Monday 7 November 2016

TAKING STATISTICAL STOCK - PART 3 - THROUGH THE EYES OF A TRANSITIONAL OBJECT - ME: PETER TED

I began this statistical stock-taking exercise at the end of June, continued at the end of August - and now just over two months later present for your interest, amusement and curiosity the third part in this saga. May I introduce my guest blogger for this article:

  PETER TED

I'm the one on the left - of course! - and I should explain I lost my left ear in the siege of Petergrad.


Hello everyone!

Well you all know how pleased I was before I took the family off for our Greek vacation. My brilliant idea of doing three consecutive blogs, one a day for three days running, had paid rich dividends as I knew it would. My protégé, the one and only Jeremy Corbyn, had come to Cornwall - I knew he would accept my invitation - and wowed the crowds at Heartlands and so I got Rob, my human, to do those three blogs. 42 and 43 and 35 page views by the end of August. It had to be my idea it was proving so successful.

And the continuing success of other blogs also had my paw-print all over. 'Jago Stone Part 2' led the way with 216 views and I of course had played a critical part in advising my human how best to deal with the issues of gender and sex that surface in that blog. Just ignore anything that Sally Ann, my partner, might say. (See the brilliant picture of me that she has somehow got herself linked into for a picture of the grey bear in my life). She has a weird view that just because I've been around for  centuries I'm kind of 'un-reconstructed' as she puts it.

I can't think what that silly grey bear means. And of course the second most popular blog was very much my idea too.  I said to Rob as we watched 'Avenue Q' at Kidz R Us 'There's a blog in this - we




can call it 'Rough Sex in St Ives - that will pull in the punters!'

The weekend with Merlin Porter, the Oxford artist and son of Jago Stone, deserved a blog and I'm not surprised that it had had 83 views by the time we set off to Greece. Merlin is a very nice human and so is his partner, Bethany. You can see what a good artist he is in this picture of me in the interior of the Sloop Inn here in my home town of St Ives. Hasn't he done a good job in depicting me! I must say he has also captured Sally Ann quite well although what she was doing there in the first place beats me. Far too young to be seen in an inn such as the Sloop.


My picture by Merlin Porter painted in early Spring 2016 in the Sloop Inn, St Ives


My human, Rob, does like his running although he can't go that far without switching to part-walking so I'm pleased that his most popular running blog had reached 83 in the charts by the summer. I knew he was preparing for a return to Oxford for a race in October and that bothered me, to be honest. Between you and me, I've never really forgiven him for leaving me behind when he got his  scholarship and disappeared off there to do his three-year stretch. I sat on the shelf in the cupboard on the stairs in that home of his in Welling for what felt like YEARS waiting for him to come and collect me.

Well of course he did - eventually. Now where was I? Ah yes - this blog - an update ... you all want to know what I've done to bring about this extraordinary increase in viewing numbers. Whoops! That's letting the bear out of the bag. I'd better explain.

I knew that Jago Stone had had contacts with the Americans at the Upper Heyford air base so I  thought I would  do a bit of pond-hopping and see what I could do to help out in his research. Well I pulled a few strings and explored the network I have across the globe and to cut a very interesting story short I ended up in a real American's home - (I'm sworn to secrecy - it will be in the book) - and I persuaded her to email my human with news that she had a Jago Stone painting on her wall. Well that began an exchange of very interesting emails that I closely monitored and she said that she would tell her friends and acquaintances about Rob's website and blogs. She must have a lot of friends or at least something remarkable happened because if I tell you the American audience figures in the last month you will not believe it. Brace yourself!

2095 page views from the States! Compared with 267 from within the UK.

You can imagine what this has done to the viewing stats for our blogs. Let me give you a flavour:

Nearly all over 100 and leading the way is the classic 'Jago Stone - Part 2', now standing at 335 hits. Joint 2nd at 171 apiece are 'A weekend with Merlin' and 'Rough Sex in St Ives'. 'Under the Surface of St Ives' clocks up 144 views - and the three JC Heartlands blogs together make a grand total of 412 page views.


I thought you would like to see the earliest surviving picture of me - the others were lost in the siege of Petergrad, along with my ear - this was taken in Lewisham around 1951 and the main humans are Rob and his mum 


As I said to Rob, "WOW -  haven't I done well!!!" 


                              

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