

I use a service called Sitemeter to help me keep track of who is reading the blog. Don't panic it doesn't reveal your contact details or any personal information, but it gives some very interesting information, including the location of the visitor and the time of the visit. I have been surprised to find that people visit the blog from a number of countries including USA, Canada, India, Philippines and Australia. I hope they don't think that everyone in England is like Robbie – that really would be scary!

Sitemeter also tells me the search terms used when people come to the blog via google or other search engines, I had a look at some of these the other day and I can only conclude that people do some very odd searches. Here are one or two of the strangest ones

national fig roll crisis
how do you get the fig into the gig roll
wake the fish
Jimmy neutron t shirts
bad things about William Shakespeare
sometimes it is not necessary to tell the truth
people in Shakespeare used to wear
craigentinny dentist blog
random demon writings
Samuel Rowbottom

I don't suppose they found many useful answers to their questions on the blog, but perhaps they were not as disappointed as the various people who searched for Robbie Photos expecting to find Robbie Williams smiling back at them, but instead they stumbled upon assorted images of Robbie instead. I'm not sure the world is ready for Robbie as a pin-up, but you never know!